Conservation and Philosophy: Exploring the Deepest Roots

Yesterday, the world celebrated World Philosophy Day (or not; who even celebrates philosophy?), and as someone whose life turned around entirely because of the incredible field of inquiry, I find myself wanting to express a few things that have been on my mind lately.

In the past few months I have found myself often explaining to my friends from college how in the world I decided to pursue science (and especially wildlife conservation) after studying philosophy, and to my classmates from my wildlife conservation course what in the world this mysterious subject of philosophy was.

A significant part of that explanation would be how closely related these two fields are, and how deeply rooted philosophy is in wildlife conservation (as with every other field ever, probably).

Conservation is a science. It depends on scientific methods of wildlife management and research, "people management", and so on. But what sets it apart from other fields like say, zoology? What is the hidden but very active implication of the term "wildlife conservation" that makes it different from zoology?

I believe that hidden within the term and the field is a strong, inherent moral commitment that any practitioner or researcher of conservation takes to protect wildlife and people. This goes much beyond mere scientific research. We often (but not as often as we must) read about conservation being inherently political. But also, and more importantly perhaps, conservation is also inherently (and by definition) philosophical.

Conservation requires - or must require - every person involved to contemplate on not only ethical, but even metaphysical roots of the concepts that they deal with. It is not only important to ask, for example, "How does one weigh the consequences in a 'people vs wildlife' situation?"; but also, "What is the meaning of 'weighing consequences', and how do we come upon the right way to do it?" and "Who and what decides the value of people and the value of wildlife?"

Would it be justified to formulate and implement conservation programs in Dibang Valley, for example, without knowing and studying and exploring the metaphysical meaning of the forest for the people? Without realising the inherent links between these metaphysical meanings and the ethics and way of life of the people? Would it be justified to label their hunting practices as morally wrong without understanding the stories and myths behind those rituals? In a world that is filled with philosophical beings, can objective and impersonal science be enough to manage and mitigate all conflict? I believe not.

Everything we practise and study and do and believe is philosophical - and wildlife conservation is no exception to it. Unfortunately, philosophy in most fields takes a hidden, subconscious position. Most people studying conservation do deal with the aforementioned and such questions, but usually without realising that they are engaging in ethics and philosophy. And what do we thus lose? Where there would have been a chance to actually apply the theoretical concepts of philosophy - like utilitarianism, deontology, and consequentialism - and evaluate every situation as such, there would instead be incomplete evaluations without an in-depth ethical meta-analysis of the situations.

Philosophy has so much to contribute, now more than ever before. All science came from philosophy, and no science ever existed without it - and never will. In fact, it was philosophy that steered me back to wildlife conservation with the words of philosophers such as Aldo Leopold and Arne Næss. And beautifully, conservation too keeps taking me back to philosophy, with every question, every study, and every conversation.

Here's to realising that conservation is philosophical. Here's to becoming a tiny, thinking, working philosopher with each passing day.