PARENT SESSION
Symposium #15: Philosophy of ecology in the eastern and western civilizations.
Sponsored by ESA Asian Ecology Section
Organized by: Y.D. Choi and J. Carter.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. 8:00 AM to 11:35 AM. Madison Ballroom B
Toward an international conservation ethic: lessons from the cranes of Asia.
Meine, Curtis1, Callicot, Baird2, Beilfuss, Richard1, 1 2
ABSTRACT- Conservation efforts must be responsive to, and reflective of, local cultural attitudes and values as well as best available science. Especially, in the case of extensive biomes (e.g., Amazon rainforest or the Himalayan highlands) or long-distance migratory species (e.g., whales or cranes) conservation efforts must be undertaken in the context of several cultural codes at once, codes that may not easily translate into one another. We suggest that Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic, as a kind of cross-cultural lingua franca or Rosetta Stone, allows for coordination and integration of culturally embedded conservation efforts for the following reasons. (1) Land Ethic is based on evolutionary biology and ecology, sciences that are pursued across cultural boundaries in diverse local contexts. (2) Leopold was acutely aware of the human response to natural beauty ("the esthetic harvest," as he put it, that land "is capable, under science, of contributing to culture") and of the potential of the natural world to serve as a common source of spiritual inspiration ("a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise"). (3) Land Ethic, an essential part of ecology and evolutionary biology, may integrate and crosscut "disciplines" inviting conversations the fields beyond the reductive "hard" sciences. We examine these premises with case studies of local crane and wetland conservation efforts in Central and East Asia.
KEY WORDS: international, conservation, ethic, Leopold