A tale of three disciplines: Navigating the Boundaries at the Nexus of Conservation Science, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

Nature is under immediate and increasing threat. Tales of destruction and deforestation abound despite the myriad interventions and investments by government bureaucracies, non-government organizations, and private land-owners. As the extinction crisis looms larger and demands on the public purse grow greater, understanding how science becomes policy and policy practice is more important than ever. As a result, and in response to the increasing insularity of conservation biology that has consciously nourished a careful separation of knowledge and action, of scientist and actor, I use this dissertation to navigate the nexus of conservation science, policy, and practice. I employ case studies in forest hydrology and species conservation, as well as cognitive theory, to examine how conservation science becomes policy. I collected field data from Lake Mead National Recreation Area and from the World Bank to explore how policies are translated into practice. Current assumptions in conservation biology apportions these three separate but equal disciplines - science, policy, and practice - into one greater and two lesser, one that is pure and two that are sticky. But the transmission of knowledge from the Academy to the domains of conservation policy and practice, though difficult, is our mandate. As much as technical competence matters in conservation biology, so too does political literacy. After all, conservation occurs within a dynamic social, political, and institutional landscape. Nonetheless, the current emphasis in conservation biology is on answering questions in the natural sciences and, to a lesser degree, in economics. This focus is important, as is protecting scholarship from the daily pressures of a society that demands quick and ready answers. But scientific data is only one commodity among many that policy-makers and conservation practitioners trade in a tournament of values. Its usefulness lies in the wider social and political environment. Moreover, conservation biology is not simply an applied subset of biology or ecology. It is a mission-driven discipline that dedicates itself to the pursuit of science to save wildlife and wild lands. It encapsulates certain values as axioms. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that the diversity of life matters and that the struggle to end extinctions is meaningful. Therefore, though conservation science, the design of conservation policies, and the practice of conservation are separate disciplines, they are closely related. For we must understand their different rules of evidence, speak their distinctive languages, and achieve credibility in all three disciplines while maintaining a sense of intellectual integrity in each. This requires respect for their differences as well as recognizing their shared mission in the service of wildlife and wild lands.