The Thoreau ideal as a unifying thread in the conservation movement.

Californian almond farmers do not need native bees. The logic of the bee market decrees it. Opportunity costs of setting aside land to promote the diversity of wild bees are higher than importing pollinators from a bee factory in some far-flung, distant metropolis (Ghazoul 2007). Conservationists cannot complain about such a perverse situation because they established the economic framework in which to install the ecosystem service strategy and will have to eat the almonds with all the wryness but with none of the bitterness. Wouldn’t it feel wonderful, though, to not have to keep quiet about the twisted dialectics of economics? Imagine being able to state, without shame or sheepishness, that the economy is but a subset of the biosphere and thus bee markets are just a Platonic abstraction, whereas native bees are a reality worth protecting. Collar (2003:265) laments our “desperate and sometimes excruciating inability to articulate the most basic truth about conservation’s motivation.” The ontology of conservation has but one basic truth: “existence value” is an oxymoron. By conceding that nature can be valued, conservationists put themselves in an untenable position. Research is beginning to reveal that many species are not actually needed to maintain valued services (Ridder 2008), which ruins the economic justification of preserving biodiversity. Conservation was never meant to become another latch in the ratchet of progress; its primary purpose has always been to transcend the notion of economic progress. Leopold (1933: 634) said “economic criteria did not suffice to adjust men to society; they do not now suffice to adjust society to its environment.” Not only do conservationists play into the hands of industry when they use an economic framework but its use bleaches the onceinteresting conservation lexicon bone white. Too often I see my friends’ eyes glaze over when I start barking out my barrage of mournful statistics and hackneyed environmental harangues. Most citizens are not creatively engaged enough to care about conservation because conservation philosophy is brimming with woebegone litanies and soulless financial rhetoric: that wetland provides $75 worth of services a day, do not touch it; that species is worth a net value of x units for y reasons, preserve it; your SUV emits 300 g CO2/km, feel bad about it. Conservation is a sexy subject, but it comes across as frumpish and bad tempered. By returning to a Thoreau-based ideology of conservation, the movement could become both reenchanted and enchanting. Henry David Thoreau recognized conservation as an existential reaction to the rapid industrialization that was tearing through frontier America. He maintained that humans are far richer when free from superfluous external inputs and, instead, embedded within the beauty of nature. It is certain that he would have balked at the tragic incongruence of conservationists using an economic framework to justify the existence of the movement. He was an unapologetic and nonviolent freedom fighter for nature who decried the societal dictum that “fruits are not ripe until they are turned to dollars,” thus discerning true wealth from the cult of wealth that capitalism has recklessly promulgated. Yet many conservationists cannot hold a candle to Thoreau. The steady edification of conservation biology as an academic discipline has resulted in a strange mismatch between motivation and justification, which is analogous to a scale mismatch between solution and problem: the development of the conservation ethos preceded industrial optimization but now attempts to use economic tools to solve what is essentially a cultural problem. The movement has been sold short. Conservation biology is, and should probably be, a scientific pursuit. But it is mostly a belief. And by defining the Thoreau ideal as an explicit and all-encompassing motivation cum justification, conservationists will create the culture of conservation in situ. In a recent discussion with my colleagues, however, I was blasted for wanting to integrate conservation morals into a coherent ethic. They declared, “Conservation decisions and outcomes are invariably complex processes, with a swirling mix of morals interacting with livelihood standards and geography.” Yes, given. But why should one not strive for the ideal? Always aiming for the inevitable middle ground leads to a shifting-baseline syndrome, allowing one to accept worse and worse trade-offs as the norm. My colleagues also contended “people are extremely varied in their attitudes toward the preservation of nature, and conservationists need to communicate with