Conservation Education Principles of Conservation Biology: Recommended Guidelines for Conservation Literacy from the Education Committee of the Society for Conservation

We live in a world of diminished ecological diversity. We extract energy, materials, and organisms from nature and modify landscapes at rates that cannot be sustained. These activities have resulted in accelerated rates of extinction, degradation, and loss of ecosystems, and disruption of the natural systems in which our cultures are embedded. The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) believes that conservation education is a necessary step toward correcting these problems. Its stated goals and objectives include “the education, at all levels, preparatory and continuing, of the public, of biologists, and of managers in the principles of conservation biology.” What are these principles? What are the central concepts and values that underlie the professional interpretation of the field of conservation biology, an understanding of which represents what could be called “conservation literacy?” Although there have been occasional spotlights on education in the literature of conservation biology ( Jacobson & Hardesty 1988; Fleischner 1990; Orr 1992, 1994; Trombulak 1993), no consensus has emerged on essential guiding principles. Here we attempt to provide a framework for such guidelines. This document is the result of a longterm project carried out by the Ed-