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The social sciences are often seen as being in opposition to conservation and the practice of conservationists. Yet social scientists have made important contributions to conservation and could make even more contributions if they are willing to use their perceptive, insightful tools as a means of both improving the practice of conservation and sharpening social science’s critique of conservation ideas and practices. I provide two lists: first, a list of the ways in which I think social science work has already improved conservation practice and, second, a set of generalizations made by some social scientists about the practice of conservation that are incorrect or incomplete. I argue that a more careful application of social science tools and approaches could begin an active and informed exploration of the diversity of values, histories, institutions, politics and approaches in conservation. This would facilitate the sharpening of social science’s critique of conservation ideas and practices and, through these, improve the practice of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conservation of species is one of the foundations of conservation biology. Successful species conservation has often been defined as simply the avoidance of extinction. We argue that this focus, although important, amounts to practicing conservation at the "emergency room door," and will never be a sufficient approach to conserving species. Instead, we elaborate a positive definition of species conservation on the basis of six attributes and propose a categorization of different states of species conservation using the extent of human management and the degree to which each of the attributes is conserved. These states can be used to develop a taxonomy of species "recovery" that acknowledges there are multiple stable points defined by ecological and social factors. With this approach, we hope to contribute to a new, optimistic conservation biology that is not based on underambitious goals and that seeks to create the conditions under which Earth's biological systems can thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the long-term issues of animal conservation. They discuss the definition of fads that embraces enthusiastically and part of conservation on human endeavor whether in business, economics or psychology. They also explores the evidence of fads that relates to biological diversity conservation. It notes that fads include various fields of ecotourism, reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and payment for ecosystem or environmental services (PES).