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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 33
AMMUNITION FOR CONSERVATION: BIODIVERSITY, SPECIES AND HABITATS BRIAN C. E V E R S H A M Background: amateurs, Professionals and data As Peter Marren has demonstrated (Marren, 1997), there was a time, as recently as the 1960s, when most professional conservationists were ecologists, and most professional ecologists were also naturalists; there was thus little conflict between professional and amateur. In recent years, two changes may be discerned. Firstly, the rise of the 'environmentalists': effective campaigners on a ränge of issues, including wildlife habitats and species, such people tend to be motivated by a general concern rather than a specific enthusiasm for a group of plants or animals, in the naturalist's sense. Secondly, the increase in the numbers of life-science graduates, with broader but shallower training: the majority of graduate biologists thus lack the signal attribute which naturalists look for: the ability to identify at least some organisms to species level. Some modern ecologists bemoan the decline in the teaching of taxonomy in our universities. I suspect this is partly based on too rosy an impression of the past. Graduates now have a poorer understanding of the animal and plant kingdoms than 15 years ago; but even a deeply traditional zoology course went only a short way toward teaching undergraduates to identify species. The 1980s saw two trends in academic ecology, whose long-term consequences are yet to be determined. The first was the arrival of inexpensive and relatively powerful Computers. The second, not unconnected, was the growth of Statistical numeracy and mathematical modelling abilities among ecologists. Computers make data analysis much more rapid, and the ability to analyse dozens of environmental variables at once could strengthen the science. Conversely, the attention paid to the design and planning of experiments and sampling programmes may have declined. The advent of home Computing within the reach of many amateur naturalists, and the continuing development of county and national Biological Records Centres may also have a significant effect. Until recently, books and journals formed a large part of our legacy from previous generations of naturalists and their societies (their collections of specimens, housed in local and national museums, are the other material benefit). Although journals such as Suffolk Natural History remain a vital Channel for communication, and a powerful stimulus to fieldwork, their role as depositories of information may change as more is handed to future generations in databases. Biodiversity and the naturalist The decline in 'natural history' among ecologists may be checked by a new and politically important term, biodiversity. The Rio conference on biodiversity (UNCED, 1990) defined it rather legalistically: "The variability among living organisms from all sources, including inter alia, terrestrial marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems." - Article 2 of the Biodiversity Convention.
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 33 (1997)