In our previous episode, we discussed that conservation is at a crossroads. More people are turning to nature and the outdoors for health and fulfillment, yet far too many are demonstrating a lack of knowledge of the differences between conservation and preservation and the benefits of both. As a result, emotion is trumping science, sound conservation actions are being pulled in all directions or tied up in court, and harmful measures are showing up on ballot initiatives.

In this episode, we drill deeper into this topic with Shane Mahoney, president and CEO of Conservation Visions. We begin by reflecting on a quote from Aldo Leopold’s book, A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949.

“There must be some force behind conservation— more universal than profit, less awkward than government, less ephemeral than sport; something that reaches into all times and places, where men live on the land, something that brackets everything from rivers to raindrops, from whales to hummingbirds, from land estates to window-boxes. I can see only one such force: a respect for land as an organism; a voluntary decency in land-use exercised by every citizen and every landowner out of a sense of a love for and obligation to that great biota we call America. This is the meaning of conservation, and this is the task of conservation education.”

We end up with the need to create an overarching conservation policy, a conservation template that puts wildlife, the environment, and more people all on the same page. How we get there is the challenge.