Earlier Conservation?

Reading an article posted by our own loveable monkey-phile Mojojojo about the decline of gibbons in mainland Asia (as documented by the ancient Chinese) I was struck with a thought that had occurred to me many times when considering species that went extinct in the modern era; is there a way we can have conservation and biodiversity to be seen as important, and worthwhile, concepts at an earlier stage in our history?

It's been discussed before (most specifically with regards to the thylacine) but usually the response is that, so long as a species (such as the thylacine) is getting in the way (whether the threat is perceived or real) of human development, we will wipe it out, but I know that there were avid zoologists, botanists, geneticists (post-Darwin) and others who might have different things to say on the matter.

Speaking of the thylacine; we understand that part of the reason for the extinction on the mainland was the introduction of the dingo, which, as an apex predator, simply out-competed the thylacine and drove them into smaller and smaller niche territories until there were none left. But on the island of Tasmania, their last fortress if you will, it can be said that their decline was rapidly brought on by sheep farmers who blamed (in most cases, wrongly so) the thylacine for killing their herds.

Now, is there a way earlier governments might, for example, set aside more land earlier for the preservation of exotic species and a region's biodiversity? And enforce it? It doesn't necessarily have to be western cultures, either.
 
Now, is there a way earlier governments might, for example, set aside more land earlier for the preservation of exotic species and a region's biodiversity? And enforce it? It doesn't necessarily have to be western cultures, either.

Well, the easiest way would be to have some culture tip over into the Industrial Revolution earlier and therefore get rich sooner. Rich cultures tend to care about preserving the environment more, so this is highly likely to lead to chronologically earlier efforts to preserve species.

However, while this technically fulfills the letter of your request, I don't think it fulfills the spirit. After all, if China industrializes in, say, the 13th century, then it is likely to do serious damage to the Chinese environment, perhaps as much as it has in reality (on the one hand, the distortions of Maoist planning are unlikely to appear; on the other, looking at Britain its highly polluting phase is likely to last longer), so that while technically it starts preserving the environment in, say, the 15th century, and therefore several hundred years before it actually did, the environment itself is no better off.

I don't have a good answer for how the environment could actually be better preserved. There are occasional instances of protection being given to some part of the natural world (e.g., Japanese forests), but these are usually for their value to humans (e.g., to use that wood for building), not just to generally protect biodiversity. That concept doesn't really seem to matter to people until they're rich, and, well, see above.
 
Exotic species were often seen as a status symbol, and protected by landholders accordingly. One example would be a herd of wisent (basically, European bison) that the landgraves of Hesse-Kassel kept in the neighbourhood of Kassel, threatening locals with severe penalties if they so much as inconvenienced the majestic beasts. Of course the system was always selective (the same rulers would organise the systematic extermination of wolves), but the idea existed. German nobles also practiced sustainable forestry and fishery on their lands as early as the 15th century.

Perversely, this heritage was one reason why conservation policies were so problematic in many countries outside of Europe. They were strongly associated with the desires of a ruling caste enforced at the expense of the rest.
 
And I think this is still going on. For example, people who have hunted on the land for a long time find themselves NGO'ed or World-Wildlife-Foundation'ed off the land.

Okay, let's put on our thinking caps and come up with a solution.
 
I'm gonna go with the opposite and say have more dictators and tyrannical monarchs (isolationist types, not imperialists) who keep their people impoverished and are only concerned with their own wealth. They would be the type to hold back their nation's economy for the sake of national parks, private hunting grounds, palaces surrounded by wilderness and they are also the type to keep exotic pets in large quantities.
 
Exotic species were often seen as a status symbol, and protected by landholders accordingly.

What about a monarch holding a newly 'discovered' area as a personal domain. Such as the monarch of Britain declaring Tasmania to be their personal dominion (ala Belgian Congo maybe?). With delayed development they could end up seeing such land as their personal island sized zoo.

Though they would probably need to be able to visit the territory in question to be able to see it that way. Maybe if Britain set up their settler colonies with local nobility. A duke of Australia might see value in a Tasmanian Island Zoo. Eventually such a set up could become a defacto national park or preserve.
 

Driftless

Donor
Have a society where there is sufficient resource at hand to sustain living, but not so much where waste is acceptable - "Waste not, want not" as a guiding principle.

People who are scrabbling just to keep from starving, nutrient deficiency, dying from freezing/dehydration, etc as an everyday event; prorbably are less concerned with sustainability. Conversely, those folks with an abundance of resources often aren't concerned as well - Those resources get over-exploited.
 
Have a society where there is sufficient resource at hand to sustain living, but not so much where waste is acceptable - "Waste not, want not" as a guiding principle.

People who are scrabbling just to keep from starving, nutrient deficiency, dying from freezing/dehydration, etc as an everyday event; prorbably are less concerned with sustainability. Conversely, those folks with an abundance of resources often aren't concerned as well - Those resources get over-exploited.

I think we have to distinguish between sustainable management and conservation here. Most agricultural societies have been pretty good at sustainability within the limits of their awareness. There were some things they didn't understand at the time, but the 'tragedy of the commons' is a fiction that never plays out in a real, traditionally managed commons.

Peasant or smallholder societies have no interest in conserving economically unproductive natural features, though. Even at very low technology levels, they were adept at managing their environment quite thoroughly. Shepherds were very careful of overgrazing and knew what plants to encourage and which to weed out in passing, but few of them would be longing for more forest cover or sentimental about wolves.
 

Driftless

Donor
I think we have to distinguish between sustainable management and conservation here. Most agricultural societies have been pretty good at sustainability within the limits of their awareness. There were some things they didn't understand at the time, but the 'tragedy of the commons' is a fiction that never plays out in a real, traditionally managed commons.

Peasant or smallholder societies have no interest in conserving economically unproductive natural features, though. Even at very low technology levels, they were adept at managing their environment quite thoroughly. Shepherds were very careful of overgrazing and knew what plants to encourage and which to weed out in passing, but few of them would be longing for more forest cover or sentimental about wolves.

Good point about many smallholder societies. I do think that sustainability and conservation are connected, though. Preservation is a branch of conservation as is sustainability.

I guess I was thinking of alternative ethos to what first happened with colonization in the US. There was so much land, so many resources, that we treated those resources with an utter disregard for the future. From the colonizer point of view, the local environment was there to exploit(as in maximize usage), as if it were a veritable bottomless "Santa's bag of toys". The reality was that we operated like locusts, stripping an area clean of easy accessible resource and then move west to the next spot - Step and repeat. To be fair, there was a strong element of human nature at work - for many immigrants, exploiting a natural resource was those family's very first prospect of some level of wealth.

Even now, the first push-back on any mention of conservation of any resource isthat conservation costs jobs - which is usually less about jobs created or preserved and more about the potential earnings of investors. I realize this is an over-simplification, but at the top of our economic food chain, there's little incentive to support conservation for the future and more drive to maximize profits today. That's where I was pushing the idea of an earlier society where "Waste not - want not" is a central ethos.
 
There was conservation.

Ever heard of New Forest in England? They were actually preserved so that the king and the Norman aristocracy would have a forest to hunt in and deer to hunt. The aristocracy have an interest in not overhunting, since they would like to have deer in the future too.

If a peasant hunted deer in the New Forest, they would be put to death. There would be large fines.

The Forest Laws in England, despite being extremely oppressive, actually conserved large forests in England, and the largest forest in Southern England were Royal forests preserved for hunting.

Simply having the monarch reserve even larger portions of the forest as off limits so that he could continue to hunt is your best bet in earlier conservation.
 
The problem with environment is that, like many other things in our lives, we only appreciate it when it is lost or about to be lost.

Many cultures in the World which modern Europeans have wondered about their advanced sensitiveness towards environment protection haven't received it by God inspiration: Maori, Australian aborigins, Native Americans...learnt how environment was important to their societies after causing an important damage to them in the past (basically, decimating the local megafauna).

Western civilization was developed in a geographical cluster where, for several reasons, did not perceive the impact they had caused, so it never stopped us to proceed further in our environmental destruction. One of the main factors is the succession of civilizations in the same geographical area. I.e. Maori folklore had references to the fragility of their ecosystems after they altered it, even if they can't recall as it happened long ago, their culture have incorporated this respect to the environment in order to do not make things worse. But Middle-Age French could not recall how the Gaul was environmentally changed during Roman times because of the break of the direct oral transmission of culture, additionally distorted by the introduction of a foreign one like the Christian.
 
European bison were protected by the Polish kings until the partition, and by the Tsars afterwards. Similar protections for wildlife by the aristocracy are common. I suppose if you could make, say, all white Rhinos the property of the crown at some point in the 19th century it could help.
 
European bison were protected by the Polish kings until the partition, and by the Tsars afterwards. Similar protections for wildlife by the aristocracy are common. I suppose if you could make, say, all white Rhinos the property of the crown at some point in the 19th century it could help.

But they did not protect them with a conservative purpose as today standards, but for keeping a hunting reservoir.
 
I wonder if there was a ruler like Ashoka of India . .

or maybe a ruler with congestive heart failure or a breathing disorder who knew he had a couple of years at most. He becomes a good delegator and a builder of people. Maybe he tells himself and others, almost like a refrain, 'weak body, strong heart,' even if that's not literally true!

and if he had also moved toward pretty broad democracy as the most stable system,

I wonder how that would have played out for the environment?
 
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