Conservationists don’t need reminding that context must be considered and somehow dealt with in doing conservation work in real places. There are several kinds of context: geographic context (e.g., climate, topography, biogeography), economic context (e.g., poverty levels, income disparities, investment in women’s education), political context (e.g., civil rights, political access, freedom of the press, fair elections, rights and sovereignty of indigenous peoples), and culture context (e.g., religion, literacy, corruption, diversity, history). As biologists, we are best able to consider the biogeographic and scale issues. For example, it may be informative to compare the conservation visions and challenges of large continents versus small ones, or compare continents to islands. I will compare the conservation challenges in three places that span such a range. These are (1) mainland North America; (2) the island-continent of Australia; and (3) the archipelago of Hawai‘i. I will discuss how these three places differ with respect to (a) threats such as exotics/ferals and future "invasibility,” (b) history such as extinction episodes in pre-history and in recent history, (c) sensitivity to climate change, (d) the kinds, scales, and relevance of dispersal behaviors and adaptive evolutionary potential for different taxa, and (e) the role of large, highly interactive species in maintaining biological diversity.
Michael Soulé is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. He was born, raised, and educated in California. After spending much of his youth in the canyons, deserts, and intertidal of San Diego and Baja California, and after graduating from San Diego State, he went to Stanford to study population biology and evolution under Paul Ehrlich. Upon receiving his Ph.D. at Stanford, Michael went to Africa to help found the first university in Malawi. He has also taught in Samoa, the Universities of California at both San Diego and Santa Cruz, and the University of Michigan. He has done field work on insects, lizards, birds, and mammals in Africa, Mexico, the Adriatic, the West Indies, and in California and Colorado.
Michael was a founder of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Project and has been the president of both. He has written and edited 9 books on biology, conservation biology, and the social and policy context of conservation. He has published more than 170 articles on population and evolutionary biology, fluctuating asymmetry, population genetics, island biogeography, environmental studies, biodiversity policy, nature conservation, and ethics. He continues to do research on ecosystem regulation by highly interactive species. He is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal, was named by Audubon Magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Champions of Conservation of the 20th Century, and is a recipient of the National Wildlife Federation’s National Conservation Achievement Award for science.
Now living in Colorado, Michael serves on the boards of several conservation organizations, including the Wildlands Project, and consults and speaks internationally on nature protection. He is also co-chair of the Science Council for Australia’s WildCountry Project and is completing a book about conservation and compassion and practical means of achieving harmony between the three life-affirming movements—conservation, animal protection, and humanitarianism.
BOOKS
1969. P. R. Ehrlich, R. W. Holm, and M. E. Soulé. Introductory Biology. McGraw-Hill, New York.
1980. Soulé, M. E. and B. M. Wilcox (eds.). Conservation Biology : An Ecological-Evolutionary Perspective, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
1981. Frankel, O. H. and M. E. Soulé. Conservation and Evolution. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge and New York.
1986. Soulé, M. E. (ed.). Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity. Sinauer Assoc. Sunderland, Mass.
1987. Soulé, M. E. (ed.). Viable Populations for Conservation. Cambridge Univ. Press. Cambridge and New York.
1989. Soulé, M. E. and K. A. Kohm (eds.) Research Priorities in Conservation Biology. Island Press. Washington, D. C. and Covelo, CA.
1995. Soulé, M. E. and Gary Lease (eds.) Reinventing nature: responses to postmodern deconstruction. Island Press. Washington, D. C. and Covelo, CA.
1999. Continental Conservation: Scientific Foundations for Regional Conservation Networks. Michael Soulé and John Terborgh (editors). 1998. Island Press. Washington, D. C. and Covelo, CA.
2001. Conservation Biology: Research Priorities for The Next Decade. Co-edited with Gordon Orians. Island Press. Washington, D. C. and Covelo, CA.
In Prep. The Tigress and the Little Girl. Compassion and its world-saving applications.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
2005 Soulé, M.E., J.A. Estes, B. Miller, D.L. Honnold. Highly interactive species: conservation policy, management, and ethics. BioScience: 55:168-176.
2005 Norse, L, Crowder, K. Gjerde, D. Hyrenback, C. Roberts, C. Safina, M. Soulé. Place- based Ecosystem Management in the Open Ocean, in L. Crowder and E. Norse (eds.), Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity, pp. 302-327, Island Press).
2005 Donlan, C. J., H. W. Greene, J. Berger, C. E. Bock, J. H. Bock, D. A. Burney, J. A. Estes et al. 2005. Re-wilding North America. Nature 436:913-914.
2006 C. Josh Donlan, Joel Berger, Carl E. Bock, Jane H. Bock, David A. Burney, James A. Estes, Dave Foreman, Paul S. Martin, Gary W. Roemer, Felisa A. Smith, Michael E. Soulé, and Harry W. Greene. Pleistocene Rewilding: an Optimistic Agenda for 21st Century Conservation. The American Naturalist: 168:660 - 81.
2006 M. E. Soulé, B. G. Mackey, H. F. Recher, et al. , The Role of Connectivity in Australian Conservation, Pp. 649-675 in K. Crooks, and M Sanjayan, Connectivity Conservation, Cambridge Univ. Press. [Same as (with minor changes) M. E. Soulé, B. G. Mackey, H. F. Recher, et al., 2004, above.]
2007 A. S. Glen, C. R. Dickman, , M. E. Soulé and B. G. Mackey Evaluating the Role of the Dingo as a Trophic Regulator in Australian Ecosystems. Accepted. Austral Ecology.
