Conservation for a New Era

Abstract

Life is resilient. It has persisted for more than two billion years, through five or more mass extinction crises, the most recent of which exterminated the great dinosaurs, leaving birds as their only descendants. Nature, in some form, will likely survive the rash actions of today’s human societies that are based on ever-growing consumption of resources. But whether that pattern will enable modern societies to continue in their current form is not at all certain, even highly unlikely.