Mason McWatters

Conservation is a practice that takes place at the intersection between social values and scientific understandings. This course is designed to approach the issue of conservation from both of these avenues. This will be accomplished through two phases of the course. During the first phase students will be exposed to a critical history of Western environmental thought since the late 19^th century. Towards this end we shall explore the ways that specific values of wilderness, nature, environmental management, and natural resource use have been constructed, debated and redefined over time, particularly in the context of North America. During the second phase students will be introduced to a modern, empirical science of conservation and its evolving suite of theories, strategies, aims and techniques. Toward this end we shall explore how the science of conservation, founded in principles of biodiversity and ecology, is practiced in contemporary contexts of climate change, industrial and post-industrial development, habitat loss and dire threats to global biodiversity.