What and why: from wildlife to biodiversity

The term ‘biodiversity conservation’ is of recent vintage. ‘Wildlife conservation’ is what inspired most modern-day conservationists, including my college friends and I. Inspired by documentaries like “Serengeti Shall Not Die”, we went on field trips to wildlife hotspots. If you had asked us why we loved megafauna or birds, our answer would have been “because they are beautiful.” It is this aesthetic and spiritual value that arguably drives most conservation action worldwide, a value derived from a subset of nature, viz., megafauna, not bacteria. Another prominent strand in conservation is ‘animal rights’. But this makes a case not only for wildlife, but also stray dogs in cities, whereas several ‘wildlifers’ would recommend culling strays to prevent them spreading infectious diseases. Similarly, the animal rights perspective differs that of the ‘Deep Ecologists’ who talk of the ‘intrinsic value of nature’ and therefore focus on ‘wilderness’. They are unlikely to endorse saving stray dogs in cities either. And possibly none of these groups will uphold the rights of mosquitoes, cockroaches or cholera germs.