Habitat conservation

Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology. For much of human history, nature was seen as a resource that could be controlled by the government and used for personal and economic gain. The idea was that plants only existed to feed animals and animals only existed to feed humans. The value of land was limited only to the resources it provided such as fertile soil, timber, and minerals. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, social views started to change and conservation principles were first practically applied to the forests of British India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: 1) human activities damage the environment, 2) there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and 3) scientific, empirically-based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing numerous medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the damage from large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments. The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state conservation management of forests in the world. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie introduced the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well to the United States, where Yellowstone National Park was opened in 1872 as the world's first national park.