SYMPOSIUM SUMMARY 



313 



other things to spend it on?" The question is 

 more properly posed in reverse: "Why should 

 the government waste so much public money 

 on unproductive projects when only a small 

 amount of money can achieve conservation of 

 these birds which some people think are 

 important?" 



The fact is that we already know why we 

 should allocate resources to conservation. I 

 believe that we have just been evading the 

 answer. We ought to conserve these birds be- 

 cause many people want them to be con- 

 served. 



This is not, as one speaker said, an elite in- 

 terest. The public, as we well know, is already 

 willing to spend money to conserve natural re- 

 sources and is increasingly demonstrating 

 that willingness. The public, in fact, is ahead 

 of the administrators and bureaucrats. To ap- 

 preciate this, we need only look at some of the 

 laws already on the books. The Congress of 

 the United States, in the National Environ- 

 mental Policy Act of 1969, declared that it 

 was the national policy to "create and main- 

 tain conditions under which man and nature 

 can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill 

 the social, economic, and other requirements 

 of present and future generations of Ameri- 

 cans." The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 

 1972 found that "marine mammals have 

 proven themselves to be resources of great in- 

 ternational significance, esthetic and recrea- 

 tional as well as economic, and it is the sense 

 of Congress that they should be protected and 

 encouraged to the greatest extent feasible 

 commensurate with sound policies of resource 

 management and that the primary object of 

 their management should be to maintain the 

 health and stability of the marine ecosys- 

 tem." As these laws have been enacted, their 

 language has become progressively stronger. 

 The Endangered Species Act of 1973 declares 

 as the policy of Congress "that all federal de- 

 partments and agencies shall seek to conserve 

 endangered species and threatened species 

 and shall use their authorities in furtherance 

 of the purposes of this Act" (P.L. 93-205). It 

 further directs all Federal departments and 

 agencies to carry out conservation programs 

 for the conservation of endangered or 

 threatened species and to insure that their ac- 

 tions do not jeopardize the continued 

 existence of these species or destroy or 



modify critical habitat. 



These references are not only to Federal 

 laws passed by remote politicians who can 

 vote with only a modest responsibility to their 

 constituents. As we have heard, there are 

 many State laws and local ordinances which 

 specify the same kind of thing. All these laws 

 are on the books for a powerful reason: public 

 opinion was behind them. The fact that they 

 have not been enforced and implemented fully 

 means that we have not been doing our job. 



In fact, there is no philosophical problem in 

 justifying conservation. What we face is an in- 

 stitutional problem. There is both a public de- 

 termination that natural resources should be 

 conserved and a public apathy and bureau- 

 cratic resistance toward doing it. As con- 

 cerned biologists, we should be combating 

 this apathy by pointing out that conservation 

 represents a rational allocation of public 

 resources. 



Those who do not learn the lessons of his- 

 tory are destined to repeat it. If we study the 

 history of conservation, we find that it de- 

 veloped most rapidly in those countries which 

 mismanaged their natural resources earliest. 

 Within the developed countries there has been 

 a progressive historical trend toward rational 

 use and conservation of natural resources. 

 Conservation of natural resources, in fact, 

 represents the future and, as biologists, it is 

 our duty to promote it. 



Economic Feasibility of 

 Conservation 



Conservation is cheap. Most of us are accus- 

 tomed to working on what are essentially 

 shoestring budgets on the order of $100,000, 

 $10,000, or even $1,000 per year. When we 

 hear of a million dollars as the cost of doing 

 something, we tend to think of it as a lot of 

 money. H. Boyd mentioned a situation on 

 Baffin Island, where it would cost about a mil- 

 lion dollars to dispose of mine tailings on 

 shore instead of dumping them into the ocean 

 under a fulmar colony. I do not think a million 

 dollars is very much certainly not in com- 

 parison with the cost of restoring a colony of 

 half a million fulmars. 



We heard this morning about the acquisi- 

 tion of Protection Island at a cost of several 

 hundred thousand dollars. It was pointed out 



