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Conservation vs. Environmentalism: What's The Difference?

The definition of conservation is ‘sane use’. This is a political and social movement that strives to protect natural resources, including plant and animal species, as well as their natural habitat for the future, the conservation movement includes fisheries, wildlife management, water and soil conservation and forestry.

Today’s modern conservation movement has widened it’s spectrum since the early 1900s, when it placed emphasis on sustaining natural resources and the preservation of wilderness areas to now include preservation of biodiversity. Thus, the conservation movement is part of a wider and more far reaching environmental movement.

Environmentalism encompasses preservation, restoration and improvement of the natural environment; for example, conservation of natural resources and the prevention of pollution. In today’s modern language, the term environmentalism is associated with resource efficiency, minimizing waste and the ethics and morals of environmental responsibility.

The ethics of conservation is to protect against exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources, with the primary focus that of maintaining the health of the natural world and create biological diversity. A secondary focus is placed on materials and energy conservation, both of which are important to protect the natural world.

It was the mid to late 19th Century conservationists such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir who brought to attention to the people that one should become friendly with nature, to respect the natural environment. It was the principles in conservation, including the intrinsic privilege of the natural world, which was to become the foundation of today’s environmentalism.

The modern environmental movement is a term that includes the conservation and green movements. It is a varied scientific, social and political movement whose goal is to advocate management of resources of the natural environment through changes in policy and individual behavior. Environmental groups advocate that humanity has the critical responsibility to participate in maintaining ecosystems, human rights, health and ecology.

Ex-situ conservation "off-site conservation”. This method of conservation compromises some of the oldest and well-known conservation methods as it utilizes controversial laboratory techniques. This is done in order to protect endangered species of plants or anmials by removing part of the population from its habitat and putting it in a new location, within the care of humans.

Ex-situ conservation takes the species from its natural ecological area and preserves it in semi-isolated conditions in the hopes that natural evolution is halted or altered in this unnatural habitat. This method is rarely enough to save a species from extinction and is used as a last resort. It is thought better to save a species at least in part, rather than to allow it to die out completely. The techniques are usually costly, and there are many other factors which come into play when making a decision to employ ex-situ conservation.

Environmental organizations are global, regional, national or local. These groups are government-run or private and they research information, participate in public hearings, lobby for changes, hold demonstrations or acquire land for preservation. Such groups include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, whose speciality is in lawsuits. Other groups include National Wildlife Federation, World Wide Fund for Nature, Friends of the Earth and the Wilderness Society.

Environmental policy can refer to either the private sector or the public sector. In the public sector it usually means a government's use and creation of the laws, regulations, and other policy mechanisms concerning environmental issues. In the private sector it usually means the compliance with those tools, or the independent development of self-regulation and law-making that can go beyond what is required by governments.

Individuals who think themselves as being environmentalists take great care to at least conserve water, energy and recycle waste. These may seem like small issues, but they are part of the vast conservation sphere to become environmentally responsible and to protect this great Earth.