Snapshot

 As I’m learning more and more about the world of conservation, I’m beginning to realize that to me, conservation is still a vast, unending library filled with mysteries yet to be uncovered. When I was in elementary school, delivering a speech on the importance of going green in front of my sixth grade class, conservation meant persuading people to switch to paper bags. When I became a college student, the word took on a more complicated meaning; it meant making science and policy work together for the good of the earth. 3 internships later, and although I understand so much more, I continue to discover yet a new nuance to the word.  

Through my bachelor’s thesis, I’ve come to learn that there’s a very real, human dimension to conservation, one that I’ve largely dismissed up until now. In obtaining the necessary data for my bachelor’s thesis, I interviewed approximately 50 fishermen throughout the course of 3 months. I expected a community of money-hungry, ruthless hunters hell-bent on catching as many fishes as possible. At least, that’s the image I encountered frequently online. But upon receiving such a warm welcome, having gotten to know each and every one of their stories, my predisposed notion of what it meant to be a fishermen was quickly proven wrong.

They catch the fish they catch not because of a profound hatred or inhumanity towards the animal, but simply because it puts food in their children’s stomachs, because it is something their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents have always done, and above all, because there is no other option. I, on the other hand, had a choice because I am privileged enough to have a college education, to have parents who can provide me with enough food to keep me from starving. At the end of the day, they are just like everyone else, working hard to provide for their family. As it happens, the only job available to them correlates with a dependent use of natural resources, in this case, fish.

Now that I think of the word conservation, it’s no longer just the wildlife, but the humans behind it as well. It’s important to also recognize that conservation is not a single snapshot of an animal in urgent, dire need of our protection, but rather a wider, infinitely more complicated painting of the correlating ecosystem, the people who rely on the animal for their livelihood, the consumer demand behind it, and a multitude of other factors I often forget.

I will always be evolving, both by how I define and approach conservation, but the principal value I hope to apply in everything that I do moving forward is to never quickly point fingers and jump to conclusions, because finding a solution that works is not as simple as a where’s waldo puzzle.  It’s more like finding the right pieces to a thousand-piece puzzle: There a lot of moving pieces to consider. To solve it quickly and correctly, it requires collaborative effort, time and most importantly, a shared desire and utmost curiosity for making the world a better place than it was yesterday.