A variety of anthropological readings discuss the issues that are related to the protection of the environment. Conservation and preservation are the main terms used by anthropologists and environmentalists to advocate for saving nature and implementing specific policies. The increasing interest in the links between culture, ethnography, and biodiversity conservation makes it evident that the aforementioned terms should be clarified. This discussion aims to discover the relationships between preservation and conservation, with an emphasis not only on the environment but also on culture.
In recent years, social anthropology promoted greater awareness of the need to focus on nature conservation as a global agenda. Being a social and political process requires many efforts on the part of both native populations and conservationists. To better understand the object of protection, it seems important to identify the concept of wilderness. Despite the deceptive concreteness, there is no specific material object that expresses this concept. Instead, it expresses rather quality, which produces a certain mood or feeling in an individual and, subsequently, can be fixed by him or her to a specific locality. Due to this subjectivity, the universally accepted definition of wilderness is quite vague.
Wilderness in the perception of one person can be a roadside or a picnic place in the consciousness of the other. For example, a hunter from Yukon would consider traveling to Northern Minnesota a return to civilization, while this would be an undoubted adventure in the wilderness for a vacationer Chicago. Moreover, the number of attributes of wilderness is almost as great as the number of observers. The equal importance of these realities is evidenced by the impression they make on the observer. Any place where a person feels insecure, lost, and confused can be called wilderness. Such use of the concept with its rich figurative capabilities takes its meaning far beyond its original content. This word can also be called a large and random accumulation of issues, even those produced by a person. For example, wilderness can be attributed to part of the garden that is deliberately planted with bushes in the form of a maze.
The main difference between preservation and conservation lies in the fact that the former is related to protecting the landscape and buildings. At the same time, the latter refers to natural resources. For example, depending on the context, nature may be synonymous with wilderness or may mean a city park. The presence of something like tin cans or even a road would not disqualify the area but would move it towards the pole of civilization. Vast, almost unmodified regions would be close to absolute wildlife. The North American continent can serve as an example. Its vast expanses and Indians living there were seen as a form of wilderness and whose savagery did not contradict the nature of the wilderness. The New World was also wildlife at the time of its discovery since Europeans considered it to be such. They believed that the control and order imposed by nature on them were absent, and the native population was hostile.
Nature conservation means the attempts to build the relationships between humans and the environment while using natural resources. On the one hand, such an approach is guided by the ideas of sustainability and reducing the potential negative impact on nature. Still, they also seek to make these links beneficial to people. On the other hand, the native people can be regarded as supporters of preservations, the examples of which are the prohibition on building roads in parks or the usage of solar panels. In other words, those who strive to preserve nature view it as a valuable resource even if it does not bring advantages to people. As a result, the native populations oppose the conservationists, who act in terms of international development.
Such a contradiction is complicated by a lack of sufficient evidence on the part of conservationists, whose voices lack clarity and emotions. In this connection, Kiik proposes the notion of the Conservationland that is to include “maximal ethnography of conservation encounters would require spending time for conservationists, native societies, state agents, animals, natural landscapes.” For sustained development, it is critical to pay attention to both the native people and conservation encounters, including their philosophies, values, attitudes, and positions. Similar ideas are provided by Mosse, who focuses on Aidland as the concept for the international social responsibility of businesses concerning environmental protection. International development, accordingly, should be viewed as the cooperation between those who want to preserve and those who strive to conserve natural resources.
To conclude, the critical analysis of the literature shows that there are difficulties in the relationships between nature conservation and preservation. The very concept of wilderness makes the issue complicated since it depends on the perception of a particular person, community, organization, etc. While conservationists consider ensuring environmental sustainability, preservationists oppose their efforts. The cooperation between these two parties can be regarded as the best solution to the global problem of nature protection.