| Sumario: | This essay assesses the role conservation biologists play inside and outside government in efforts to protect British Columbia's ancient rain-forest ecosystems. An epistemic community of government-entrenched conservation biologists has largely been absent or ad hoc, playing a negligible role in conservation. The Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel is a partial exception, with the important advisory role it played to the BC government regarding sustainable forest management in the region. Instead, a mission-oriented, transnational "civic" scientific community has emerged around the Y2Y Conservation Initiative, Conservation Area Design plans for the BC's coastal rain forests and efforts to promote a meaningful Species at Risk Act at the federal level. A transnational advocacy network of Canadian and American conservation biologists is using "civic science" in concert with environmental organizations to develop and implement a vision of ecosystem-based land-use planning and species protection, and this provides valuable lessons on the potential and limits of scientific power in civil society as well as government institutions.
|
|---|