Fundamentals of conservation biology is exactly what its title advertises – an introductory text that guides undergraduate students through the major topics in the field. The text is divided into four sections – description of biodiversity (four chapters), threats to (five chapters) and maintenance of (four chapters) biodiversity, and finally, the socio-economics and politics of conservation (three chapters). The first chapter provides a brief history of the development of modern-day conservation biology and its historical roots. From the start we are drawn into Hunter’s comfortable writing style that flows easily and effortlessly from one topic to the next. Basic theories are presented, but these are done largely verbally and only occasionally in equations or graphs. Hunter makes good use of box insets to expand on particular methodologies, theories, or case studies. In addition, most chapters end with a specific application; many of these tell conservation success stories or at the least after painting the specific crisis situation, he ends with an optimistic and hopeful tone. The complexities of nature led David Ehrenfeld to claim that there will be no shorthand book to conservation (1989. Hard times for diversity, pp. 247-250 in David Western and Mary Pearl, eds. Conservation for the twenty-first century. Oxford University Press). Hunter does not offer one here. Throughout the text Hunter identifies where basic principles are not generally supported by empirical data. Nonetheless, his own opinions of these theories, or other controversial issues often emerge from the text. Students are challenged at the end of each chapter with a series of discussion questions – questions to which there invariably are no simple or “right” answers.
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Caughley and Gunn discuss the conservation and ecology of species in 13 chapters in Conservation biology in theory and practice. Although some chapters parallel those found in Hunter (e.g., extinctions, design of nature reserves), Caughley and Dunn approach their topic quite differently. Perhaps in response to the criticism that conservation biology is not a hard science, the first chapter is devoted to describing the scientific process and stressing the importance of hypothesis testing and experimental design. The examples in this chapter provide a common thread to the book as they are revisited in later sections on population demography, loss of genetic variation, population viability analyses, in situ and ex situ recovery methods, reserve design,