Nature conservation is the set of practices designed to preserve the current quantity and quality of natural capital for future generations.
What is meant by nature conservation?
The term ‘nature conservation’ refers to scientific and political actions to ensure a good state of natural capital preservation over time. I turn, it includes biodiversity, the mineral world that hosts it, and all surface and underground resources.
Open spaces close to the sea, such as this prairie by the beach at Policoro (Basilicata, are now severely rarefied or disappeared in the Mediterranean. This due to ever-increasing land consumption and their underestimation by the public.
Often, when people speak about ‘nature conservation,’ they think only of forests protection, forgetting all that environmental heterogeneity that makes this world so rich, diverse and unique.
Why is nature conservation important?
The importance of natural capital conservation lies in its key role vis-à-vis generations of men and women to come.
Humanity’s food, energy and social well-being depend directly on raw materials and biodiversity. Therefore a good state of conservation of natural elements ensures:
- fewer famines
- extreme weather phenomena
- energy crises
- wars for natural resources
Ultimately, conservation is the most economical and therefore sustainable way to prolong the prosperity over time of the human species. Thus it is also an act of love and respect for those to come.
How is nature actually conserved?
There are various ways of conserving nature. In general, it should be kept in mind that the main cause of deterioration of natural capital is land consumption for agricultural, industrial and urban use. This results in the subtraction of habitats from biodiversity and removal of chemical elements from mines and deposits.
Therefore, not only life is at risk on this planet: even underground products taken for granted, such as aluminum and zinc, are now at risk of extinction. For these reasons, the most effective way to protect these resources is to limit their uses and abuses, through:
- creating off-limits or restricted access areas
- creation of laws to protect these areas with multi-generational agreements
- public and private bodies to oversee proper compliance with these protection laws
Some of these protection areas may be: integral reserves, national parks, regional parks, oases, refuges, private properties and gardens. “What?!” you will say “Gardens?”. Well yes, nature protection and conservation starts right in your backyard! Let’s find out in the next paragraph.
What can I do to conserve nature?
Those individuals fortunate enough to have a small green space around their homes can contribute to nature conservation.
For example, in spring and summer, a simple act such as less invasive and less frequent mowing of the lawn, which avoids cutting grazing to the ground as in the ‘English lawn,’ allows a myriad of organisms that are closely dependent on the micro refuges that exist between stems and between the soil and the turf to be sustained for many months.
In autumn and winter, on the other hand, when the lawn no longer grows as vigorously and the leaves fall, it is important to leave a layer of the latter. This provides hibernation places for a whole different variety of animals. In fact, these take advantage of the layer of warm air between soil and leaves to survive the rigors of the two seasons.
In addition to a more sustainable management of green spaces at home (including balconies!), many actions can help to reduce one’s ecological footprint:
- volunteering in fauna and flora recovery centers
- citizen science actions on your own or in organized groups
- more decentralized tourism, towards less traveled destinations
- more recycling of private waste
- less use of paper and gasoline
Nature conservation and OutBe
OutBe offers land conservation and improvement services, however, with a dual and complementary perspective: conservation combined with restoration of natural capital. Indeed, it is no longer enough to conserve what is left, but to go a step further and regenerate what has been lost.
OutBe offers the opportunity to create small artificial spaces to be naturalized in circumscribed areas. We create micro-habitats useful for protecting breeding, refuge and feeding places for that biodiversity associated. In the first case, with wetland environments, and in the second with pollen.
In fact, the ponds project aims to protect the category of Italian biodiversity that is most threatened at the moment, along with that of dune and littoral environments, namely that of semi-aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates that are closely dependent on still fresh waters.
The pollinators project aims to protect lesser considered pollinators, which include butterflies, beetles, flies and wild bees.
Both projects unite agricultural or industrial realities with external sponsoring realities. This with the common goal of a more resilient and widespread biodiversity on the Italian territory. The process follows a scientifically thoughtful and logistically enduring method.