Beyond Biology: toward a More Public Ecology for Conservation

Abstract: The ultimate purpose of conservation science is to inform and affect conservation policy. Therefore, conservation biologists and all the people who produce, review, and apply conservation research should evaluate the success of their knowledge according to its ability to influence conservation decisions. In addition to possessing conventional “scientific” attributes such as validity, generalizability, and precision, conservation knowledge must also possess qualities that make it effective in the political arena of decision making. “Public ecology” is a philosophy and practice of conservation science that goes beyond biology and beyond the norms of modern science to construct knowledge that is useful for environmental decision making. As post‐normal conservation science, public ecology is defined by the following six attributes: evaluative, contextual, multiscalar, integrative, adaptive, and accessible. We discuss the need for a more public ecology and describe the qualites that make it a more powerful ecology.