Conservation can mean life or death

Excerpt

I have talked a lot recently about shifting priorities for conservationists. Priorities for those of us living and working in Canada and the United States are shifting from resource conservation to environmental management. That shift is apparent in the articles published in our Journal, in the papers presented at our annual conference, in the policies and programs that drive much of our day-to-day work, and in the conversations I have with you. But I was reminded recently that the benefits of resource conservation—at the most basic level—are still out of reach for many.

My reminder came in the form of a short article tucked into the back pages of the New York Times. The article, really just a couple paragraphs, was about the effect the recent series of hurricanes had had on land and people in the Caribbean. The article reported that fewer than 10 people had been lost in the Dominican Republic while 2,000 people had been killed in Haiti. Two countries that share the same island and that were hit by the same storm suffered such radically different consequences. How could this be?

A tour of websites produced the answer—a story of …