ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY AS A CONSERVATION CONCEPT

Neither the classic resource management concept of maximum sustainable yield nor the concept of sustainable development are useful to contem porary, nonanthropocentric, ecologically informed conservation biology . As an alternative, we advance an ecological definition of sustainabi lity, that is in better accord with biological conservation: meeting h uman needs without compromising the health of ecosystems. In addition to familiar benefit-cost constraints on human economic activity, we ur ge adding ecologic constraints. Projects are not choice-worthy if they compromise the health of the ecosystems in which human economic syste ms are embedded. Sustainability, so defined, is proffered as an approa ch to conservation that would complement wildlands preservations for e cological integrity, not substitute for wildlands preservations.