A Defense of Integrity as a Conservation Concept

Ethics and the Environment 21 (2):79-117 (2016)
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Abstract

An environmental ethic needs to have an answer to two basic questions: what nature should we care about, and why? A number of proposals have been made about how to answer these questions. In this paper, I consider in detail one such proposal, namely, biological or ecological integrity. Different characterizations of integrity can be found in the literature, but I will treat the following one as paradigmatic. Integrity refers to a property of landscapes that are relatively unmodified by human activity and that have their native biota largely intact.1 By “native biota,” I mean the native plant and animal life in a particular place, and...

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J. Michael Scoville
Eastern Michigan University

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