Despite aiming to make conservation science and practice more effective, many conservationists default to excessive precaution, advocating conservative actions—or even inaction. The field suffers from an understandable aversion to unintended consequences, especially for approaches involving biotechnology and “next‐generation” interventions. We call this default precautionary attitude among conservationists the ethos of restraint and argue for replacing it with an ethos of responsible conservation action. Loosening the ethos of restraint will require (a) more holistically accounting for comparative risks, benefits, and costs of novel approaches; (b) gathering more data on their consequences; (c) engaging in dialogue about intended consequences and conservation values; and (d) pursuing adaptive implementation strategies. Adopting an ethos of responsible conservation action requires grasping that precaution and proaction are not diametrically opposed attitudes. Instead, we must decide what level of precaution or proaction is warranted, and what to do, on a case‐by‐case basis.
We argue that the wild release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be justified as a way of preserving species and ecosystems. We look at the case of a genetically modified American chestnut (Castanea dentata) that is currently undergoing regulatory review. Because American chestnuts are functionally extinct, a genetically modified replacement has significant conservation value. In addition, many of the arguments used against GMOs, especially GMO crops, do not hold for American chestnut trees. Finally, we show how GMOs such as the American chestnut support a reorientation of conservation values away from restoration as it has historically been interpreted, and toward an alternative framework known as rewilding.
This essay explores the relation between feminist epistemology and the problem of philosophical skepticism. Even though feminist epistemology has not typically focused on skepticism as a problem, I argue that a feminist contextualist epistemology may solve many of the difficulties facing recent contextualist responses to skepticism. Philosophical skepticism appears to succeed in casting doubt on the very possibility of knowledge by shifting our attention to abnormal contexts. I argue that this shift in context constitutes an attempt to exercise unearned social and epistemic power and that it should be resisted on epistemic and pragmatic grounds. I conclude that skepticism is a problem that feminists can and should take up as they address the social aspects of traditional epistemological problems.
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