The exploitation of populations: The exploitation of natural populations

[Chairman's address]
[First paragraph]
As today's speakers have well brought out, one can judge the maturity of a nation by its ecology and its conservation laws. Mankind has been slow during his short history to develop a conscience relating to the biological world he forms part of. Yet what private ethics are to the single individual we may well say ecology is to the nation. The human species lives by exploiting. There is no adverse reflection in this: many of the plants and animals he exploits -like the red grouse (Lagopus scoticus) in Scotland and the trout (Salmo spp.) in New Zealand—owe their continued and cultivated existence to man's interest in them. The symbiosis consists in his substituting himself for their natural predators and consumers, in weeding out their competitors and jealously reserving to himself the natural increment.