One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community and, if its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance.

When one of these non-economic categories is threatened and, if we happen to love it, we invert excuses to give it economic importance. At the beginning of century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing. Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid.

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