Conservation Psychology: New uses for old science

In the last three decades of the 20th century, environmental principles became entrenched in language, politics, and action. Academic awareness followed, leading to the first textbook on conservation biology in 1986. Many books followed, and conservation science emerged in the 90’s as a central intellectual discipline encompassing genetics, physiology, ecology, management, economics and politics. Psychology does not appear in that list, although the biological arm of animal psychology, animal behaviour, litters those texts. I arrived at the realisation that I was a conservation psychologist with some surprise, because I have never met a person who claims that lable. Surprisingly, psychological principles are routinely used by people working on conservation issues, but only rarely do they have training in psychology. I will introduce the notion of conservation psychology, give suggestions about why it has been ignored as a subdiscipline of animal psychology, and outline the current use of psychological principles in conservation science. I then give an overview of my research on the problem of how to improve the ability of endangered species to understand predators: a problem in animal cognition. I conclude with the suggestion that it is time for animal psychologists to take their place on the new and exciting stage that has launched conservation science.