Conservation Ethics for Spacefaring Civilization

There is already an implicit conservation astrobiology that is present in planetary protection policies instituted by several space agencies. We would benefit from making this conservation astrobiology explicit and examining its assumptions. Drawing upon definitions of conservation biology and astrobiology, definitions of conservation astrobiology are formulated and examined. The cosmological scale of conservation astrobiology entails drawing upon the resources of evolutionary conservation biology, which recognizes that, “conservation above and beyond the species level must become increasingly employed.” For conservation astrobiology, this means conservation at the biospheric level. Adopting the framework of “Whither conservation ethics?” by J. Baird Callicott (1990), conservation astrobiology is examined from the perspectives of the Romantic-Transcendental Preservation Ethic, the Resource Conservation Ethic, and the Evolutionary-Ecological Land Ethic, and the consequences of these frameworks for conservation at the biospheric level is examined.