On a hot, fair day, the twelfth of September, 1609, and a small crew of Dutch and English sailors rode the flood tide up a great , past a long, woode… - Eric W. Sanderson

I came to the Bronx as an ecologist to work for the (the 's parent organization), a New York City cultivation institution with a century-long dedication to and s around the world. My task was to bring technical aspects of modern geography into its global mission to save tigers, elephants, whales, s, and other ... More than most disciplines, ecology thrives on complexity, and ecology in the service of conservation (a subdiscipline called ) pulls one rapidly into the domains of economics, society, and politics.

struggle to decide how many animals to save. In this article, I outline 18 approaches to setting population target levels (PTLs) for animals, with rules of thumb and analytical recommendations for each approach. , the most common target level, are necessary but not sufficient for most efforts, given the range of values that bear on conservation. Reference s, either extant or historical, are key for setting practical target levels. Setting PTLs sufficient for conserved populations to be animals in all respects (including functional, social, landscape, ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects) is a critical consensus point. In many cases densities as well as overall population size will need to be specified. I suggest a four-tiered system of setting incrementally higher population target levels such that conservation provides first for demographic sustainability, then ecological integrity, then , and finally , based on times when human beings had less impact on the planet than we do today.