ABSTRACT
Some societies protect certain plants and animals for reasons of religion or local economy (e.g. baobab trees are protected by people in most of Africa), and here and there rulers established reserves (for example, in parts of India before the fifteenth century). From the late seventeenth century European and American geographers, explorers and naturalists popularized natural history (mainly for the leisured classes), stimulated academics to seek better understanding of it, and encouraged policy makers to legislate for better treatment of nature. By 1700 the forests and wildlife of colonies like Mauritius had been degraded, the timber had been cleared on Madeira, the Cape Verde and several other islands. By the 1760s there was legislation to try to protect forests, e.g. on Tobago, Mauritius and St Helena (Grove, 1992; 1995).
