ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that what the conservationist ought to be working towards protecting and perpetuating is wildness. It suggests that wildness is central to the meaning of nature conservation. Safeguarding wildness is the best practical way of securing the future of the nature we wish to protect. The wildness criterion fits comfortably with both the 'thinking interventionist' position and the nature of the conservation quest. The chapter shows that wildness is of central importance to conservation, indeed, that the overarching aim of conservation ought to be the perpetuation of wildness. The notion of wildness is not concrete, measurable, or empirically determined in the way that nativity, say, purports to be. The wildness experience offers exactly the right ingredients with which speciation can take place: an abundance of nature, an absence of inappropriate human intervention and the requirement for 'participatory scale' that secures the space necessary for speciation.
