Earth-science conservation: no science without conservation

Abstract

The first call for the conservation of geologically important sites in The Netherlands was made by Van Baren in 1908. In the decade that followed, some reserves were established, mainly through the efforts of interested individuals as no lead was given by the professional societies and only a few scientists chose to play an active role. Further, those conservation societies which were in existence and in receipt of support from numbers of professional scientists, had interests which were largely confined to biological features. It was not until 1969, when the Gea working group was inaugurated, that systematic governmental involvement in earth-science conservation began. Descriptive inventories of sites of scientific and/or educational value are produced province by province; in addition special reports dealing with individual sites threatened with destruction are also prepared. Some case histories in geological conservation are outlined in this paper.