A zoological revolution: rethinking our interactions with native fauna to increase the conservation options Daniel Lunney 1 and Chris Dickman 2 1 NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, PO Box 1967, Hurstville 2220 2 School of Biological Sciences and Institute of Wildlife Research, University of Sydney, NSW 2006 ABSTRACT The objective of this forum was to assess revolutionary conservation proposals that aspire to reform current constraints on using native fauna as a replacement for the traditional European models of land use. Gordon Grigg outlines the history of the ideas that underpin this radical proposal. Mike Archer argues that eating our native fauna is a better conservation option than the current paradigm of an English agricultural landscape that excludes native fauna and is composed almost entirely of introduced plant and animal species. The trade-off for the retirement of sheep from much of the land is that we consume kangaroo and other native species in order to create a market for indigenous products. Mike Archer and Paul Hopwood present and defend another contentious thesis, namely that native mammals should become pets, and thus provide Australians with the opportunity to get to know their own fauna.This proposal has its critics in Karen Viggers and David Lindenmayer,who address a long list of serious matters concerning the keeping of native mammals as companions. Penny Figgis presents her concern that Archer has overlooked the fundamental value of national parks as repositories of biodiversity in his grand vision of a wild landscape. Harry Recher’s position is the most challenging. He remains concerned that these proposals do not address the fundamental problems of the land degradation crisis. Pages 1 - 11 in A Zoological Revolution. Using native fauna to assist in its own survival. Edited by Daniel Lunney and Chris Dickman, 2002. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Mosman 2088 and Australian Museum. Introduction Welcome to a forum that debates the necessity for a zoological revolution that some Australians now deem to be imperative to stem the ever- mounting loss of our native wildlife. The twin objectives of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW are to enhance the science of zoology and to conserve native fauna and their habitats. Convened in this spirit, this forum, entitled “A Zoological Revolution”, sought to test some controversial ideas which stem from the subtitle of this forum, namely “the use of native fauna to assist in its own survival”. The objective was to provide a critical assessment of these revolutionary conservation options that aspire to reform our outlook by utilising native fauna as a replacement for the traditional European model of land use that has led to the loss of so much of our biodiversity in the last 200 years. There is an oxymoron, a seeming self- contradiction, in the phrase “revolutionary conservation”. The revolution is in the thinking about how to live with our native fauna to give Australians an incentive for conserving it, the long-term aims being to conserve the fauna and the habitats on which they depend, and to keep our natural ecosystems free of toxins, feral species and soil degradation. If this exercise were only a matter of preserving a small breeding population of a modest number of vertebrate species, then a zoo upgrade would suffice. This is not, however, the intent, although a small number of species, such as the quolls, Tasmanian tiger, koala and flying-fox, inevitably serve as icons for the wealth of Australia’s natural biodiversity. The intent is to conserve our natural biological treasurehouse with its full range of biota by shifting our thinking to a holistic approach (rather than a piecemeal approach, such as focusing just on threatened species or particular land tenures) and conserving the landscape by consuming it on an ecologically sustainable basis or by sheltering some species as pets.