Conservation is the preservation and careful management of the environment and of natural resources.

1. In situ conservation - takes place inside an organism's natural habitat, maintaining the genetic diversity of species and their evolutionary adaptations. Examples include wildlife reserves and marine conservation zones.
2. Ex situ conservation - involves the removal of organisms from their natural habitat. Examples include botanic gardens and captive breeding programmes in zoos.

A seed bank collects and stores seeds from many of the world's plants. If the plants become extinct in the wild, there will be seeds from which they can be grown in the future.

Organisms born in captivity might not be suitable for release into the wild because of potential loss of resistance to local diseases, behavioural issues, genetic differences, and limited suitable habitat.

International cooperation is required to ensure habitats and individual species are preserved across borders, as animals do not respect a country's boundaries.

The IUCN aids in securing international conservation agreements and publishes the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, detailing the conservation status of threatened species.

The scheme offered payments to farmers and land managers to enhance and conserve the landscape, making conservation a part of normal farming and land management practice.

It was replaced by the Environmental Stewardship Scheme, which operates similarly.

The Rio Convention consists of three agreements between nations to maintain biodiversity, stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations, and prevent the transformation of fertile land into desert.

CITES is a treaty that regulates the international trade of endangered wild plant and animal specimens and their products, such as furs, skins, and ivory, to prevent over-exploitation.