Conservation or Preservation? Protected Areas, Sustainability, and the Challenges of Framing

Focusing on government-controlled protected areas and various strategies used in conservation biology, this chapter seeks to better understand how management of nature and its ecosystems are communicated to mass audiences. Building on the framing theory, it explores how sustainability is articulated through mass media and the practical implications this has for policy, management, and engaging key stakeholders. By developing a more complex and complete picture of ecological conservation, and the ways in which protected areas are situated in social systems, it provides better methods of sustainability communication and differentiates frames that are commonly used.