Conservation of resources so we can add more people can only go so far.

Each person needs X water to survive. Our streams are already over-appropriated. We can save water by "conserving" but at some point use at X still sums up to more than we use now. Food has to be grown somewhere, wood fiber too, we need to mine metals for all those computers, and the list goes on.

Habitat-wise we can certainly do better but at some point we will still hit the wall where it is fish or humans. Europe and eastern NA have denser human populations and where are their salmon, bears, deer, elk, or other megafauna? Africa and Asia, where individual consumption is less than here are not sharing the planet with animals very well.

One of the reasons, I believe, why the "general public" doesn't see the need for habitat protection is because they don't see that their individual action is either hurting salmon or helping. Why should I, for example, reduce my water use by 10 gallons a day when that reduction will have no detectable benefit? "Somebody else" can reduce.

Like salmon fishing. AK needs to cut back, BC needs to cut back. So I cargo fishing..