Dr. Jonathan Ashley-SmithGetty Conservation Guest ScholarAbstract:This presentation will discuss the inevitability of prediction in conservation activities.Routine activities such as condition assessment and risk assessment rely on the ability topredict future environments and future physical and chemical states of objects. Yet for theresults to be useful they have to be presented as positive statements that hide the hugeuncertainties in such predictions. Codes of conservation ethics imply predictions about thefuture behaviours of people and objects. Despite the inherent uncertainties of suchpredictions, such codes have become the bedrock of the conservation profession.