Reed Noss, Provost’s distinguished research professor at the University of Central Florida and president of the Florida Institute for Conservation Science, is the author of the forthcoming "Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation."

Conservation problems take many forms; therefore, so must solutions. That said, because the loss, destruction and degradation of habitat is the major cause of the extinction crisis – driven ultimately by human population growth and over-consumption of resources – the protection and restoration of habitat for native species is the most important thing we must do to save species. Scientific estimates suggest that if we are to reduce extinction rates appreciably, at least half of a typical region must be protected and managed with conservation of biological diversity as a major goal. This scale of protection will not be possible without a large reduction in the human footprint, that is, scaling back our population and consumption.

Many zoos already contribute to habitat conservation, but the scale of these efforts must be expanded.

Do zoos have a role to play in this solution? Certainly. Many zoos already contribute to habitat conservation, but the scale of these efforts must be expanded. Zoos also should better educate the public about proximate and ultimate causes of species loss. With climate change, the role of captive populations in zoos becomes more important. Many species – for example, on islands soon to be inundated by the rising oceans – will soon lose all of their habitat in the wild. We must take these species entirely into captivity, move them to a new habitat (often not a good idea), or freeze samples of their tissues in gene banks. The alternative to these measures is simply to document their extinction in the wild.

Many species in the Florida Keys, like the Key deer (about the same size and attitude as a skinny Labrador retriever), will go extinct in the wild within the next few decades as their habitat disappears under the sea. Educational exhibits with Key deer in zoos will provide a valuable lesson to the public about how human-induced climate change has driven species to the brink of extinction. The alternative to taking Key deer into captivity would be relocating them to Caribbean islands similar to the Florida Keys, but but they would not be native there, so I am not convinced this is a good idea. They might have unanticipated negative effects on native species.

Interestingly, the Key deer evolved as its island habitat became isolated by rising sea level since the last glacial maximum. Only over the last 6,000 years have the Florida Keys been isolated from the mainland, and the Key deer has evolved in genetic isolation from mainland deer populations. Soon these islands will largely disappear, this time under a sea rising because of human activity. That’s a lesson in evolutionary biology as well as in climate change and conservation.