When we conserve biological, that is living, natural resources such as wild plants and animals, we make decisions about their use, management, or protection in order to prevent their depletion and insure that they will continue to be around in the future. In this chapter we will look at the historical conditions that created a need for a formal approach to natural resource conservation in the western world and its colonies. We will see how the disciplines of wildlife management, forestry, and range management arose in response to threats to living natural resources that followed the commodification of resources in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Australian region. These disciplines are utilitarian in their approach; they focus on the exploitation of economically valuable species. The word “exploitation” has several connotations. To exploit a resource is to use it, but the term often carries an implication of excessive use, unfair use, or use without appropriate compensation. In this book, the term exploitation is meant to be synonymous with utilization, without a connotation of exorbitant or inappropriate use. We will, however, see many cases of unregulated or excessive exploitation that resulted in resource depletion or environmental degradation. All societies, of course, use living natural resources, and thus they are utilitarian in their approach to those resources (although this is not necessarily the only way that they relate to the natural world).