Many things happen in nature reserves that are contradictory at first glance. For example, flower meadows are mown down during maintenance work, even though all the plants growing there are protected. Elsewhere, protected reed beds are burnt down in a fen or the top layer of soil is removed with bulldozers in a dune conservation area. Still other areas are to remain completely untouched by human intervention. The author Klaus-Dieter Hupke shows the different strategies of nature conservation. He also shows that nature conservation is mostly not exactly what the term says in essence: "protection of nature". On the contrary, in Central Europe nature conservation areas are predominantly the relics of old agricultural and thus cultural landscapes. Often, aesthetic aspects of a landscape section are also in the foreground when designating it as a natural monument or nature reserve. Moreover, nature conservation runs the risk of becoming a substitute action and an alibi for a stillgrowing destruction of traditional and near-natural landscape systems in Central Europe as well as globally.
The updated second edition now explicitly includes the consequences of climate change for nature conservation and has also incorporated a stronger reference to Austria as well as to the central Alpine region in some places for the relevant readers.

1 What is "nature" for us?

2 Why "nature conservation"?
3 Why "nature conservation" has the worse cards compared to "environmental protection" and "animal protection"
4 Nature conservation - on which areas?
5 "Extreme locations" - avoided by the economy, preferred by nature conservation?
6 Confusing diversity - area categories of nature and landscape conservation: Nature reserves, national parks, natural monuments, landscape conservation areas, nature parks.-7 Which nature do we want to protect and how?
8 The construction of natural balances - Ideal starting point of the demand for nature conservation
9 Help for endangered species? Red lists and endangerment categories
10 Of birds and butterflies: How nature conservation distributes its sympathies
11 What endangers nature?
12 "Outlaws" and "helpers": the actors in nature conservation
13 Nature that does not deserve protection: spontaneous vegetation, ruderal communities, neophytes and neozoa
14 "Process conservation" as an alternative and a silver bullet?
15 Nature where no one expects it: in the city
16 Land used for military purposes - a nature idyll?
17 Second-hand nature: renaturation of quarries and open-cast mines
18 Is nature only intact if all species increase equally?
19 Nature conservation is successful: the example of large animal species
20 Habitats for land conservation in Central Europe
21 Small biotopes: their importance for biodiversity and nature conservation
22 Geological landscape objects in nature conservation
23 River straightening vs. river renaturation
24 Nature conservation in the forest: natural forest - permanent forest - clear-cutting?
25 Agricultural accompanying programs of nature conservation in Germany
26 Europe also gets involved: Federal Nature Conservation Act, FFH and Natura 2000
27 On the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in nature conservation
28 The silverware of the GDR? Nature conservation in the eastern Germanstates
29 The world's oceans and Antarctica: international, therefore unprotected?
30 Nature conservation outside Europe
31 Nature conservation in the "Third World - a pillar of "neo-colonialism"?
32 Nature disappears, nature conservation arrives? - On the token function of nature conservation and nature-protected areas
33 Nature conservation in times of climate change
34 Hikers, cyclists, motorists: How leisure modalities shape our view of nature
35 Man and nature - a constructed opposition?
36) Search for ideas: How can "nature conservation" be socially justified and anchored?
37 Nature conservation versus zeitgeist?
38 The benefits of diversity: reality, poetry or esotericism?
39 On the future of nature conservation
40 Epilogue: Nature conservation expertise concerns everyone!