Conservation efforts are financed very heavily by hunters. Game tags, licenses, etc. So yes they should be conservative and also they are, but generally only with regard to preservation of wilderness with respect to health and population of game.

Well, akshually... ☝️🤓

This is kinda what OG conservatives were (and I mean like back in antiquity). Motivation tho could be boiled to something like:

Gods forbid we give land doles to filthy plebs - they'll be doing their pleb shit in there and gonna ruin natural scenery.