Emma Marris, the author of Rambunctious Garden (RG), loves the nature hiding in back street alleys and along the highway median strip. Marris believes it's time to abandon (or de-emphasize) what she sees as outdated and naďve conservation strategies such as creation of national parks and wilderness reserves. She feels the biggest obstacles to a bold new world of "designer" and "novel" ecosystems is the "wilderness cult" that naively wants to preserve "natural" landscapes--which she says do not exist anymore.
Marris espouses the anthropocentric perspective that the Earth is more or less a resource cookie jar for humans--to be used carefully to be sure--but she doesn't really question whether ethically or ecologically this is ultimately a good idea.
Marris is a cheerleader for the dangerous concept that humans are both intelligent enough and wise enough to "manage" the Earth--the `smart resource management' school of thought. She is a prime example of the kind person biologist David Ehrenfeld had in mind when he wrote his book the Arrogance of Humanism. Embrace weeds, we are told. Assemble new designer ecosystems that can flourish with human activities. Increased economic growth is not seen as a problem, rather an opportunity to work with industry for the betterment of nature.
She sees this prospect of human dominance of global ecosystems as uplifting and joyful, as explained here from her website.
"We argue that the Anthropocene-the epoch marked by widespread human influence-is not by definition a disaster, and that accepting the scope of man's changes to the Earth can set the stage not for hopelessness, but for a more hopeful environmental movement. I hope it gets people who have been feeling gloomy about Earth thinking, active, even optimistic again. We can make things better, not just less worse."
Marris's optimism can only be shared by those who are blissfully ignorant. As the ecologist Aldo Leopold noted: "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen".
Marris unabashedly declares that she is neither an ecologist nor environmental activist. And she says she seldom ventures far from a road. She proudly wears this lack of experience and knowledge as a badge of honor; and instead of displaying some humility, she believes this lack of ecological training gives her a unique perspective. However, she is more like the layman that Leopold suggests is blissfully unaware of the ecological wounds and damage all around.
Marris chooses to characterize creation of parks, wilderness areas, and other reserves based on what she calls the "Yellowstone Model" as an extension of colonialism that has displaced native people, and other local people--and thus spread human exploitation in general. This is in contrast to wildlands supporters who view such protected areas as a significant moral and ethical accomplishment. To members of what she derisively dismisses as the "wilderness cult", parks and wildlands reserves are places where society in essence practices a kind of self-discipline and a willingness to put at least some parts of the Earth off limits to human exploitation and development.
It is surprising that she chooses to trash Yellowstone, because despite the inappropriate policies of the past such as killing off wolves (now restored), stocking of exotic fish, and so on, Yellowstone is still in better ecological condition than any other surrounding public or private lands. The only real problem with Yellowstone Park is that it needs to be enlarged. As a conservation model, it is the best we have.
Instead of supporting the ecosystems created by the interaction of natural events, evolution, and geological time, Marris supports acceptance of novel ecosystems. Novel ecosystems are entirely new arrangements of plants and animals fostered by human design or at least human intervention, which some call `techno-ecosystems'.
In my view as an ecologist, the techno world view is one of the major threats to natural systems. Marris argues there are few "natural" ecosystems left, so novel and designer ecosystems are not a threat, but an opportunity to create pleasing landscapes, much as a gardener might choose which plants to favor in the backyard flower patch--hence her reference to `rambunctious garden' in the title of her book.
However, by moving the goalposts to vacant city lots as an acceptable desired future condition of the landscape, she implicitly, if not explicitly, provides cover for all manner of environmental degradation. I can agree with her that not all human landscapes are necessarily abhorrent. Human dominated countryside and cities can be attractive and beautiful and can even provide for a lot of ecosystem functions. But there is abundant evidence that these human landscapes tend to be less sustainable and more disruptive to biodiversity than natural ecosystems.
One of the problems with a critique of her book is that it's full of contradictions. If one picks out something to criticize, someone else will be able to find another part of the book where she appears to support exactly the opposite perspective. She'll bash creation of Yellowstone National Park and other preserves as old fashioned and hopelessly naďve efforts at conservation, but then later laud conservation strategies like the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Initiative which essentially are efforts to protect as much land as wilderness or parks as possible.
What this suggests to me is that Marris can talk the talk, but does not walk the walk in terms of her knowledge of ecology, genetics, conservation history, and even the intricacies of resource management. She knows the key phrases and can briefly describe the key ideas, but there is no real systemic analysis. She will often discuss conflicting ideas without seeming aware of the contradictions in her examples.
For instance, late in the book, she outlines the need to protect genetic diversity and does an admirable job of explaining why this is important, yet earlier, she is an advocate of "assisted migration" and "designer ecosystems" where plants and animals are mixed up and moved around based on human notions of what is a good or useful mix. As any biologist can tell you, moving species around and mixing things up is one of the best ways to destroy genetic diversity, since species or populations with unique genetic attributes can be swamped by newcomers. Think of the numerous cutthroat trout subspecies around the West that are endangered by genetic swamping from hybridization with rainbow trout-that were "assisted" in their migration into new watersheds by state wildlife agencies and fishermen's bucket brigades.
Marris seems to have gotten most of her information from reading papers by and interviews with some researchers. Reading scientific papers is important, but it is no replacement for time spent outdoors in natural environments and years of immersion in ecological training. She was an English major in college and appears to have started to study these issues as a reporter for Nature Magazine. Consequently, despite being a good researcher, she hasn't had the time to really delve into these issues.
As I read RG, I kept thinking about some of the smart, but inexperienced younger students I shared graduate seminars with while in school. They were good at memorizing and regurgitating factual information. Yet because they hadn't been around the woods enough to have acquired the breadth of knowledge that comes from extensive familiarity with the academic literature and actual on the ground, hands-on experience, these students, like Marris, were often unable to put forth a systemic analysis.
Throughout RG Marris suggests that an old paradigm of working to protect natural patterns of diversity from human activities must be replaced by a new paradigm of accepting human-dominated ecosystems. In other words, protecting wild areas is passé, in part because, Marris would argue, there are few wild places left.
Setting up a straw man of "pristine" wilderness to knock down, Marris suggests that many conservationists believe there are vast tracts of "wilderness" where the footprint of human activity does not exist.
However, if she really had done the proper scholarship she would know that few (if any) serious observers of nature today believe there are "pristine" lands, in the sense of completely untouched by humans. Plus if she had done enough background reading, she would know this debate was hashed out decades ago, and her observations offer no further insights.
The idea of wilderness is not black and white, but more nuanced--nuances that Marris and others of her persuasion are unwilling to acknowledge. Most wilderness advocates readily admit that human influences are widespread and pernicious--but that on some parts of the globe natural processes dominate to a greater degree than in more humanized landscapes. It is the degree of naturalness, not the complete absence of human influence, that makes some places wilder and less domesticated than others.
To use just one legal definition, the word `untrammeled' as defined in the Wilderness Act does not mean untouched, or state of "purity"; rather it defines wilderness areas as places that "generally appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable." Downtown Los Angeles is considerably more modified to human ends than say the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Arctic Refuge, by the Wilderness Act's definition, would qualify as "wilderness" even though the refuge is certainly not "pristine" in a literal sense.
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