AGENDA
- Elliott recap
- Two approaches
- Conservation/Restoration
- Rewilding
Robert Eliot, "Faking Nature"
Fake nature is not as good as wild nature because...
- Importance of origins: they're often relevant to the value things have (forged art, etc)
- Meaning of wildness: origins not human
- Value of wildness: world is better for having a lot of wild nature
- Recovery impossible: you can't make a wild bison herd
Conservation/restoration vs. Rewilding (debate next time)
Conservation/restoration (older)
- Interventions to restore nature so the ecosystem has the "right" elements again
- Philosophical argument for conservation/restoration: Aldo Leopold, ecological holism
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac p. 6 (Canvas)
Rewilding (newer)
- Rewilding:
- stop interfering so areas become wild again
- intervene, then let things go
- area doesn't become literally untouched, but the way it would be without humans
- not necessarily going backward in time
- no end point--no "right" elements
- Monbiot also defines wildness in terms of "trophic function"
- rewilding organizations: Rewilding Earth, Rewilding Europe, Rewilding Patagonia
- Philosophical argument for rewilding:
- value of wildness (Eliot)
- rejects Aldo Leopold's emphasis on "integrity and stability" (see Hettinger and Throop)
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Examples
Conservation/restoration that's NOT rewilding
- Restoring buffalos to the great plains, musk oxen to Alaska , etc. AND managing them -- NPS video
- Exterminating non-native species simply because "they don't belong there"
Rewilding that's NOT conservation
Passive
- Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Russia) (watch video)
- Stop weeding lawn and garden
- Human extinction--"The Last of Us" TV series
Active
- Rewilding areas depleted by agriculture (watch video)
- Restoring animals and then NOT managing them
Projects that are BOTH conservation AND rewilding
- Yellowstone wolf restoration
- conservation: they were once part of the ecosystem
- rewilding: adding makes Yellowstone more like it would be without humans, they add trophic function
- Exterminating non-native species that are invasive--coqui frogs in Hawaii
- conservation: they don't belong to the Hawaii ecosystem
- rewilding: they're messing up trophic function
- Wildlife corridors
- Ecological holism argument (Leopold)
- Anthropocentric argument (Baxter)
- Species preservation argument (Russow)
Potential arguments for rewilding
- Wildness as a good (Eliot, Monbiot)
- Respect for nature (Taylor)