MODULE 5: Faking nature

 AGENDA

1. Recap of threats to wilderness/wildlife
2. Preview: solutions (3 Rs)
• Restoration (today, next week)
• Returning to indigenous people (Friday + Debate Monday)
• Rewilding (next week)

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Threats to wilderness (Land use)

Is the loss of wild nature bad?

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Robert Eliott, "Faking Nature" (1997, Australia)

Main idea

The restoration thesis: environmental destruction can be "compensated by the later creation (recreation) of something of equal value" (Elliot, p. 81).  

He rejects the restoration thesis: "There is a dimension of value attaching to the natural environment which cannot be restored no matter how technologically proficient environmental engineers become" (p. 81)

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Restoration examples

Elliot's own examples

1. Dune example (p. 81)
2. Moving a creek to accommodate a highway (p. 82)

More land restoration examples

1. Restoring land after mining--Alaska
2. Restoring rainforest in Brazil
3. Restoring blackland prairie in North Texas

Let's add some animal restoration examples

1. Restoring wolves in Yellowstone (next week)
2. Restoring eagles in the US (urban ecology, later)
3. Restoring the dire wolf 
4. Restoring buffalo--
• at the brink of extinction at the end of the 19th century
• preserved by breeders and in zoos
• conservation movement decides to create herds
• buffalo from the Bronx zoo sent to Wichita wildlife refuge in Oklahoma
• contrast with buffalo herd at Yellowstone (not restored but highly managed)

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His point: restoration can't fully restore.  Why not?

1. Restoration can be an intrinsic failure--some of the features and functions are lost (NOT HIS POINT!)
2. When restoration is intrinsically successful, there's still loss of value 
3. because of change of origins: an "object's origins do affect its value and our valuations of it" (p. 85)
4. Example: real Vermeer painting vs. fake Vermeer (p. 85)



5. Fake nature -- lacks natural, wild origins--p. 86
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6. Our xperience of nature can be enhanced by beliefs about origins--p. 86
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7. What if I don't know?  -- p. 88

"Of course I can be deceived into thinking that a piece of landscape has that kind of history, has developed in the appropriate way.  The success of the deception does not elevate the restored landscape to the level of the original, no more than the success of the deception in the previous example confers on the fake the value of a real Vermeer." (p. 88)

 

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He's not saying ...

1. Not saying wild nature is the only thing we value--we may also admire aspects of a city or even a dam--p. 86  -- Dallas Arboretum -- trollstigen
2. Not saying "natural is better" in all cases (diseases, etc.)--p. 87
3. Not saying we should never alter nature
4. Not saying we shouldn't restore...we should just realize we can't fully restore 

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Two objections he tries to defeat

     

1. "Art is different" objection: We care about the origins of an artwork because we judge that it's exceptionally high quality, but nature isn't judged in this way, so the case of art fails to establish the importance of origins for nature  (p. 90)
2. Preservation objection: Many natural places are preserved, and preservations alters their origins, so the effort to hold onto wild nature is doomed to failure. (p. 87)

WORKBOOK

MODULE 5: Is wilderness a social construct?

 AGENDA

1. Recap
2. Wilderness & wildlife -- disappearing
3. Is wildness something to value?

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Recap

1. Schedule, reports
2. Urban wildlife trips
3. Loving nature 

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Wilderness & wildlife are disappearing

• wilderness = areas relatively untouched by humans, working according to their own logic
• wildlife = animals not bred or tamed by human beings
• Nature article (look at maps and images)
• World Wildlife Fund

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How is wilderness/wildlife loss bad? -- Module 1

1. bad for humans (Baxter)
2. bad for animals (Singer, Palmer)
3. bad for plants (Taylor)
4. bad for whole ecoystems (Leopold)
5. bad that species are disappearing (Russow)

New idea: wildness itself is valuable, so loss of wildness is bad

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Overview of views on the value of wildness--

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VALUERS OF WILDNESS

Henry David Thoreau

E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life

Do you value wildness?

the wild Antarctic

from a brochure about visiting

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SKEPTICS ABOUT WILDNESS

William Cronon 

•     "The Trouble with Wilderness" (1995) -- original 
•     NYT essay

Cronon's main arguments 

1. Wilderness is a human creation
2. Wilderness is literally made, not found
3. Privileged people long for wilderness and thus invade it
4. Valuing wilderness makes us devalue local nature

1. Wilderness is a "human creation"

The general idea (NYT p. 2)

Much of history (and in some places today), wilderness is thought of as terrifying, savage, deserted, bewildering  (original p. 2)

Little Red Riding Hood

But at the end of 19th century, wilderness thought of as garden of eden   (original p. 3)

  

Bierstadt, "The Rocky Mountains" (1863)

Wilderness seen as positively sacred, a place to have religious experiences--though with an element of terror (original p. 4-5)

Henry David Thoreau (1846), writing about climbing
Mount Katahdin in Maine

Another view: wilderness as comfortable church (original p. 6)

John Muir writing about Yosemite valley

Wilderness as playground for the rich-- impressive lodges in National Parks (original p. 8)

St Mary lodge, Glacier National Park

Wilderness as a frontier where rugged individualism can flourish (original p. 7)

Monument Valley, Utah (where many westerns were shot)

Wilderness as a place for authenticity--where you can be yourself (p. 11)

Anything else?

2. Wilderness was actually made, not found (p. 10)

• Removal of native Americans from national parks (article and video)
• We will look closely at this issue Friday and Monday
• Recent example:  removal of Maasai from wilderness areas in Tanzania

3. Privileged people long for nature and thus invade it

• NYT passages -- p. 3-4

3. Overvaluing wildness has bad consequences

• It teaches us to value certain things and then makes them distant and unattainable (original p. 17)
• We search for pristine wilderness and don't notice equally impressive nature nearby (original p 18-19, below)