In Marris’ last chapter, she lists a series of goals that people consider for conservation as alternatives to the pristine wilderness ideal. Since people are not focused on a single goal, the number of options for the conserved land have increased. The increased number of goals force people to decide what is more important or what is more feasible because it is impossible to promote all goals at the same time. Marris lists seven goals: to protect other species rights, to protect charismatic megafauna, slow extinctions, protect genetic diversity, defend biodiversity, maximize ecosystem services, and to protect the aesthetic experience of nature. There are several goals that could conflict with each other such as maximizing ecosystem services and protecting aesthetic experiences of nature.
Most of these goals are self explanatory and each individual goal addresses a specific issue that different conservationists like to focus on. The main problem with conservation was that it was trying to achieve all of these goals by focusing on achieving the baseline or a pristine wilderness. The incompatibility or infeasibility between multiple goals stem from economic problems like funding and conflicts between human values of the land and the ecosystems within.
When examining these goals, it is safe to say that each of them have their own merits. Of the seven goals Marris writes about, I feel like only a few are actually a plausible goal. Due to human’s selfish nature and needs, protecting species rights seems to be a difficult task. Protecting megafauna, genetic diversity and slowing extinctions are up to how we deal with the animals and how we modify their ecosystems. Protecting biodiversity seems like an unrealistic goal due to the scope of biodiversity. Of most of the goals I believe that maximizing ecosystem services are actually the most achievable. Marris does mention that ecosystem services promoters are commonly thought to follow the money (she thinks differently) and I agree with this general notion. Due to our selfish nature, we support more projects that are beneficial to us, so I think that this goal/tool is actually the most useful.
For the last goal of protecting aesthetic experiences of nature, Marris seems to support it more if our perceptions of actual aesthetic nature is widened. I think that this goal will be achieved the most because humans want to save this aesthetic value. I do not think that we can actually shift our perceptions of spiritual and pristine nature as humans continue to move into urban areas. The vast differences between a concrete jungle and a real jungle only emphasizes our fascination with pristine nature.
I think that Marris’ concept of a rambunctious garden is an admirable one that can work depending on where the conservation occurs and what goals are being accomplished. I do not believe that some ideas like conservation everywhere would be successful, but I do believe that if humans have an active hand on conservation, we can revert some of our negative impacts and reap some benefits.
