The main idea of the author seems to be that although conservation is not necessarily futile depending on its goals, if its goal is to keep a place the same as it was years ago that is vain and so is our view on nature. The author lists two ways in which nature has been lost. One is through man. An example would be deforestation. Another is what she calls “misplaced” nature.
Our perception of nature is far away, not in the cities, with no people and untouched by mankind. The author points out that nature is everywhere, even in cities such as birds in backyard. Even if not pristine as we view nature, it can still be viewed as such. After all, there is no going back to when nature is considered pristine. The author points out changes happen to nature all the time.
She understands that changing our ideas is hard. The methodology she described as how conservationists go about preserving an area. There are baselines that are the goals, the ecosystem that conservationists want to obtain. According to our nature ethics, it is to go before human touch. Problems that arise though are ecosystems are complicated to figure out. Ecosystems are always changing with or without humans. Although a baseline is created, we don’t always know how the ecosystem looked back then. Most important of all, these goals are almost impossible to achieve unless decides to put in large amounts of money into it and everywhere makes it their priority. I agree with the author when she says it is almost impossible to obtain this.
Even though parks and reserves can be worth having like Yellowstone Park and the reserves in Scotia and Australia, nature is always changing. There are new ways to embrace nature. When the grad student saw the ecosystem in Hawaii, he wasn’t like the other ecologists who believe that it is something to scoff at. They can still have benefits and the ways they interact with each other are unique and interesting as those before. As she says these ecosystems are the ones driving the earth, not the ones of the past.
Even though human touch is thought to be bad, parks with fertile land had people there. The reason nature was there however was the people living there were doing the least harm.
I believe she makes a good case of her main point. People want a stable equilibrium in the ecosystems but it almost impossible. Ecologists know that change is the norm of ecosystems. Some changes in forests aren’t even the work of human. Sometimes it is the work of nature such as the Ice Age. Ecosystems aren’t static.
Even if an ecologist knows nature is always changing, he will try to establish a balance of nature policy. They always change. Even park managers admit so and hope that the system will be resilient. Even knowing change is happening, manmade change is still held to be bad. Searching for the untouched is vain in searching the unchanging. I am one of those people, too. Even if I know nature always changes, having our influence on nature makes me feel conflicted as to what should be done. Even if nature always changes, we can’t help but feel responsible for those changes. I see her point but saying preservation is vain feels off to me.
