In the final chapter, “A Menu of New Goals,” Marris lists the various goals conservationists hope to achieve. Since most of them have apposing views of conservation, they tend to have varying opinions on the importance of the goals. The seven goals that she identifies are: protecting the rights of other species, protecting megafauna, slowing the rate of extinctions, protecting genetic diversity, defending biodiversity, maximizing ecosystem services and protecting the beauty of nature.
Many of these seem like obvious goals conservationists would want to achieve but the problem is that some of these goals can conflict with one another. The previous system of conservation was attempting to achieve a pristine wilderness by reaching the baseline of an ecosystem but seeing as how this method can be incredibly cost-ineffective and time consuming, narrowing conservation into numerous goals seems like a valid alternative. Nevertheless, several problems with achieving the goals also stream from lack of funding and conflicts between human values of land and the effort willing to be put in.
The first goal, protecting the rights of other species, is an extremely long held debate that has led the emergence of numerous animal rights groups and a ton of legislature. The argument usually stems from humans considering themselves top of the food chain and using animals for their own benefits. What makes it ok for humans to eat other animals? And what makes it ok for humans to use animals for experimentation? Nevertheless, it is still a very difficult goal to achieve because humans tend to favor certain exotic and beautiful species and turn their backs on the less favorable ones.
Protecting megafauna and slowing the rate of extinction have the problem that protecting megafauna may lead to the extinction of numerous smaller species that are prey to the megafauna. Protecting genetic diversity and defending biodiversity are great goals but the sad truth is no matter what, we will never be able to protect every species.
Protecting the beauty of nature, on the other hand, seems the most achievable and the one goal that everyone can agree on. I am fairly certain that everyone enjoys seeing exotic and beautiful nature, which seems to be the sparkle at the end of the story where no matter how many different opinions on nature converge, they can all agree on this final goal.
In the end, I enjoyed reading Rambunctious Garden. Going in, I knew little of conservation efforts around the world besides trying to save endangered tigers donating a small monthly payment of $19.99. While reading the book, my views of conservation definitely changed and now in many ways, I support the arguments of Marris.
