In chapter 10, the final chapter of the Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris outlines seven major goals of conservation. The purpose is to point out that no single goal provides a solution; we need to give up the idea of pristine wilderness and work around these major goals outlined by her. Every piece of land is different; therefore we must apply a combination of various different methods to each situation.

Goal One: Protect the Rights of other Species. The first goal emphasizes deep ecology, i.e. looking after all living species because they have intrinsic value. We shouldn’t be concerned about conservation only because that species benefits humans at the end.  However, the problem comes in when dealing with rights of one animal over another. The idea of intrinsic value differs based on perspectives therefore results in some problems when dealing with invasive species.

Goal Two: Protecting the Charismatic Megafauna. The second goal emphasizes the human love for large mammals with large eyes. As humans, we love some species more than others based on their appearance, such as dolphins, tigers, pandas etc. Even though, the idea of saving species based on human love for them seems unethical, studies have shown that larger animals often form the keystone species therefore their survival is critical to the maintenance of that ecosystem.

Goal Three: Slow the Rate of Extinctions.  The third goal emphasizes the extinction value of species. For this goal, Marris talks about mathematical ecology, which uses algorithms to model the practicality and financial burden of saving one species vs. another. Using such an approach can result in humans losing species that they really love, as well as mirrors breeding because efficiency is stressed out.

Goals Four: Protect Genetic diversity. The third goal focuses on the concept of species. Often times a population is genetically far more different, than another closely related species. As a result, the importance preserving genetic diversity as opposed to just species comes in. It allows for greater complexity of life and helps with the process of evolution. Genetic diversity represents millions of years of evolutionary activity; hence protecting it is highly important. However the idea questions the value of the individual species. Is an animal only important because of its varied gene pool? In that case genetic diversity can simply be preserved in laboratories. As a result, in her fifth goal Marris outlines definition of biodiversity and why it’s important.

Goal 6: Maximize ecological services & Goal 7: Protect the spiritual and aesthetic experience of nature, present contrasting point of views. Maximizing ecological services mirrors an economic approach of maximizing profit, where finite resources are implemented in such a way that the output is the greatest. Ecological services are estimated at billions of dollars, therefore it does make sense to follow that. However, maximizing services doesn’t necessarily guarantee aesthetics. On the contrary, protecting the spiritual and aesthetic experience of nature focuses on the emotional response we get from looking at nature that often various from person to person.  Both goals 6 and 7 are rather extreme and something, which is a combination, would be a more acceptable.

Marris sums up her book with the notion that a single approach is not adequate to utilize every form of land and forming rambunctious gardens. Hence, she provides 7 goals which can be used for conservation.

Marris starts off the last chapter by saying that when dealing with the preservation or care of nature no single goal will work out in every possible scenario. So, this means that for every piece of land out there we have to come together and create a common set of goals to help preserve it. Lucky for us she provides us with some sort of basis in the form of seven goals to go about creating a set of common goals amongst ourselves.

The first goal she mentions is, to protect the right of other species. I like the analogy she gave here about all of us species being a community it might be a little cliché but it kind of reminded me of the lion king and how every living thing has a purpose in the circle of life. Furthermore the quote she put there from Aldo Leopold fits in very well with this idea, “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” This basically means that people usually take care of their communities in a certain manner and treating the community with a certain degree of dedication and care is important for the survival of the community.

The second goal she mentions, in my opinion isn’t really a goal it’s more about kissing up to the people. This means that try and preserve certain species that people care about like Dolphins, Polar Bears, Tigers or Panda Bears, because if people like them they wont want to destroy them. Another reason that Ecologists say these animals have importance is that ecologists believe them to have a great effect on how the ecosystem works. Furthermore if the animal lives in a large amount of area it might help get people to agree to protect the whole area and not just the species.

The third goal that she mentions is the one of slowing the rate of extinctions. So, if a certain species is not doing too well for whatever reason you should keep some of the species elsewhere like a zoo. (She used in her example amphibians) Now she brought a very big problem with this goal in that lets say the environment changes so much that the amphibians can no longer survive there, should they forever be in the zoo? She brought a good point by saying keeping the amphibians in a box to save amphibian diversity is a lot like keeping Incan art in a museum to preserve their culture. But, I feel like her response is a good answer, we may not be able to save ecosystems, but at least we could save species.

The fourth goal is to preserve genetic diversity for example, even though a polar bear may be closely related to a brown bear even more so than other brown bears, this does not mean we should let it go extinct. So, while species diversity is important Genetic diversity is just as important. The quote she brings from Nick Isaac sums it up pretty well, “You are in a spaceship leaving Earth with three paintings. Do you take three Rembrandts, or do you take one Rembrandt, one Leonardo and one Picasso?”

The fifth goal is to preserve biodiversity, you don’t just want to save every species and have them in zoos on display. The point is for them to be able to exist in nature in the way that they evolved to exist.

The sixth goal is to maximize ecosystem services in other words the grass is making oxygen for us for free. Marris then proposes that in that case we should just take the plant that does this the best and to just use that one. An answer Marris gave to this is that there is existence value, where knowing that other species exists has value.

The Seventh goal and in my opinion, the most important is how nature is aesthetically pleasing to us, it gives us a sense of relaxation and every once in a while people use nature to get away from it all and refresh themselves, therefore we should preserve it.

Marris ends off by saying one goal isn’t going to cut it in every situation and sometimes your going to have to put in more effort to preserve the land. But, she also mentions how “we have forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it.”

When I was reading chapter eight and chapter nine the main thing I understood from it is how Marris is trying to take us into a new path in dealing with nature, more specifically one that involves the future of nature. The first thing I found important while I was doing the reading is this concept that Marris introduced to me known as the Designer Ecosystem. For one thing it caught me off guard because earlier in her book she talked about the concept of Rewilding and this is the exact opposite. Rewilding is a way of reverting nature from how it is now to its former pristine form. Basically this means that conservationists would take a piece of land and try to return it to how it was a few thousand years ago before the influence of man took hold. Designer Ecosystems from what I understood is a way of organizing the ecosystem around a certain place or in a certain manner that will be beneficial in some way. One example that Marris provides is how they are fixing certain parts of the ecosystem to remove Nitrogen from the water. To be more specific she explains how in one place they tried to design a stream but after adding a certain amount of boulders into the ecosystem she says herself it “looks more like a wet land than a stream”. But, to emphasize her point she is showing how by manipulating the ecosystem it can prove to be beneficial. Furthermore, in my opinion this is a much better approach to conservation than rewilding. For one thing even without human interaction nature would have changed, so reverting the ecosystem to how it ‘used to be’ doesn’t make sense, I mean some of the changes would have occurred without our interference, so this form of conservation whereby we design the ecosystem to have a beneficial purpose seems to make more sense. I mean why try and fix a broken past, when instead we could look towards a better future. As for chapter nine again in my opinion she is telling us to watch for the future. The way she does this could clearly be seen in the beginning of the chapter when she brings a story about when she was kayaking in a river in Seattle, Washington and she witnessed a Salmon do an impressive jump a few feet from her kayak. She then proceeds to try and make us guess where she was; she starts off by asking us to guess if she was in the Sol Duc River or even if she was in a rainforest in British Columbia. Then she juxtaposes those two by saying she witnessed this in the middle of Seattle. In my opinion she is showing us how nature is everywhere, like in the heart of a city and since the title of the chapter is called “Conservation Everywhere” she is telling us to conserve all the nature, literally everywhere. So to reiterate my initial claim I truly believe in these two chapters where Marris is trying to tell us to care for the future of nature.

Marris’ The Rambunctious Garden gave a very in-depth detail about modern ecology. She talks about the pollution humans are leaving behind, conservation ideas to help these problem, and new projects that will help humans and wild life as a whole. However there are many things that Marris says that do not seem realistic or unnecessary.

Her last chapter is meant to give us a list of goals she believes are necessary for the future of conservation, however, I felt the chapter lacking. Some of the points she mentioned didn’t seem like they could be realistic, and some unethical. Here are points that I found necessary to comment on.

The land ethic is a term used to describe “soils, waters, plants and animals, ” and the moral obligations we have toward these creatures.  That we are all interconnected in a web of species where id one is disturbed can cause drastic consequences. She also talks about giving plants and animals a moral status. Though she makes it sound like she wants animals to have human’s rights, animals and plants deserve to have mutual respect from humans. This specifically includes the livestock that we butcher. Humans are part carnivorous animals and it is understandable, and essential for us to eat meat. However the rate at which we consume it is unnecessary, especially since most animal farms keep animals in the worst of condition. By creating a healthy environment for animals in slaughterhouses could be a way for meat prices to raise and keep us from over consuming it.

Charismatic mega fauna, which are the really big animals that humans do not want to go extinct, is something that can help provide more support for conservation.  By telling people that the habitats for certain animals will lead them to extinction would have them (hopefully) more involved and considerate for nature. It may sound like this is targeting only a select few; however by saving environments these mega fauna inhabit will save the same homes the smaller wild things live.

Deep ecology sounds like an interesting idea. It means to look at the intrinsic value of nature and work at this by looking after the world as an extension of us. Saving genetic diversity seems to be the best way to look at diversity. Saving species that are very different from each other is perhaps better than saving one species and its subspecies, and its very closely related one. It would be best to have the one Picasso, one Rembrandt, and one Leonardo Da Vinci, than just the three Rembrandts. Species from very similar animals will soon enough go through evolutionary processes and will continue to differentiate. Losing a very different animal as a whole however cannot be brought back.

Conserving biodiversity will perhaps save the aesthetics of nature by maintaining a balance amongst the complex relationships of flora and fauna, however Marris does bring up that we do not know how the relationships work, and they may have been an accident that learned to stabilize. Conserving ecosystem for ecosystem service will not only save biodiversity, but will also maximize our resources from them (hopefully not too much to make them go extinct.)

Saving nature wholly for the aesthetic aspect is something would like to invest in because people still want that serenity they get from it. However with an expanding human population, matters like these might lose validity, and designer ecosystems could be the new fad.

Perhaps people look to the serene because it is something that we have recently began too lose. But when we think of central park, we know it is man made, but it has been a designer ecosystem that has worked out. Human collaborated, or artificial nature does not seem to be a problem, or thought of as taking away from serenity. Most of our nature has become artificial since humans in many ways have polluted most. Artificial clean up will try to clean up the mess we did in the beginning.