Through the first two chapters of Rambunctious Garden, by Emma Marris, the main point being stressed is that the reader and society as a whole must rethink the way we conserve nature. She describes rambunctious gardening as “Proactive and optimistic; it creates more and more nature as it goes, rather than just building walls around the nature we have left.” People are often worried about protecting the nature we have left, but they fail to realize that a greater impact can be made if we let nature take its coarse and not build fences around it.
More than half of Hawaii’s plants are nonnative. An experiment took place to determine whether a native Hawaiian forest would bounce back if all the introduced species were removed. The results that Marris discovered were that quite a few native seedlings appeared on the forest floor. Marris realized that despite not being able to turn back the clock, many conservation projects like to recreate a former time of the native land on a larger scale. Examples of this would be know as little islands like the past.
The past ten years, according to Marris, scientists have moved beyond focusing on the past, but now focus on the future and asking themselves what they would like it to look like. “No single goal will provide for a sensible, well-rounded conservation program…Layering goals and managing landscapes with an eye to the future, rather than the past, is the cutting edge of conservation.”
Marris goes on to talk about the Yellow Stone National Park effort to preserve the area. About 13% of Earths land is protected area. Initially, most early parks preserved land that could bring tourists, but later after the 1940s, land such as the less sexy swamps that were rare in ecosystem were finally being preserved. To sum up the first two chapters by Marris, she tells us that part of the beauty of ecology is its change.
I agree with many of the strong points that Marris made against the current ways of conservation. Her idea that people are making nature conservation just for the sake of preserving nature alone is a strong one. She supports it by saying that we as humans should accept that we have modified nature and should preserve it the way it is, not by trying to reinvent the past. Nature has its ways of balancing things out and as humans we should help it through the process instead of providing it with barriers. The key to all of this is to embrace nature, and since ecosystems never hold still, we should value the history that is taking place right in front of our eyes.
