I think the concept of Pleistocene rewilding that Marris presents to us in the beginning of chapter 4 of Rambunctious Garden is one of fantasy. I found it comical that rather than merely trying to return an ecosystem back to a time period before substantial settlement, ecologist were working to reconstruct a time period even before the existence of humans. Immediately the city of Atlantis came to mind when Marris described the reservation area of Oostvaardersplassen- parts of which had been “underwater as recently as 1967” (57). Going into the chapter I wondered how reversing such a landscape to a time before humans, where many different extinct and unknown species lived cohesively would be possible. Because many of these environmental characteristics cannot be recreated, ecologists end up creating new ecosystems rather than old ones. There is also the issue of what natural life was actually like in these baseline eras. Because ecosystems are forever changing, seasonally as well as over long periods of time, there is no pinpointed time where one can say what a certain place was like on average thousands of years ago.
Despite my initially reaction to what I felt was a radical idea, Frans Vera’s experiment seemed to be doing well as it attracted numerous rare species to the constructed ecosystem. Thus, I find the main goal of rewilding in the non-pleisocene sense to be a plausible and possibly more beneficial effort than that of baseline reconstruction and conservation. Rewilding addresses the need of any ecosystem, which is diversified species. The more diversified species within a given ecosystem, the better off it will be in the face of adversity. Vera’s goal of obtaining a prehumen era ecosystem may not be so successfully accurate, however, by doing so he has brought together as well as attracted multiple species to the area.
There can be issues that arise when it comes to taking organisms from one habitat and placing them in another just for the sake of diversification. I am personally not sure whether it would be ethical depending on the case, nonetheless in the case of a reservation, I see rewilding as being more beneficial to the environment by adding to its sustainability rather than ripping away what it has with the hopes of recreating something new.
Going back to the case of Oostvaardersplassen, aside from the fact that rewilding helps with ecosystem biodiversity, Vera’s efforts to recreate a past time period is similarly paradoxical like that of the baseline remodeling. Both involve the alteration of an existing ecosystem in order to recreate something that was never truly there in the first place so that it resembles a time period before the human alteration of these land masses. In my opinion, ecologists should look to change their perspectives rather than trying to fit nature into a mold that they have made up in their minds as what true nature is to be. Like the grad student Joe Mascaro, referred to in the first chapter, I agree that nature should be appreciated for what it is. Nature is ever changing and continues to move forward despite human efforts to keep it the same. In the end both rewilding and baseline reconstruction are beneficial, I believe they are done in vain save for their purpose of increasing biodiversity in threatened areas.
