In Chapters 8 and 9 of Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris continues her attack on societal perceptions on nature and attempts to change most of her readers’ views, using designer ecosystems and the coexistence of nature and industry as examples. From ancient streams that were “more like swamps,” “eucalyptus woodlands” that aren’t “going back to the way it used to be,” and the Duwamish River in Seattle, Marris shows us once again why setting a pristine baseline for nature is impossible, and how we can work with urbanization to diversify and better nature, along with ourselves (123, 129).
Chapter 8 discusses designer ecosystems, which can vary from “restoration projects” primarily focused on a natural image to “building de novo to achieve a particular goal” (125-6). Apparently, ecologists are “beginning to see the possibilities of designing, engineering, cooking up something new,” by focusing in on designer ecosystems that are more associated with the phrase “whatever works” than anything having to do with restoration (126-7). In one example, Galapagos penguins are endangered due to rats in Seattle that eat the penguins, so scientists have reacted not by trying to force the rats out of Seattle but by “drilling more nesting holes into the rocks for the birds” – a compromise, in working with what they have and doing their best to accomplish a specific goal (127). Marris describes designer ecosystems pragmatically, as they work within a modern, urban context without attempting to restore an area to a historical baseline and a pristine wilderness.
Marris continues with this idea of working with what you have in nature in Chapter 9, Conservation Everywhere, in which she talks about the possibilities for a “hybrid future” where nature and industry can successfully co-exist (133). Cari Simson, a staffer at the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition in Seattle, calls this an “eco-industrial vision” – a vision that consists of “making the most out of every scrap of land and water, no matter its condition” and complementing “our wildernesses with conservation everywhere else too, from industrial rivers like the Duwamish to the roofs of buildings and farmer’s fields” (134-5). Marris suggests that one can help conserve wilderness by letting their lawns grow as much as possible, making space available to species on farmers’ acres of land so that they can exist more easily, and changing agricultural practices to make more space for species.
While Marris’s argument is very convincing, it’s almost condescending to me to read some of what she writes – on the last page of Chapter 9, she writes that “(s)treet trees are not just attractive shade-providing devices…Street trees are nature…If conservation is to take place everywhere, we must all learn to see nature as the background to our own lives and not just as islands far away” (151). Are people generally that ignorant to nature, so much so that they can only see “street trees” surrounding them as “shade-providing devices,” and they can only see nature on “islands far away” from their urbanized lives? I don’t think so – people are more thoughtful than that. And for all of the criticism that Marris had earlier for the leading authors of conservation from the 19th Century, she suggests that one of her goals in tying nature to industry is so that people “can take a moment and connect with nature” (143). Wasn’t that what Thoreau and Muir wrote about earlier? People can still find and appreciate nature around them without this dichotomy of pristineness and the Anthropocene that Marris repeats – and this isn’t far from what Muir and Thoreau wrote about centuries ago.
