Now that the previous goal of restoring nature to its pristine baseline is ineffective and impossible to achieve, Marris lays out seven new goals for conservation today in the final chapter of her book. Her first goal includes protecting the rights of other species. Such effort begins by believing that animals have intrinsic value and humans need to respect them by reducing their impact on Earth (155). Marris states, “many people have an intuition that animals have rights, just as humans do (155)” The Earth does not belong to humans only but to all animals, plants and landscapes that are just as much part of it as we are. Second goal is in protecting charismatic megafaunas. Third is slowing the rate of extinctions. This goal saves specific species but not the ecosystem as a whole. Other goals include protecting genetic diversity, defining and defending biodiversity, maximizing ecosystem services, and lastly protecting the spiritual and aesthetic experience of nature.
All these goals cannot be pursued alone. All of them have drawbacks and difficulties in our attempts to achieve them. She says, “Even after we agree to pursue all sorts of goals, we still have complex compromises to make between ideologies in contested places and between local and global interests (170).” After deciding what it is we want from nature, we need to practically consider the costs of achieving that goal and be reasonable in our pursuit of it.
A goal that spoke especially strongly to me was the last one, which was protecting the aesthetic and spiritual experience of nature. Personally I love nature. I guess it’s the idea of standing in awe of something that is significantly greater than myself. Or maybe because nature is not something I have control over. Or it may be simply because I am always in the busy city surrounded by skyscrapers and man-made structures. Marris poses a question beginning this chapter. She asks, “what kind of appeal would make you most likely to donate to a conservation organization?” And my answer would be the goal I’ve just described above. I do not want to see nature diminishing more than it already did. I feel extremely sad and hopeless whenever I hear about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or extinction of animals as a result of human greed. It is foolish to destroy something as precious and unique to our planet as nature for something as individual and temporary as money. Damages to nature cannot be undone.
My desire is similar to that of Marris’. It is to “preserve open land” and to stay away from mindless development. To protect any open land from being destroyed. It is time for humans to stop altering the Earth and start managing it effectively. My personal views on what defines nature and conservation changed immensely through Rambunctious Garden. Now I look forward to nature existing with humanity not apart from it.
