In the last chapter of Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, Emma Marris lists seven goals for conserving nature. Throughout the novel, she presented new methods of attempting to save nature because older conservation methods are flawed and impractical. In order to understand how to best preserve nature in an area, we need know what our goals are. She explains that “no single goal will work in all situations” so people will need to come up with a common set of goals for each project. She then explains the seven goals, describing what the idea behind each one and why it might not work in certain cases.
The first goal is to protect the rights of other species. The idea behind this goal is that every species has an intrinsic value and should therefore be protected. Two problems that this goal faces involve determining what the intrinsic value of a species is and conflicts between the rights of individual plants or animals and the protection of a population or species. As an example of the first problem, this goal is sometimes only applied to animals when plants and landscapes deserve rights too. Marris exemplifies the second problem by suggesting a case in which cats are killing all the albatross nestlings on an island and the cats may have to be killed.
The second goal is to protect charismatic megafauna. The idea behind this goal is humans like certain large animals and don’t want to see them go extinct. In many cases, these charismatic megafauna are keystone species, which greatly impact an ecosystem, and protecting them will benefit the entire ecosystem. A problem with this goal is that protecting charismatic megafauna may not always be beneficial for other species in the ecosystem. The example Marris provides for this is an elephant park in Africa that has become overcrowded with elephants and plants species are suffering as a result.
The third goal is to slow the rate of extinctions. The idea behind this goal is that we should treat all species as equally and return the rate of extinctions to its state before humans interfered. The problems with this goal are that it can be too costly and it doesn’t necessarily save ecosystems.
The fourth goal is to protect genetic diversity. The idea behind this goal is to focus on saving species that are weird because they contain genes that have come from millions of years of evolution and aren’t present anywhere else. One problem with this goal is that a simple solution to it would be to simply save genetic samples of these species. This would mean that, although the genetic material would be safe, the organisms themselves might not exist alive in the real world.
The fifth goal is to define and defend biodiversity. The idea behind this goal is to protect variety of species, genes, and ecosystems. Two problems with this goal are that it is extremely complex and it may put more value on keystone species than redundant species.
The sixth goal is to maximize ecosystem services. The idea behind this goal is to focus on ecosystems and species that help humanity. The problem with this goal is that doesn’t necessarily protect species or ecosystems that do not provide a service but simply have an existence value, or a value that comes from just knowing that it exists.
The seventh goal is to protect the spiritual and aesthetic experience of nature. The basic idea behind this goal is to preserve natural environments because people like them. The problem with this is that people have the tendency to put less value on environments that are not pristine.
I believe that these are good goals to have for conservation and agree with Marris that we need a variety of goals so that we can protect the many different types of ecosystems that have different types of values for humans. Marris has presented many solutions to ecological problems but almost every one has drawbacks. In order to determine which solutions are viable for a particular problem, we need to know goals and which drawbacks ae acceptable given those goals.
