Marris starts off the last chapter by saying that when dealing with the preservation or care of nature no single goal will work out in every possible scenario. So, this means that for every piece of land out there we have to come together and create a common set of goals to help preserve it. Lucky for us she provides us with some sort of basis in the form of seven goals to go about creating a set of common goals amongst ourselves.
The first goal she mentions is, to protect the right of other species. I like the analogy she gave here about all of us species being a community it might be a little cliché but it kind of reminded me of the lion king and how every living thing has a purpose in the circle of life. Furthermore the quote she put there from Aldo Leopold fits in very well with this idea, “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” This basically means that people usually take care of their communities in a certain manner and treating the community with a certain degree of dedication and care is important for the survival of the community.
The second goal she mentions, in my opinion isn’t really a goal it’s more about kissing up to the people. This means that try and preserve certain species that people care about like Dolphins, Polar Bears, Tigers or Panda Bears, because if people like them they wont want to destroy them. Another reason that Ecologists say these animals have importance is that ecologists believe them to have a great effect on how the ecosystem works. Furthermore if the animal lives in a large amount of area it might help get people to agree to protect the whole area and not just the species.
The third goal that she mentions is the one of slowing the rate of extinctions. So, if a certain species is not doing too well for whatever reason you should keep some of the species elsewhere like a zoo. (She used in her example amphibians) Now she brought a very big problem with this goal in that lets say the environment changes so much that the amphibians can no longer survive there, should they forever be in the zoo? She brought a good point by saying keeping the amphibians in a box to save amphibian diversity is a lot like keeping Incan art in a museum to preserve their culture. But, I feel like her response is a good answer, we may not be able to save ecosystems, but at least we could save species.
The fourth goal is to preserve genetic diversity for example, even though a polar bear may be closely related to a brown bear even more so than other brown bears, this does not mean we should let it go extinct. So, while species diversity is important Genetic diversity is just as important. The quote she brings from Nick Isaac sums it up pretty well, “You are in a spaceship leaving Earth with three paintings. Do you take three Rembrandts, or do you take one Rembrandt, one Leonardo and one Picasso?”
The fifth goal is to preserve biodiversity, you don’t just want to save every species and have them in zoos on display. The point is for them to be able to exist in nature in the way that they evolved to exist.
The sixth goal is to maximize ecosystem services in other words the grass is making oxygen for us for free. Marris then proposes that in that case we should just take the plant that does this the best and to just use that one. An answer Marris gave to this is that there is existence value, where knowing that other species exists has value.
The Seventh goal and in my opinion, the most important is how nature is aesthetically pleasing to us, it gives us a sense of relaxation and every once in a while people use nature to get away from it all and refresh themselves, therefore we should preserve it.
Marris ends off by saying one goal isn’t going to cut it in every situation and sometimes your going to have to put in more effort to preserve the land. But, she also mentions how “we have forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it.”
