In the first chapters of Emma Marris’ Rambunctious Garden, she quickly indicates—and likely will continue to reinforce in later chapters—the problem with many conservation projects: it is just not that simple. Preservation is not as easy as planting a tree or making compost to save the environment, although many people—especially city dwellers and commuters, I would haphazardly guess—see it this way. While it does serve to be environmentally friendly and, indeed, help nature in at least reversing more obvious, destructive consequences of nature, such as the dramatic increase in carbon concentration in the atmosphere, it does not, say, save the sequoias, at least not in a direct sense. But Marris brings up a good point: should it?
As evident in chapters 1 and 2, preserving such majesties is often incredibly costly, either at the cost of labor or of the surrounding nonnative species, as was in Marris’ Hawaii example, or, more often, both. In the Yellowstone model, the conservationists sought and seek an arbitrary baseline—typically pre-European settlement—as their guideline of what natural utopia should be. The problem, as Marris points out, is that nature is never still, never static. Evolution, slow though it may be, works to alter the flora and fauna (and, indirectly, the landscape as well). Migratory patterns of plants over the last several glaciations also indicate no… well, pattern; the distribution of seeds over a vast continent went in different directions, sometimes defying logical progression of post-glacial distribution. Would it not be, then, that we are preserving a false ideal of what we believe nature should be?
The concept of having nature for various reasons began (in the States) in the Northeast, where Thoreau and Emerson could seek peace and aestheticism from the scenery—often little more than a mile or two away from civilization. Muir expanded upon that with a more zealous approach to nature, attributing it to godly proportions. Teddy Roosevelt had a more violent take on nature—that from animals to minerals, it was for our taking—but nevertheless emphasized its necessity, if even just for sport. I am unsure which of the reasons would be preferable (though I would prefer Roosevelt’s gung-ho style), but regardless, as nature diminished to towns, cities and metropolises, awareness to its ebb increased.
Nevertheless, conservationists have created some havens—if only very small relative to the grand scheme of things. A patch of native Hawaiian plants here, a pocket of Australian preserve set aside for “cute-and-furries”, being more pristine examples, as well as the numerous parks, preservations and conservations that dot the globe, albeit “protecting” the lives within them imperfectly. Despite the likely, if not inevitable, failure of many of these locations’ missions, they are undoubtedly still very beautiful and useful for what they are. Aestheticism goes a long way when the daily commute is steel and concrete, I suppose.
