Throughout chapters 1 and 2 of her book, Rambunctious Garden, Emma Marris reassures the reader that as a society we must rethink our efforts in terms of conservation. From the start, Marris claims that “we have lost a lot of nature in the past three hundred years-in both senses of the word lost.” Nature has been destroyed, according to Marris; houses now stand where trees once stood, parking lots and pipes laid down where creeks once flowed, but most importantly, we have “hidden nature from ourselves.” (1) Rambunctious Garden’s main point, quite clearly, is that traditional conservationist efforts are often becoming more and more obsolete in our ever-progressing modern world. Marris’ opinion is simple, why waste time preserving the old, when we have the opportunity to embrace the new? Nature is most definitely NOT pristine, so why make the fruitless effort to preserve something that, in fact, changes almost everyday? Marris notes that nature is always changing, whether humans interfere or not. All this adding up to the fact that comparing our environment to “prehuman baselines is becoming increasingly impossible to achieve.” (5)
Chapter 1, appropriately titled “Weeding the Jungle,” relates Marris’ experience in various environments around the world, most notably in Hawaii. In the “extinction capital of the world” (5) Marris discovered that man’s hand has found its way into almost every square inch of the Earth’s surface. We are altering our planet’s original blueprints, and we have been for hundreds of years. Parks are one of the main focuses of Chapter 2, alluding to the creation of Yellowstone Park under President Roosevelt as a means for increasing tourism and hunting. (24)
While Marris presents an extremely valid argument for a more modernized approach to conservationism, my own opinion on the case is somewhat ambivalent. I do agree with Marris’ “we are the future” sort of mentality, because like she says, the planet is not what it once was. In our global society’s current state, it is imperative that we look for ways to improve and become more eco-friendly. The human existence has drastically altered our planet and we must adjust accordingly; however, traditional values must not be overlooked as our ancestors once lived in a simpler time where their wants and needs were less detrimental to Earth. Granted, this is all coming from a college student with very little experience in this particular field, so take this with a grain of salt when I say that certain efforts to preserve the past ecosystem have been not so successful, and humankind and society as a whole must work to make our planet a better place; after all, this is the only planet that we have.
