In the final chapter in “Rambunctious Garden,” Emma Marris summarizes all the different goals that conservationists can aim to achieve. They can have different views on the value of nature and thus have different goals that they want to see in nature. The many different goals that she describes are protecting the rights of other species, protecting charismatic megafauna, slowing the rate of extinctions, protecting genetic diversity, defining and defending biodiversity, maximizing ecosystem services, and protecting the spiritual and aesthetic experience of nature. This chapter summarizes many of the points that traditional conservationists would make. Throughout the book, she had been talking about alternatives to traditional conservation methods, while in this last chapter she focuses on things to focus on for conservationists. Her ideas about these various goals are pretty much in agreement with the conservatives who follow them. These goals are simply different ways of looking at nature conservation. For example, rather than just thinking about conservation as something that involves pushing the ecosystem back in time to a certain baseline, the goal of protecting genetic diversity would define conservation as the path to reach that goal.
I think that these goals are all connected and that through proper conservation techniques, most, if not all, of these goals can be achieved in the future. I think that she is introducing all of these goals in order to encourage readers to develop an interest in conservation, if they were not before, by siting all the different benefits that can come from conservation. Even if readers do not have a scientific goal that they have an interest in, they may still want to conserve nature in order to protect the spiritual and aesthetic experience that it provides. I feel that she did a good job with giving a diverse selection of reasons for making an effort towards conservation.
Marris also mentions that conservation can take place in a variety of places. It does not always have to be extensive. She also points out that the costs of conservation methods certainly does need to be included when considering whether or not and how many resources should allocated towards conservation.
In the end, she makes it clear that conservation is definitely needed in nature in this day and age. “In a nutshell: give up romantic notions of a stable Eden, be honest about goals and costs, keep land from mindless development, and try just about everything.” (170) This shows that Marris wants people to understand that conservation is a long process that does not have a clear solution. In the coming years, we need to focus on conservation in all parts of the world. Since humans have already altered all parts of the world, it is useless to try to take those alterations out of nature. Rather, we should focus on how to conserve what we have and to make nature a better place for all organisms to live in. This is the message that I feel Marris wanted to tell readers in “Rambunctious Garden.”
