Emma Marris opens her book Rambunctious Garden summarizing the preconceived notions and misguided visions of conserving the wilderness that have driven humans to interfere with delicate ecosystems. Activists, scientists and conservationists have all worked to preserve the popular parks and forests, such as the Yellowstone National Park. However, Marris introduces the idea of “a new way of seeing nature” beyond the “carefully managed national parks and vast boreal forest” (2). For years, humans have longed for nature to fit their changing ideas of a pristine sanctuary, yet are unable to achieve it because of the changing tendencies of the Earth. Marris urges that humans need to accept, “even embrace” (2) the effects of their actions on the ecosystem. One statement that she makes towards the end of the first chapter sets up her argument well: “This faith that native ecosystems are better than changed ecosystems is so pervasive…that it has become an unquestioned assumption” (Marris 14). Instead of working to recreate and restore the natural wilderness that existed hundreds of years ago, Marris suggests that humans shift their focus towards creating and preserving flourishing ecosystems, and protect the plants and animals that inhabit the areas regardless of whether or not they originated there.
Marris spends much of the first chapter exploring some of the difficulties ecologists and conservationists have faced trying to restore ecosystems back to a specific standard, referred to as a baseline. She references her first-hand accounts of these issues from her tours ecological tours of parts of Hawaii and Australia. She illustrates some conservationists’ efforts to return to a “baseline”, the reference period that they are trying to recreate. Not all conservationists agree, however, on which baseline to follow, differences that result from varying conservation theories.
In Hawaii, Marris explored some of the conservationists’ experimental areas, ranging from lush gardens with non-native plants and animals to recently cleared and scarcely vegetated forests inhabited by few native plant species. In Australia, conservation efforts have been more violent as non-native animal species are viewed as intrusive, and are sought after and removed, all with the intention of allowing the native species to thrive again.
In the second chapter, Marris traces the evolution of American conservationist theories, going back as far as the 1800’s. She beings to stray away from her points in the first chapter, referencing Yellowstone National Park as the idealistic wilderness park. However, the different ecological theories do reflect the different experimental conservation methods Marris saw in Hawaii and Australia. The summary of the different theories in the first half of the second chapter was useful and relevant background information, but disrupts the train of thought she begins in the first chapter and continues it only towards the second half of the chapter.
