BK 9: (Mar 5, 2019) Rambunctious Garden - Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

Hi Everyone...

On Mar 5th we will discuss "Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World" by Emma Marris (Sep 6, 2011).

With 171 reading pages it is approximately 7 pages per day.

Check out the Bio & Video below...

"A paradigm shift is roiling the environmental world. For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity. Emma Marris argues convincingly that it is time to look forward and create the "rambunctious garden," a hybrid of wild nature and human management.

In this optimistic book, readers meet leading scientists and environmentalists and visit imaginary Edens, designer ecosystems, and Pleistocene parks. Marris describes innovative conservation approaches, including rewilding, assisted migration, and the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems.

Rambunctious Garden is short on gloom and long on interesting theories and fascinating narratives, all of which bring home the idea that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by us."

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This is what we discussed at the meeting...

* History of what land and its animals was like in the past

* Cahokia Mounds (I visited!)

* The word "Pristine" does not appear in the Wilderness Act

* Dutch Govt strict laws against animal cruelty (Killing & letting animals die of starvation)

* Butterfly migration shifts

* Bison

* Pika

* Father Goose "Bill Lishman" helping the migratory patterns of Geese (video below!) Update to video...the geese came back on their own the morning he was to leave and get them. Further Update...Bill Lishman passed away on at the end of 2017 and Operation Migration shut down in 2018, after 25 years, after the difference in management viewpoints with the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

* Do you intervene with "nature"?

* Novel vs Native Ecosystems

* Should we  and can we make it look like presettlement time?

*  Biotic vs Abiotic changes 

* Hostess Cupcake Factory in Hoboken, NJ

* Costa Rica

* Should it be restored to only what contributes to human well-being?

* Leopold...value of place if one never goes there?

* Can Invasives actually help?

* "Accidental Gardens"
* Hydroelectric Niagara Falls Stopped? Beauty? Why not? Water!! 

*  NPR with interview Joe Duff (co-founder with Bill Lishman!) Nov 1, 2018