[snip]
Ben wrote:
Put another way, and more particularly, it doesn't take any money NOT to
cut down a tree.
Chris Perley here: False premise Ben. Protecting a HABITAT (why is
everyone fixated on individual structural components of an ecosystem
anyway - functions and processes are where it is at) requires active human
management (read MONEY) whether we like it or not. Most ecosystems have
evolved over continental scales. Like it or not we have destroyed the
ability of many ecosystems to keep working within that geographical scale.
As an example there is a theory that elephants may have evolved in a
continental ecosystem where they periodically reached huge numbers (no
natural predators), wreaked their own home, then crashed. Having a domain
the size of a couple of continents saved them. They don't have the
continent to play in any more - so if we want to protect them, we have to
intervene. Intervene = money. Either that or treat humanity as a virus to
be expunged (the anti-humanist solution). That was Jim's point I thought.
You Buffalo Bill Americans wiping out the buffalo is another example. They
cannot wander the way they did, so they have to be managed.
Actually the anti-humanist solution (which I associate most readily with
those who see "HUMANS OUT!!" preservationism as the only possible
environmental solution) is not an environmental solution in many ecosystems
of any scale. E.G. in NZ the introduction of mammalian pests is the single
major cause of biodiversity decline in this country (a land of birds without
mammals - except the bird-like bats that flew over here). Remove humans,
and you sign a death warrant for biodiversity.
Any other solutions? Try active management of preserves AND an
encouragement of habitat protection within the human dominant environment
(i.e. discard the idea that protection and use are mutually exclusive).
Unfortunately many just want more preserves, and are not that interested in
changing peoples' underlying ethics to ecosystem management. Try a little
Wendell Berry on your morning muesli. A little bit of Leopold for lunch.
Stephen Budiansky's Nature's Keepers is also relevant.
Chris
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