Steven Bissell wrote:

>
> Chris wrote, in part:
>
> "Getting away from our "balance of nature" metaphor has some pretty major
> implications for environmental ethics - and environmental policy.  We
> haven't really explored them that much.  Mostly, there is fighting
> (including plenty on this list) above our implicit ontology

>
> Chris, have you considered decaf?

CP:  Definitely not!  I am applying the intravenous drip as we speak.
Freshly ground Arabica by the kilo.  I mix it with hot water to assist the
infusion.

> Great set of ideas, care to pick one?
>
> Here is what Leopold had to say about the "balance of nature"
> metaphor; "The
> image commonly employed in conservation education is 'the balance of
> nature.' For reasons too lengthy to detail here, this figure of
> speech fails
> to describe accurately what little we know about land mechanisms. A much
> truer image is the one employed in ecology: the biotic pyramid.
> (and so on,
> SCA, pg 214 to 220 for the complete statement)."
>
> I sort of wonder if Leopold's synoptic statement, "A thing is
> right when it
> tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
> community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise" didn't do much to
> further the 'balance of nature' metaphor, especially in the use
> of the terms
> 'integrity' and 'stability.'

CP: Callicott has an essay on this.  Callicott 1996 Do deconstructive
ecology and sociobiology undermine the Leopold Land Ethic.  Env Ethics 18:
353-72 (also in his collection of essays - Beyond the land ethic: more
essays in environmental philosophy).  He claims that Leopold openly rejected
notions of "balance" - at least as a single point that is static (uses
quotes from his essay "A biotic view of land" which elaborates on the quote
above from the Land Ethic.  Callicott suggests that by "stability" Leopold
seems to mean "community persistence" (from Leopold's essay "Conservation in
whole or in part?") in the sense of a typological biotic community as a
persistent unit that comes and goes as such.

From Leopold "Cons in whole or part" (collected in The River of the Mother
of God and other essays): "The wisconsin land was stable....for a long
period before 1840 [when settled by europeans].  The pollens embedded in
peat bogs showed that the native plants comprising the prairie, the hardwood
forest and the coniferous forest are about the same now as they were at the
end of the glacial period - 20000 years ago.  Since that time these major
plant communities were pushed alternatively northward and southward several
times by long climatic cycles, but their membership and organsiation
remained intact.....  The bones of animals show that the fauna shifted with
the flora, but its composition or membership likewise remained intact."

Trouble is that we have a better picture of the pollen records now.
Callicott quotes Linda Brubaker (1988.  vegetation history and anticipating
future vegetation change.  in Ecosystem management for parks and wilderness.
JK Agee (ed).  Univ of washington press) - "because species have responded
individualistically to climatic variations, plant communities have been
transient assemblages, seldom persisiting for more that 2000 to 5000
years......Most of the tree species dominating Nth America today became
common 8000 to 10000 years ago when they expanded from ice-age refugia.
Most species spread at different rates and in different directions, reaching
their current range limits and populations only 3000 to 5000 years ago.
Thus present day Nth Am forests should not be considered stable over
evolutionary time scales."  (The same is true in NZ - where our current
forest is a response to an ice-age history - and where there is ongoing
change in species composition, some at least of which is recordable over a
40 year period from the evidence of some resampling of old National Forest
Survey plots - first done in the 1950s - which we had a look at in the late
80s.)

Callicott contines - "Where does that leave the moral maxi of the land
ethic - "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability
and beauty of the biotic community.  It is wrong when it tends otherwise"?
Apparently assemblages lack integrity.  They are "transient assemblages" of
species that are individualistically adapted to the same edaphic and
climatic gradients.  And apparently they lack stability: apparently, that
is, they do not persist; nor, apparently, do they resist alteration (species
mix and match opportunistically); and apparently, assemblages do not
reconstitute themselves when the climate oscillates back to a former state -
they are not resilient (at least not in response to long term climate
perturbation cycles.  All that seems left to preserve is the beauty of the
biotic community.  That may satisfy Hargrove and Sagoff who ground
environmental ethics in natural aesthetics.  But the individualistic-dynamic
paradigm in deconstructive community ecology seems to undercut 2 out of 3 of
the land ethic's cardinal values."

Callicott moves on to a section titled "The land ethic dynamised".  In his
conclusion he answers his title question: "No".  He argues that we are still
part of nature with obligations to kin.  He states "Biotic communities may
be ever-changing assemblages of organisms of various species that happen to
be adapted to the same edaphic and climatic gradients.  But that makes them
even more analogous to human communities that the old static-holistic
representation.  Ever-changing, imprecisely bounded communities of human
individuals are robust enough to be identifiable entities and to generate
special obligations to fellow members and to such communites per se.  Why
should a communitarian environmental ethic such as Leopold's have to meet
any higher standard of community robustness?"

Here is his reformulation of the moral maxim - "dynamised".

"A thing is right when it tends to disturb the biotic community only at
normal spatial and temporal scales.  It is wrong when it tends otherwise".

I like it!  BUT - this takes us back to the original post by Alina
concerning "catasthrophic" change - and to the question I posed about how we
choose and define the scale at which we are "right" to operate - in both
space and time?  At least Callicott is trying to provide a

 I guess I'm a bit surprised, however, that
> 'balance' is still being seriously considered in academic circles. It was
> one of the ideas I learned to reject in my first ecology class lo
> these 30+
> years past.

I am always surprised at it.  I really think there is something inate in
humans where the status quo is always the best, and change is bad.  There is
some work on landscape appreciation by local communities - termed "Sense of
place".  If you grow up in a treeless environment, you generally value a
treeless environment.  If you grow up with certain landscape cues, you
generally want them retained.   But some languages are geared to
processes/relationships rather than entities - so maybe there is more to it
than that.

Sorry for the length.  Time for another coffee.

Chris Perley
"A thing is right when it tends to disturb the biotic community
only at normal spatial and temporal scales.
It is wrong when it tends otherwise." But don't ask me what "normal" is, OK!
Cos, it depends!