Book description
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to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the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.
Marris is a whip-smart writer . . . already being compared to the
greatest environmental writers and thinkers of the past century, Rachel
Carson and Aldo Leopold. Emma Marris
grew up in Seattle, Washington. Since 2004, she has written for the
world s foremost science journal, Nature
, on ecology, conservation Biology and other topics. Her articles have
also appeared in Wired
, the Christian Science Monitor,
and Conservation
. She currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband and
daughter.
