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Environmental Values 25 (2016): 385–407.
© 2016 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096327116X14661540759115
Submitted 14 July 2014, accepted 23 October 2014
Future Directions for Conservation
JOZEF KEULARTZ
Faculty of Science
Radboud University Nijmegen
and
Applied Philosophy Group
Wageningen University and Research Centre
Hollandseweg 1, 6796 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands
Email: j.keulartz@science.ru.nl
ABSTRACT
The use of target baselines or reference states for conservation and restoration
has become increasingly problematic and impractical, due to rapid environmental
change, the paradigm shift in ecology from a static to a dynamic view
of nature, and growing awareness of the role of cultural traditions in the reconstruction
of baselines. The various responses to this crisis of baselines will
to a significant extent determine the future direction of nature conservation.
Although some hold onto traditional baselines and others try to refine or redefine
the reference concept, the debate is currently dominated by two widely
diverging reactions to the crisis: while the so-called ‘new environmentalists’or
‘new conservationists’ declare the whole baseline notion obsolete, replacing a
backward-looking approach with a forward-looking one, the ‘re-wilders’ push
the baseline back to a deeper, more distant past. This article provides a critical
assessment of the debate on these conversation options, with a special focus on
the differences between Old World and New World perspectives.
KEYWORDS
Conservation baselines, Old World and New World perspectives, novel ecosystems,
anthropocene, rewilding
INTRODUCTION
New World and Old World conservationists use different historical baselines
or reference states. Ecological restoration in the New World comes down to
returning habitats or ecosystems to the way they were when Europeans arrived
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to settle the area – for North America, the year 1492 is a holy baseline; for
Australia it is 1770, when Captain Cook first landed there. Ecological restoration
in the Old World, on the other hand, uses the pre-industrial (and not
the pre-settlement) landscape of the mid-nineteenth century as a baseline, and
aims to return ecosystems to their condition prior to large-scale modernisation
(Ladle et al., 2011).
These different baselines correspond to Simon Schama’s distinction in
Landscape and Memory between two kinds of Arcadia, the primitive and the
pastoral. ‘There have always been two kinds of Arcadia: shaggy and smooth;
dark and light; a place of bucolic leisure and a place of primitive panic’
(Schama, 1995: 517). Whereas primitive Arcadia is inhabited by people who
behave like wild animals, pastoral Arcadia is a place from which all dangerous
creatures (such as the snake and the lion) have been banned and the ideal animals
(such as the cow and the bee) behave like conscientious and industrious
citizens. Primitive Arcadians are ‘hunters and gatherers, warriors and sensualists’(ibid.:
527), who seek shelter against the elements in caves or simple huts;
pastoral Arcadians, on the other hand, are agriculturists, who have replaced
hunting and gathering with farming and herding, and who have exchanged a
nomadic life for a sedentary life.
Both New World and Old World approaches struggle with the problem
that target baselines have become increasingly troublesome and impractical
(Gillson et al., 2011). On the one hand, the New World idea of a pristine wilderness
devoid of human effects has been deflated, since it became apparent
that many wilderness areas had been profoundly affected by humans before
European conquest and settlement. On the other hand, it is clear by now that
preserving or recreating typical Old World cultural-historic landscapes is rendered
almost impossible by strong anthropogenic drivers, such as climate
change and habitat fragmentation.
There have been two widely diverging reactions to this crisis of conservation
baselines. One wing of the conservation community has abandoned history
altogether, shifting the focus from the past to the future, and from ‘restoration
ecology’ to ‘intervention ecology’, under the invocation of the emerging
Anthropocene, the ‘age of man’. The other wing has moved the baseline back
to an even deeper, more distant past, adopting what has been termed ‘rewilding’
or ‘resurrection ecology’.
Although rewilding projects on both sides of the Atlantic have much
in common, they also differ in some important respects. In the US the late
Pleistocene has been adopted as a baseline; in Europe it is the mid-Holocene
landscape that functions as the main benchmark. In the US, the emphasis is
on the reintroduction of large predators, because of their role in the top-down
regulation of ecosystems; in Europe, the emphasis is rather on large herbivores
and their role in a resource-driven bottom-up approach.
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After careful consideration of the various conservation options, this paper
will conclude with a plea for the peaceful co-existence of the different approaches,
seeing them as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
THE AMERICAN BASELINE CRISIS – THE WILDERNESS MYTH
UNMASKED
The contrast between primitive and pastoral Arcadia, between the hunter-gatherer
who is supposed to live a hand-to-mouth existence, never staying long
enough in any one place to leave lasting human imprints, and the agriculturalist
who completely transforms wildland environments, has had a profound impact
on theAmerican perception of wilderness as a pristine Nature devoid of human
effects. This conception, as developed by John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and
Aldo Leopold (among others), was at the heart of the creation of a system of
National Parks, first in the US and later in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
(Callicott and Nelson, 1998). In Europe, the idea of National Parks didn’t
take root – they were only established in some sparsely populated areas in
Switzerland and Scandinavia – but lost out to the idea of Nature Monuments,
which had less emphasis on wilderness (see the next section).
As Kat Anderson has noted in her book Tending the Wild, about native
American knowledge and the management of California’s natural resources,
early European and American explorers and settlers saw in California’s landscape
an ever-full horn of plenty that gave the native people no need to be
industrious. ‘In their eyes, native people were merely the reapers of this abundance,
not the sowers’ (Anderson, 2006: 241). But this was a totally false
impression, because without an Indian presence, these early explorers and settlers
would have encountered less spectacular wildflower displays, fewer large
trees, fewer park-like forests, vast grasslands, et cetera. Instead of a pristine,
virtually uninhabited wilderness, they had arrived in ‘a carefully tended “garden”
that was the result of thousands of years of selective harvesting, tilling,
burning, pruning, sowing, weeding, and transplanting’ (ibid.: 125-6).
Acase in point is one of the greatest icons ofAmerican wilderness,Yosemite
Valley, established in 1864 as the nation’s first natural park. This valley was
occupied by the Miwok Indians until 1853, when they were evicted from the
valley in the interest of gold miners. Soon after their expulsion it became clear
that their land management practices, especially those involving burning, had
an important ecological impact. The lack of burning led to the accumulation of
detritus and bush which in turn made for much more violent fires and ruined
the very scenic views that were meant to be preserved (Olwig, 1996).
The idea that man in wilderness areas should act not as gardeners but as
guardians is becoming more and more obsolete. The magnitude of anthropogenic
environmental stress from pollution, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity
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loss and, above all, climate change, makes it unavoidable to toss out the ‘handsoff’
philosophy that has guided stewardship for fifty years. Again, Yosemite is
a good case in point. As a result of climate change, the Tuolumne Meadows,
the largest subalpine meadow in the Sierra Nevada, are being invaded by
lodgepole pine. Preserving the meadows will require massive and long-term
intervention, for instance in the form of regular tree-cutting, or irrigation for
species intolerant of drier conditions (Solomon, 2014).
The cult of pristine wilderness, where indigenous people, under the influence
of late-nineteenth-century anthropologists, were considered as part of the
fauna – ‘half man, half beast’ – is still popular among many conservationists
and the general public, although it has long been exposed as a cultural
construction. But the idea that it is time to move beyond romantic notions of
pristine wilderness is increasingly gaining ground. As Emma Marris has argued
with great passion, to save nature in a post-wild world we should replace
such antiquated notions with ‘the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious
garden, tended by us’ (Marris, 2011: 2). Europeans will find this concept attractive
because they have always thought of ecological restoration very much
as gardening, or even more as farming.
THE EUROPEAN BASELINE CRISIS – HALF-NATURE UNDER
PRESSURE
European conservationists have always had much less seemingly pristine land
to work with than their American, Canadian and Australian colleagues.1
Here,
not the primitive Arcadia of hunters and gatherers was considered the ideal
baseline, but the pastoral Arcadia of farmers and herders. Marris has noted
with some amazement that ‘Europeans even run their dedicated nature reserves
a bit like farms’ (ibid.: 139). Not, however, like modern farms, where intensive
and industrial agriculture is predominant, but like traditional farms, where
small-scale extensive agricultural activities have produced picturesque landscapes
with a wide variety of plant and bird species.
An important role in the emergence and development of nature conservation
in Europe was played by German Romanticism. The Prussian geographer,
naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, an exponent of a Romantic
style within natural inquiry, introduced the notion of ‘Monuments of Nature’
in 1814 to refer to spectacular trees, rocks, waterfalls and other impressive
landscape elements. Nature Monuments are creations of nature that may at
the same time bear witness to cultural history, including agriculture, forestry
and landscape gardening. According to the most important nineteenth-century
forerunner of the Dutch conservation movement, Frederik van Eeden, Nature
1.	 There are, however, still vast areas of wilderness in the European Arctic, including
Spitsbergen, the North Pole, Fennoscandia and Northwestern Russia.
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Monuments are so attractive because they show a ‘peaceful fraternization’ between
nature and humanity (Van Eeden, 1862: 213).
After the Second World War, Victor Westhoff, a prominent scientific advisor
at the Dutch Society for the Protection of Nature Monuments, introduced
the term half-nature to characterise the typical pre-industrial agricultural landscapes
(Van der Windt, 1995: 77–93). The management of these landscapes
comes down to a continuation of traditional agricultural techniques, such as
hunting and fishing, reed and brushwood cultivation, tree planting and felling,
mowing and turf cutting, the setting up of duck decoys and the use of water
mills.
A good example of a pre-industrial agricultural landscape is the inland
drift-sand landscape of Northwestern Europe. Drift sands represent a typical
man-made landscape which emerged with the shift from nomadic farming
to sedentary farming, and the introduction in the twelfth century of the socalled
‘plaggen’ agricultural system. Forests were cut to create heath lands to
be grazed by sheep during the day. Their manure was collected in deep litter
stables (the ‘potstal’) where the animals spent the night. Heather sods (the
‘plaggen’) were cut and used as bedding material in the deep litter stables,
where it was soaked by the manure. The mixture of manure and sods was used
to fertilise the arable fields where rye, the main staple food in those days, was
grown. This mediaeval system was a vulnerable system: due to intensive sheep
grazing and sod cutting, much of the heather disappeared, and the bare soil
became exposed to wind erosion, which initiated sand drifting.
The territorial expansion of the inland drift-sand landscape reached its peak
in the nineteenth century. But with the introduction of artificial fertilisers and
cheap wool from Australia, this landscape was doomed gradually to disappear.
Because the use of sheep and sheep-manure was no longer required, extensive
heath lands became superfluous; they were reforested or prepared and used for
raising crops.
Currently, inland drifting sands are a typically Dutch phenomenon – more
than ninety per cent of Europe’s drifting sands, also called ‘Atlantic deserts’,
are found in the Netherlands. Whereas there were still some eighty thousand
hectares of drifting sands in the Netherlands around the middle of the nineteenth
century, today only fifteen hundred hectares (two per cent) remain. It
is increasingly becoming realised that these small remaining areas represent
a unique ecosystem, characterised by a special floral and faunal composition
adapted to extreme environmental conditions.
Like Yosemite’s subalpine meadows, the preservation of these drifting
sands is under increasing pressure. Climate change has a disruptive impact on
plant and animal life. Entire populations are being confronted with the alternatives
of either moving outside their historic ranges or going extinct. This makes
it difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee the survival of specific target-species
in specific places. Moreover, an increased nitrogen deposition, caused by car
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traffic and fertiliser application, leads to the acidification and eutrophication
of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and causes open sand areas to become
overgrown at an astonishing rate of three hectares per year, driving back some
plants and animals into ever smaller areas.
It is evident that historical baselines or reference states are always somewhat
arbitrary, because of the role that cultural traditions play in their reconstruction.
What is more, historical baselines are increasingly being dismissed as
irrelevant as strong anthropogenic drivers such as climate change, nitrogen
deposition and habitat fragmentation make it difficult, if not impossible, to
preserve or recreate historical ecosystems. There are two widely diverging reactions
to this situation: whereas one wing of the restoration movement has
abandoned history entirely, shifting the focus from the past to the future, another
wing has moved the baseline back to an even deeper, more distant past
(Alagona et al., 2012).2
FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE
A growing number of members of the conservation community feel that we
have entered an era characterised more and more by so-called ‘novel ecosystems’
(Hobbs et al., 2013). Novel or no-analog ecosystems may contain
new, non-historical combinations of species, which arise not only through the
impact of the deliberate and inadvertent introduction of species from other regions
as a consequence of globalisation and the increase of trade and tourism,
but also through land-cover change, pollution, and especially through rapid
climate change. Accepting the fact of novel ecosystems means that we must
be ready to incorporate many alien species into management plans, rather than
eradicating or drastically reducing them (Davis et al., 2011).
It is no coincidence that the concept of novel ecosystems has originated in
the New World, because for Europeans, novel ecosystems are anything but new.
To quote Emma Marris once again: ‘In places like Europe, I don’t think people
care as much about novel ecosystems, because they don’t have the same obsession
with pristineness and purity that the Americo-Australian-Pacific Island
group does’ (Leaf Litter Newsletter, 2011). In fact, the conceptual framework,
developed in the edited volume Novel Ecosystems, distinguishes between
three types of ecosystem: historical systems, which have remained within their
historical range of variability; hybrid systems, which are composed of new
species combinations and/or abiotic conditions, but can be returned to their
2.	 Yet another reaction involves a redefinition or refinement of the baseline concept, one which
attempts to factor in the dynamic nature of ecosystems. For instance, Balaguer et al. (2014)
have argued that, because it is impossible to identify a single historical reference for dynamic
ecosystems, we should develop a ‘multiple sequential reference model’, selected from an
historical series of shifting ecosystem configurations over the past centuries or millennia (see
also Davies and Bunting, 2010).
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historical states; and novel systems, which are irreversibly changed (Hallett
et al., 2013). Restoration ecologists mostly work in the area of hybrid ecosystems,
trying to restore them to historical ones. But more attention should
be paid to novel ecosystems. It is estimated (by Perring and Ellis, 2013) that
already about thirty-five per cent of the world’s ice-free land is currently covered
by novel ecosystems, and, in light of the ongoing human impact on the
environment, they are expected to become ubiquitous.
To recognise that some ecosystems are transformed irreversibly, and that
invasive species will in some cases persist, ‘may seem to some to be a defeatist
approach’ (Hobbs et al., 2006: 5). On the other hand, ‘valuing the past when
the past is not an accurate indicator for the future may fulfil a nostalgic need
but may ultimately be counterproductive in terms of achieving realistic and
lasting restoration outcomes’ (Harris et al., 2006: 175). In a world that is in
ever-greater flux, restoration to a historic standard is becoming more and more
anachronistic. Hence the suggestion that we should drop the term ‘restoration
ecology’ with its historical focus, and replace it with the term ‘intervention
ecology’. This substitution of intervention for restoration signifies a shift from
a ‘historic’ to a ‘futuristic’ approach to ecosystem management (Choi, 2004;
Choi et al., 2008). Rather than looking nostalgically to a past that is impossible
to restore, ‘we should intervene with an eye to the future and toward managing
for future change’ (Hobbs et al. 2011, 444), which basically comes down to
maintaining or repairing key ecosystem services.3
Novel ecosystems are considered to be a distinctive feature of the emerging
Anthropocene era, the age of human dominion of the Earth. Whereas many
conservationists bemoan this new world order as ecologically disastrous, an
increasing number ask us to celebrate ‘the age of man’; they not only promote
acceptance of, but also, and above all, admiration for human’s newly-acquired
power over the planet. According to these so-called ‘new environmentalists’
or ‘new conservationists’, the Anthropocene does not represent the failure of
environmentalism, but should rather be seen, more optimistically, as ‘the stage
on which a new, more positive and forward-looking environmentalism can be
built’ (Marris et al., 2011). Whether we accept it or not, having made the leap
to an entirely new level of planetary importance, ‘we are as gods and might as
well get good at it’ (Ellis, 2011) – in other words, we are now de facto planetary
managers, and we should take our responsibility seriously and manage
the Earth ‘with love and intelligence’ (Marris et al., 2011).
Anthropocene enthusiasts usually claim that nature is not as fragile as the
doom-and-gloom idiom of old-school conservationists suggests – destruction,
depredation and deterioration – but in fact, it is surprisingly resilient,
3.	 The growing popularity of the concept of ecosystem services within the conservation community
testifies to the emergence of enlightened (or prudential) anthropocentrism, where
nature is only allowed that degree of agency which is required to deliver the services which
are essential for human well-being (Keulartz, 2012).
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and often recovers from even severe perturbations (see Kareiva and Marvier,
2012: 965). More importantly, new environmentalists tend to shift the emphasis
from the protection of biodiversity conservation for its own sake towards
the enhancement of ‘those natural systems that benefit the widest number of
people, especially the poor’ (Kareiva et al., 2012). They argue for an approach
in which the centrality of humans is recognised, and in which the improvement
of human well-being through the management of the environment plays
a key role (see Kareiva and Marvier, 2012: 962-3). Rather than assemblages of
species, new environmentalists view nature as a bundle of ecosystem services.
Promoting and maintaining these services, should be conservation’s primary
goal, not preventing anthropogenic extinction. ‘Some human-caused extinctions
are inevitable, and we must be realistic about what we can and cannot
accomplish. We must be sure to first conserve ecosystems in places where biodiversity
delivers services to people in need’ (Kareiva and Marvier, 2007: 56).
Not surprisingly, therefore, new conservationists distinguish themselves
from old-school conservationists by their willingness to work with corporations.
‘A small number of global corporations have a huge impact on land
conversion, mining, energy extraction, and consumer choices. In essence,
corporations are the “keystone species” of global ecosystems’ (Kareiva and
Marvier, 2012: 967). Instead of scolding capitalism, conservationists should
partner with these corporations to achieve better results by dovetailing conservationist
and economic activities more effectively.
The new conservationists claim that novel ecosystems will inevitably
become ubiquitous, taking over the entire planet, and that consequently conservationists
who cling to historical fidelity will run out of work, except ‘for
only a few boutique restoration jobs’ (Marris et al., 2013: 347). Some are even
somewhat hesitant to use the concept of novel ecosystems because this would
imply the existence of its opposite, and reinforce the notion of some pristine
alternative to novel ecosystems. ‘If there is a ‘novel’ ecosystem, then there
must be an ‘old’ or ‘normal’ or ‘unchanged’ ecosystem out there somewhere,
right?’ (ibid.: 348).
It goes without saying that many conservationists are less than amused by
this sweeping claim. Some of the most prominent academics and activists from
North and South America, Europe, and Australia have recently joined forces
in a volume entitled Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth.
They strongly reject the recent focus on the age of man and on human exceptionalism
as the latest embodiment of human hubris (Hettinger, 2014: 179;
cf. Noss et al., 2013: 242). They also strongly reject the assumption that the
protection and development of ecosystem services and goods might be the best
alternative for the ‘nostalgic recompositions of the past’ (Choi, 2007: 352).4
The authors of Keeping the Wild offer a bold advocacy for free nature in all its
4.	 The attractiveness of the concept of ecosystem services is understandable in an era of
unprecedented global environmental change, but the concept and the accompanying
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diversity, which brings us to the other response to the baseline problem and the
growing incapacity to restore historical ecosystems.
Rewilding points in a direction that is diametrically opposed to the one
taken by the supporters of a futuristic, forward-looking approach to conservation.
Far from abandoning history altogether and dismissing the past as an
inaccurate indicator for the future, the rewilders try to reach back to a deeper
history. Whereas the preoccupation with novel, no-analog ecosystems is mainly
limited to North America and other parts of the New World, there clearly is
growing momentum for rewilding on both sides of the Atlantic.
RESURRECTION ECOLOGY: PLEISTOCENE REWILDING
The word ‘rewilding’ was coined by David Foreman (see Foreman, 2004), a
founder of the radical environmental group Earth First!, who also helped to
establish both the Wildlands Project (in 1991) and the Rewilding Institute (in
2003). The scientific foundations for the new discipline were laid by another
founder of the Wildlands Project (now the Wildlands Network), Michael Soulé,
and other biologists from the Society for Conservation Biology, of which he
was the first President. Together with Reed Noss, Michael Soulé formulated
the essence of rewilding in a landmark paper published in 1998, ‘Rewilding
and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation.’ In
it, Soulé and Noss present three features that characterise contemporary rewilding:
large, protected core reserves; connectivity between these reserves;
and the presence of top predators and other keystone species, i.e. those species
whose impact on their environment is disproportionately large relative
to their numerical abundance. In simplified shorthand, these characteristics
have usually been referred to as rewilding’s Three Cs: ‘Cores, Corridors, and
Carnivores’ (Soulé and Noss, 1998: 22).
Noss and Soulé put most emphasis on large predators because of their role
in the top-down regulation of ecosystems. These species occupy the highest
trophic level and create impacts that ripple downward along the trophic ladder.
They activate trophic cascades that are essential to the preservation of
biodiversity and the maintenance of ecosystem integrity (Terborgh et al., 1999;
Miller et al., 2001). Yet most of these species, which play such a crucial and
irreplaceable regulatory role, were lost after the dispersal of modern humans
from Africa and Eurasia. In North America alone, more than fifty species of
large mammals went extinct after the arrival of the Clovis people some thirteen
thousand years ago, including mammoths, mastodons, horses, giant ground
sloths, American camels, lions and the saber-tooth cats. This catastrophic extirpation
– sometimes referred to as the ‘Pleistocene overkill’ – has started an
commodification of the world’s ‘natural capital’ may well have some highly undesirable
consequences for both society and nature (Keulartz, 2013).
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ecological chain-reaction that led to further extinctions, and hence to severe
ecosystem simplification.
To correct this dramatic megafaunal loss, Josh Donlan and ten other biologists,
including Foreman and Soulé, have launched the idea of ‘Pleistocene
rewilding’ (Donlan et al., 2005, 2006). They blame most conservationists and
management agencies for suffering from a ‘post-Columbian bias’, typically
turning to 1492 for a restoration baseline. If, however, we accept as a benchmark
for restoration measures the arrival of people from the Clovis culture,
we could consider introducing surrogates for some of the North America
megafauna that went extinct after the arrival of these people. Paul Martin, the
originator of the overkill hypothesis, has suggested (2005) the term ‘resurrection
ecology’ for the Pleistocene rewilding program.5
Pleistocene rewilders recognise that human-induced environmental impacts
are now unprecedented and show alarming signs of worsening, with the
result that the megafauna that have already disappeared from Europe,Australia
and the Americas could eventually also disappear from Africa and Asia, the
only places where megafauna are still relatively intact. Given this risk of further
extinction, the rewilders propose using megafauna from these regions,
such as camels, cheetahs, elephants and lions, as proxies for extinct American
species. Consequently, Pleistocene rewilding is supposed to serve a dual purpose:
to restore some of the evolutionary and ecological potential that was lost
thirteen thousand years ago, and to help prevent the extinction of the world’s
remaining megafauna by creating new, and perhaps better protected, populations
in North America.
The Pleistocene rewilders mention not only ecological reasons but also
ethical reasons to justify their alternative conservation strategy. Pleistocene
rewilding is ethically justified because human beings are to some significant
degree implicated in the megafaunal extinctions in North America and
elsewhere, and thus bear a moral responsibility to vigorously redress these
catastrophic losses as far as possible (Donlan et al., 2006: 666). In addition
to the ethical justification for rewilding, Pleistocene rewilders also mention
emotional and aesthetic arguments. They point to evidence of our fascination
with charismatic megafauna, and claim that the establishment of a ‘Serengeti
of the New World’ will create significant economic opportunities for the ecotourism
industry. They further argue that wilderness without top carnivores
such as cougars, wolves or black bears can hardly be called ‘wild’. ‘Without
these components, nature seems somehow incomplete, truncated, overly tame.
5.	 Currently scientists are trying to bring back extinct animals with the help of synthetic biology.
For instance, leading synthetic biologist George Church is working, in partnership with
‘Revive and Restore’, on a ‘de-extinction’project of the Long Now Foundation, to bring back
to life the iconic extinct passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). See http://rare.longnow.
org/projects.html for more information.
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Human opportunities to attain humility are reduced’ (Soulé and Noss, 1998:
24).
Not unlike the new conservationists, Pleistocene rewilders see their approach
as an optimistic alternative to the prevailing doom-and-gloom message
of conservation biology, with its paralysing effect on the general public. It
seeks to transform conservation biology from a defensive and reactive discipline
into an offensive and proactive discipline, one which might galvanise
public support for nature conservation. ‘Moving away from managing extinction
and toward actively restoring ecological and evolutionary processes using
Pleistocene history as a guide provides an exciting new platform for conservation
biology’ (Donlan et al., 2006: 664-5).
As might be expected, Pleistocene rewilding was not only welcomed with
enthusiasm but also met with firm criticism. Many opponents challenge the
science behind this conservation strategy (Rubenstein et al., 2006). They reject
the possibility of restoring the evolutionary potential of North America’s
extinct megafauna with the help of African and Asian proxies, because of the
differences in genetic makeup. They also question the claim that the ecological
potential of North America’s ecosystems can, at the same time, be restored
by using proxy species, because these ecosystems are different from the
Pleistocene ecosystems, as well as from the ecosystems that are home to the
extant African and Asian megafauna. Taken together, these differences make
it probable that the proxies will act like invasive species that could devastate
populations of indigenous species and wreak havoc in native environments.6
Rubenstein and colleagues in fact fear that the translocation of exotic species
to non-native habitats could result in novel ecosystems with unique species
compositions and unknown functional features.
Apart from ecological concerns, critics also point to the high economic
costs of Pleistocene rewilding. The acquisition of land, the translocation and
monitoring of animals, and the fencing of large areas will require considerable
financial resources. It is feared that, given these high costs, in combination
with the comparatively high salaries of North American managers and scientists,
attention and funding will be diverted from more traditional conservation
strategies in Asia and Africa as well as in North America (Caro, 2007). It is
also feared that Pleistocene rewilding might negatively affect Africa’s ecotourism
‘if tourists and hunters, unwilling or unable to travel overseas, could view
wildlife and hunt mega-fauna in their own North American backyard’ (Toledo
et al., 2011: 566).
Possible resistance by rural communities is another area of concern. People
will respond with fear rather than fascination when they and their livestock
have to face catastrophic disease-transmission and are exposed to dangerous
6.	 Because the intended or accidental introduction of invasive species is one of the primary
drivers of biodiversity loss, ‘the rationale and methodology for Pleistocene re-wilding ultimately
represents unsound conservation practice’ (Huynh, 2010: 100).
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predators. An email that Josh Donlan received during the height of the media
attention for Pleistocene rewilding shows the deep-seated fear and hate of
these animals:
Turning loose wild animals in USA anywhere is moronic. You must not have
any children or if you do you must think its ok that they will be lion food. You
are f*$#ing moron if you release killers in our homeland. I hope the cattle
rancher guys shoot your ass or feed you to those lions if you release those killers
into our ecosystem. (In Donlan and Greene, 2010: 298)
Finally, the ethical justification for Pleistocene rewilding can also be questioned,
because the overkill hypothesis, which puts the blame for megafaunal
extinctions on humans and thus requires redress, is far from uncontroversial
(Wolverton, 2010). There are now no fewer than three alternative hypotheses,
known (tongue-in-cheek) as overchill, overill, and overgrill. The overchill
hypothesis states that climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene epoch
triggered the megafaunal collapse; the overill hypothesis supposes that the
megafauna were wiped out by some very virulent and very lethal ‘hyperdisease’;
the overgrill hypothesis claims that a comet impact or airburst over
North America did it.
REWILDING GOES DUTCH
On the other side of the Atlantic, rewilding has also gained considerable momentum.
Martin et al. (2008) mention two developments that have contributed
to the rising enthusiasm for rewilding: the fall of the Iron Curtain, which
revealed large natural areas in Central and Eastern Europe, and created opportunities
to turn them into government-protected areas; and the change in
Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, which has led to significant conservation
opportunities in depopulated rural areas.7
In Europe, rewilding has gone Dutch, to paraphrase a chapter title ofAndrew
Balmford’s 2012 book Wild Hope. Balmford refers to the Oostvaardersplassen,
a polder situated five metres below sea level and just half an hour from
Amsterdam. Reclaimed from the sea in 1968, this marshy area of six thousand
hectares was initially earmarked for industry, but soon evolved into a
perfect habitat for those plant and bird species that had become very rare in
the Netherlands, or had completely disappeared from the country. The site became
a nature reserve of international importance, where Frans Vera and his
colleagues initiated a management approach of rewilding with large ungulates.
The rapid adoption of the ideas behind the Oostvaardersplassen project by
7.	 Another development worth mentioning is the establishment of Natura 2000, which aims at
creating a coherent network to protect the most valuable nature areas in the EU. Natura 2000
is, without doubt, one of the most ambitious supranational initiatives for nature conservation
worldwide, and forms the cornerstone of the EU nature conservation policies.
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agencies from other European countries, especially the UK, gives an indication
of the influence that the work of Vera and colleagues has had. These ideas have
proved ‘immensely stimulating to conservation biology throughout northern
Europe’ (Smout, 2010: 112).
Although the rewilding projects on both sides of the Atlantic have much
in common, they apply different baselines. Whereas Donlan and colleagues
moved the baseline back to the pre-human past, Vera and colleagues in Europe
stay closer to human history and use a pre-agrarian baseline. Their benchmark
is not the late Pleistocene landscape (of around thirteen thousand years ago)
but the mid-Holocene landscape (of about seven thousand years ago).
During the last Ice Age, large parts of Europe were covered with a mosaic
of grasses, herbs and stunted shrubs. This steppe-tundra environment was
home to large cold-adapted herbivores such as reindeer, musk ox, mammoth,
woolly rhino, the saiga antelope, the steppe wisent, elk and horses. After the
last Ice Age, when temperatures began to rise steeply, some of these large animals
were forced to move elsewhere, while others went extinct:
Reindeer and musk ox migrated northeast, to the cooler tundra, while the saiga
antelope and the Przewalski horse moved eastwards to the steppes. Mammoths
and woolly rhinos shuffled on as well but they eventually died out, never finding
a climate as congenial as the steppe-tundra they left. (Vera and Buissink,
2007: 24)
The former steppe-tundra that these great mammals had occupied was colonised
by large ungulates who had survived the Ice Age in more southern parts
of Europe, like red deer, roe deer, elk, wild boar, wisent, aurochs and tarpan
(the successor of the Przewalski horse). Not all of the megafauna that had
taken refuge in Southern Europe, however, were able to migrate back to the
north. The largest animal species, such as the European elephant, the rhino and
the hippo were hunted to extinction by humans that had colonised the Iberian
and Italian peninsulas. The same fate also hit the mammoth and the woolly
rhino when these hunters began to migrate north (Goderie et al., 2013: 37).
Unlike the New World rewilders, however, European rewilders blame ‘pastoral’
farmers and herders, rather than ‘primitive’ hunters and gatherers, for
megafaunal extinctions. The transition from hunters and gatherers to farmers
and herdsmen, that started at some point between eight and seven thousand
years ago, did not allow wildlife populations to recover. Quite the contrary:
these populations were forced to retreat to ever more inhospitable places,
because they were seen as competitors with domestic livestock for the best
feeding grounds. As early farming cleared the natural vegetation and gradually
replaced it with agriculture, many of the large ungulates were decimated, or,
like the aurochs and the tarpan, went extinct altogether.
According to Vera, everywhere agriculture leads to the simplification and
depletion of natural ecosystems. Agriculture is selection: all over the globe,
no less than about forty species of the estimated total of approximately fifty
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thousand naturally-occurring species of birds and mammals have been domesticated
– that is 0.0008 per cent!
During the past thousands of years, an enormous area has been cleared using
the plough, the axe and fire for the small number of selected species, at the cost
of the space for the wild forms of the selected, domesticated species, as well as
of the species that were not selected and not domesticated. (Vera, 2000: 379)
By contrast with their North American counterparts, European rewilders place
less emphasis on the introduction of large carnivores and more on the introduction
of large herbivores. Apart from red deer, roe deer, wild boar and wisent,
Old World rewilders also use proxies for the aurochs (Bos primigeniuis) and
the tarpan (Equus przewalski gmelini). In the Oostvaarderplassen, Vera and
colleagues use Heck cattle, which originated in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt
by the brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck to breed domestic cattle back to
the aurochs that went extinct in 1627 (Lorimer and Driessen, 2013).8
They also
make use of the konik horse, the closest relative to its wild predecessor, the
tarpan, the last of which died in the Moscow Zoo in 1887.
In 1983, thirty-four Heck cattle and twenty konik horses were introduced
to the Oostvaardersplassen. In 2012, a helicopter count revealed about 350
Heck cattle and 1,150 konik horses, alongside 3,400 red deer which were introduced
in 1992. Because of these large numbers of free-roaming ungulates,
the German magazine Der Spiegel has called the Oostvaardersplassen ‘the
Serengeti behind the dikes.’
It is clear that Old World rewilders, with their preference for the restoration
of wild large herbivores and the introduction of naturalistic grazing, have
adopted a resource-driven bottom-up approach, in which the system is regulated
by energy moving upward from lower to higher trophic levels, i.e., from
plants to herbivores to carnivores. In a bottom-up approach, little ecological
importance is accorded to carnivores because they sit atop the food chain. As
a consequence of this bottom-up approach, the population size of large herbivores
in the Oostvaardersplassen and similar reserves is regulated by limited
food availability (in combination with harsh winter conditions). Consequently,
in these reserves the prevention of starvation is not allowed, whether by proactive
culling or by supplementary feeding. Only reactive culling, to prevent
the unnecessary and prolonged suffering of moribund animals, is allowed.9
This would undermine the internal mechanisms of population regulation that
herbivores developed in the millennia they have lived in an environment with
periodic food shortages. Red deer, for instance, are able to resort to a strategy of
what has been called ‘hidden hibernation’: their heart rate goes down to thirty
8.	 Because Heck cattle bear less resemblance to the aurochs than some other modern cattle
breeds do, a new back-breeding project, the Tauros Project, has formed in the Netherlands.
9.	 This proves to be an important obstacle for the adoption of naturalistic grazing methods in
the UK, where animal welfare legislation would at present prohibit Oostvaardersplassen-type
food limitation of cattle and horses (Hodder and Bullock, 2010: 227).
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beats per minute, and their energy use decreases to thirteen per cent of the
annual average. Another mechanism concerns the reduced fertility of female
animals due to severe weight loss. Red deer in the Oostvaardersplassen produce
up to three times fewer calves than in the Veluwe, one of the Netherlands’
largest nature reserves, where they are subject to proactive culling.
Old WorldNew World
B ottom-up: herbivoresTop-down: carnivores
E xtinction by farmingE xtinction by hunting
Mid-HoloceneLate Pleistocene
Pre-industrial
Pre-agrarian
Pre-settlement
Pre-human
Figure 1. Differences between Old World and New World perspectives on rewilding.
By stressing the key ecological importance of large herbivores for biodiversity
conservation, Vera and his colleagues have challenged the widely-held
belief that the lowlands of Central and Western Europe at the end of the
Pleistocene would have been covered by closed-canopy forest. According to
the prevailing succession theories, the original fauna of wild ungulates did not
have any influence on the primeval forest structure and dynamics, but were
supposed to follow the developments in the vegetation. Under natural conditions,
all known wild ungulates were supposed to live at very low densities,
such as 0.5 to 3 red deer per hundred hectares, or 4 to 5 roe deer per hundred
hectares (Vera, 2009: 300). As an alternative to this high-forest hypothesis,
Vera proposed his so-called ‘wood-pasture’ hypothesis. Based on ecological,
palynological, etymological and historical arguments, he claimed that
the mid-Holocene landscape of the European lowlands was an open park-like
landscape, in which the indigenous fauna of large herbivores played an essential
role in the cyclical turnover of vegetation types and the development
of a shifting mosaic of open grassland, scrub and woodland groves. Vera’s
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wood-pasture hypothesis, however, is at the heart of a heated debate between
ecologists and archaeologists, one which is far from settled.10
Aside from this scientific controversy, there is also a social conflict that
breaks out repeatedly. The main bone of contention are not ‘dangerous’ animals,
as in the case of Pleistocene rewilding, but ‘pitiful’ animals. The process
known as ‘de-domestication’, whereby the animals have to learn to fend for
themselves, is the most controversial because it entails minimising supplementary
feeding and veterinary assistance. Due to population growth and the
resulting increase in grazing intensity, there is always the risk of food shortage.
The condition of the animals declines in the winter and the early spring, which
results in growing numbers of starving animals. The national forest service
does intervene for the sake of animal welfare on the basis of the so-called
‘predator model.’ If an animal’s behaviour reveals its death is impending, it is
shot (reactive culling). Time and again this situation provokes fierce protests,
stretching from local people to the national parliament (Klaver et al., 2002;
Keulartz, 2009).
Public and political commotion escalated in the winter of 2004-5. In that
period, fourteen per cent of the konik horses died, twenty-two per cent of the
red deer, and thirty-four per cent of Heck cattle. The minister of Agriculture,
Nature and Fisheries asked two national councils for advice, the Council for
the Rural Area, and the Council for Animal Affairs.
The Council for the Rural Area advised the minister to accept periodical
reductions in animal welfare as a consequence of ecological management. This
kind of management should be optimised by improving the so-called predator
model and by expanding the area available for the animals. The Council also
advised the minister to improve public communication of this kind of ecological
management.
The Council for Animal Affairs fiercely opposed these conclusions. It was
of the opinion that the carrying capacity of the area had been substantially
exceeded and that management had failed. The Council’s chairman even compared
the situation to that of a concentration camp. According to the Council
these kind of ‘animal experiments’ should be abandoned. The total population
should be reduced to fifteen hundred animals by shooting animals in small numbers
all year round (proactive culling), and selling the meat for consumption. It
10.	 According to Vera, the defenders of the high-forest hypothesis have fallen victim to the socalled
‘shifting baseline syndrome’. Fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly introduced this term to
signal a disturbing trend in resource management, where each generation of scientists ‘accepts
as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of
their careers, and uses this baseline to evaluate changes… The result obviously is a gradual
accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species’ (Pauly, 1995). Because
the supporters of the high-forest hypothesis don’t acknowledge the size and significance of
large herbivores in the past, they consider pastures ‘to be artificial products, “stolen” from the
forest’ (see Vera, 2009: 29).
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would possibly be best, however, to remove the cattle and horses and only use
deer to graze the area. Also, contraception should be considered.
This discord is typical of the conflicts between animal ethicists and animal
protectionists on the one hand, and nature and wildlife conservationists on the
other. Animal protectionists generally prioritise the welfare and rights of individual
animals, and tend to downplay the importance of species preservation
and the prevention of biodiversity loss.11
Wildlife conservationists oppose this
individualistic approach by animal protectionists, and embrace a more holistic
view in which individual organisms are perceived as parts of a greater whole,
such as populations, species or ecosystems. The Oostvaardersplassen provides
a striking example of the often very virulent character of this conflict between
individualistic animal-centred ethicists and holistic species-centred ethicists.
DISCUSSION
It is clear from this overview that there are a growing number of uncertainties
with respect to conservation policies and practices on both sides of the
Atlantic. Should we go back to pre-human, pre-settlement, pre-agrarian or preindustrial
times? Or should we give up the notion of ‘restoration’ altogether
and instead focus on ‘intervention’ for the sake of securing the provision of
ecosystem goods and services? Or should we resort to the ‘resurrection’ of
extinct wildlife, through the use of proxies from Asia and Africa (as in the case
of rewilding in the US) or through back breeding (as in the case of rewilding
in Europe)? I think that there are many good reasons for the view that we do
not need to opt for only one of these different alternatives, but that we should
feel free to move in multiple directions, depending on the (a)biotic conditions
and the socio-cultural contexts of an area. I will briefly mention three of them.
First, there is no real contradiction or conflict between the top-down regulation
through large carnivores in the US and the bottom-up regulation through
large herbivores in Europe. ‘Reducing trophic interactions to a dichotomous rubric
of either top-down or bottom-up is counterproductive. It is clear that forces
flow in both directions simultaneously and interact while doing so’ (Miller et
al., 2001: 203). For example, it is evident that large carnivores play a role in
naturalistic grazing, not so much by regulating the numbers of large herbivores,
but rather by shaping their foraging patterns, which have a major impact
on an area’s vegetational development. After reintroduction of large predators
(and the ‘ecology of fear’), these patterns reflect their need to balance demands
for food and safety by a fear of predation. This usually has a beneficial impact
on the biodiversity of particular areas. Because of the complementary character
of both rewilding approaches, it is high time for a transatlantic dialogue,
11.	 They tend to endorse Dale Jamieson’s view that the notion of a species is an abstraction, and
that only individual creatures have welfares (Jamieson, 1995).
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in which experiences and insights with respect to conservation issues can be
exchanged (Drenthen and Keulartz, 2014).
Secondly, the positions of the rewilders and the new conservationists are
less antithetical than the heated debate between them seems to suggest. On
the one hand, as already indicated, some critiques fear that the attempts to
restore the evolutionary and ecological potential of North America’s extinct
megafauna, with the help of African and Asian proxies, will not result in the
‘historic’ wild ecosystems of the Pleistocene but ‘could instead result in “rewilded”
novel, or emerging, ecosystems with unique species compositions and
new or altered levels of ecosystem functioning’ (Rubenstein et al., 2006: 233).
On the other hand, novel systems are supposed to
… manifest key characteristics of wildness including ongoing change, uninhibited
growth and free-flowing evolutionary processes. Over time, novel
ecosystems may become the new normal, and as such become representative of
new values of wildness. (Light et al., 2013: 259)
Historic ecosystems which have lost their wildness, because they require ever
more intensive management, are now being replaced by novel ecosystems
as the new centres of undirected evolution and wildness (Marris et al., 2013:
348).12
Thirdly, it should be borne in mind that the whole discussion of the novelecosystem
concept is fraught with ambivalence. At one moment, some authors
claim that everything is a novel ecosystem, that conservationists should look
only forward and shake off the yoke of history entirely (see Marris et al., 2013);
at another moment, they claim to champion novel ecosystems ‘not above or
instead of more historical ecosystems but in addition to’ them (Marris, 2014).
This last claim seems to be in line with the editors of Novel Ecosystems, who
caution that the book is not a polemic against traditional conservation approaches
aiming to restore historical ecosystem structures and functions, and
that theirs is ‘not an argument that novelty per se is a good thing and should
be encouraged’ (Hobbs et al., 2013: 3). As we have seen previously, the conceptual
framework developed in the book distinguishes between historical
ecosystems, which have had no change, hybrid ecosystems, where the changes
are reversible, and novel ecosystems, where they are irreversible. We should
not abandon but continue and even accelerate our efforts to conserve historical
ecosystems and to restore hybrid ecosystems, even if this will require large
investments – or so the message goes.
In short, there are enough good reasons why we should not try to narrow
down our conservation options to just one approach, be it the restoration of
historic landscapes, the resurrection of vanished wildlife, or the intervention
in novel ecosystems. Instead, we should broaden our scope of options and aim
12.	 In an interview from 2014 with the American Society of Landscape Architects, Emma Marris
even proposes to use the notion of ‘the new wild’ for novel ecosystems (see ASLA, 2014).
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at a peaceful co-existence between the different approaches, seeing them as
complementary rather than as mutually exclusive.
Proponents of novel ecosystems should distance themselves more clearly
and unequivocally from any claim about the omnipresent and entirely beneficial
nature of these systems. Rewilders, on the other hand, should show more
pragmatism and recognise the de facto existence of novel ecosystems which
are impossible to return to some former state. Rewilders also have to ask themselves
whether the concept of rewilding reinforces the line between humans
and nature, rather than blurring it, and thereby represents a serious challenge
for traditional cultural-historical ecosystems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Philip Cafaro and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments that helped to improve the text.
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