Kangaroo Island, 2013.10.15
In 1980, French microbiologist René Dubos [1901-1982], discoverer in 1939 of antibiotics, then an imaginative and active ecologist who coined in 1978 the motto “Think globally, act locally“, wrote a very original and uncomparable book:
“Courtisons la terre” — “The Wooing of Earth“.
In it he argued, and demonstrated, that Homo sapiens was an animal species responsible for huge destructions on the planet, but also, in many cases, a magnificent landscaper who had actually improved, visually and ecologically, vast swaths of the planet. Where humans misunderstood and hated the land, there was destruction and ugliness. Where humans loved the land, and courted it, wooed it, nature had been improved and made more beautiful.
Travelling through the ancient landscapes of Italy and France, Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore was stricken by their beauty, and how the inhabitants of these lands had endowed nature with a superior touch. It was beauty in demonstration, but also ecology in action: for example, wooden groves, hedges and meadow strips along fields, everywhere, preserved wildlife corridors and areas for feeding and nesting.
But after the 2nd World War, large-scale and intensive mechanisation of agriculture, a devastating process imported from the USA, destroyed in many places these old landscapes where humans and wildlife shared life: huge lands dedicated to monoculture, with soils poisoned with pesticides and gorged with fertilisers, became the planetary norm.
During this agricultural transition, Dubos’ very Latin approach of ecology came to be perceived as old-fashioned, and fell out of favour for a more German and Anglo-Saxon one, which can be summarised as the cult of wilderness, in which human beings are considered as forming a foreign body on the planet, and incompatible with its wilderness, except as a guardian of a few preserved patches of it. The remainder (i.e. the largest part) of the planet being dedicated to human occupations, without much ado about nature-humans relationship, considered as more or less an irrelevant matter.
In other words, in the wilderness approach, ecosystems are considered without integration of the human parameter. 33 years later, it is becoming obvious that this “fundamentalist” approach of ecology has hit a wall.
Fundamentalist ecology has become immaterial because its fundamentals have vanished, irreversibly, in an evermore human-dominated world, where there’s only very little wilderness left.
On that kind of planet deeply transformed by human beings, there cannot be any pretense left that the term “ecosystem” is synonym for pristine and unspoilt nature… because this kind of nature exists no more, nowhere. Accordingly, the term “novel ecosystems” was coined a few years ago to describe ecosystems in which biodiversity has been significantly altered as the result of human intervention.
In this context, the artificial battlefield which was created in the USA and in Australia in the 60s, where an ideological line had to be drawn between “native good” and “non-native bad” (the exact opposite of the previous ideology, which had been reigning since the subjugation of the North American and Australian continents by the English settlers!), comes to light for what it is: a fad, and a cruel one (how many massacres committed in its name!), and an ugly one (how many landscapes ripped of their old trees), without serious scientific base (where does one draw the line, biologically? animal and plant species always have been in a flux on the planet); it is a waste of environmental resources, and a socially dangerous ideology…
In this rather bleak context of a philosophical vacuum in ecology, it is refreshing and stimulating to come across a scientific study by a Swiss and a German, two non-Latins who show that humans, despite their general destructiveness, can positively contribute to biodiversity conservation in an integrative approach, without being trapped within the wilderness vs human space antagonism, and the native vs non-native opposition:
Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene
by Christoph Kueffer and Christopher N Kaiser-Bunbury
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2013
In an interview, pollination biologist Dr. Kaiser-Bunbury states: “In our new conservation framework we argue that this strict distinction between historic and novel ecosystems should be reconsidered to aid conservation (…) Our framework combines strategies that were, until now, considered incompatible. Not only historic wildlands are worth protecting, but also designed cultural landscapes. Given the increased anthropogenic pressure on nature, we propose a multi-facetted approach to preserve biodiversity: to protect historic nature where ecologically viable; to actively create new, intensively managed ecosystems; to accept novel ecosystems as natural, wild landscapes; and to convert agricultural and other cultivated landscapes while generally maintaining land-use priorities.”
This study can be downloaded as a pdf document: novel_ecosystems_Kueffer_2013.
The lesson to be learned is that everyone with ownership of and responsibility for a patch of land should put aside the delusion of fighting a rear-guard, long lost battle for wilderness and nativeness, but rather contribute, even on the smallest scale, to a renewed, more beautiful, more balanced nature, where humans, plants and animals all live together. With knowledge and love. Wooing the earth.
Dr Gabriel Bittar, Kangaroo Island
See also
the part “Humans – an even worse danger to wildlife populations” in “Domestic cats – wildlife enemy number one or convenient scapegoats ? – Hartwell 2004”
“Garden plants do not have to be native to help most pollinating insects — Garbuzov and Ratnieks 2013”
“The educational and moralising role of urban animals – Benson 2013“