William Jordan (1994)
"Sunflower Forest: Eco Restoration a basis for a New Env. Paradigm"

RESTORATION AND GARDENING

Gardening is a healthy paradigm for the relation between humans and rest of nature

Handles nature with respect
W/o self-abnegation (self-denial) (or humility?)
Manipulates nature intelligently and creatively
- To manipulate nature is a healthy relation?
It benefits and nurtures plants and animals
Exercise wide range of human abilities
Leaves a distinctively human mark on landscape
A basis of communion with other species

Restoration is gardening of wild nature

Reconstruction and maintenance of wild nature

Ecosystem construction involves creative and conservative poles

Creative pole: traditional forms of agriculture, construct ecosystems and create/invent new ones
Conservative pole: eco-restoration which recreates historic landscapes

Restoration as a type of ecosystem construction (206)

This makes for a good target for Katz's restored ecosystems are artifacts criticism

JORDAN'S CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL PRESERVATIONIST ENVIRONMENTALISM (p. 208)

Jordan is criticizing traditional env. (that is preservationsim) as much as defending restoration

Katz and Elliott embrace preservationism

Difference conservation, preservation, and restoration as environmental philosophies
Preservation def.: Conserving natural systems by preventing human influence on them

Ideal is wilderness preservation

Restoration def: Conserving natural systems by active human influence of restoration

Ideal is Cap Sauers restoration?

One: Can't stop living ecosystems from changing

False view of preservation: It's goal is not to freeze frame nature, but let nature change on its own; preserve natural processes, not a status quo

Two: Can't prevent ES (change) from reflecting human influence

Preservationism ignores this influence instead of acknowledging and correcting for it

But is small degree of influence a problem that requires restoration?

Three: Inevitably all ecosystems will be so degraded by human influence that management/restoration is needed

Because everything is hitched to everything else, in the final analysis, all historic ecosystems will be virtually eliminated by human activity, as have the prairies and oak openings around Chicago
Thus they all will need to be restored (p. 207)
False empirical claim if this means a high degree of human influence (this is not inevitable)
Removing exotics from national parks like Yellowstone is a far cry from restoring/recreating) oak savannas like Packard is doing
If restoration includes light management, then no dispute between preservationists and restorationists, as preservation has no problem with minor human interventions like pulling out a few exotic weeds

Four: Puts a distance between humans and nature

Real nature is wilderness and wilderness is a place humans are visitors who don't remain

Five: Ideal of nature is wilderness untrammeled by man

A human/nature apartheid

Six: Offers a severely limited relation to nature;

Minimal impact ethics: take only pictures, leave only footprints
Largely non-participatory

People's role confined to visitor/observer of nature, rather than active element in community

Seven: Concern almost solely for the land and almost none for human participant

But human concerns are dominant everyplace else already

Eight: Healthy relation to nature not possible under this env. picture

For a healthy relation to nature must be participatory, ecological, and engage all human abilities
Is Jordan saying preservation can be no part of a healthy relation to nature, or that if taken as the only appropriate relationship, it is unhealthy?
Env. preservation is trouble only when it is taken as the sole model of humans relation; for it provides no model for future sustainable human society
Given human degradation/domination of planet today, preservation's focus on minimal impact on remaining wildland is an appropriate role for today

JORDANS ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF RESTORATION

Restoration involves:
One: Humans as direct participants in ecology (like a muskrat/beaver), a maker of marsh, not mere observer
- Humans influencing, shaping nature, a direct participant like a muskrat

Humans achieve full citizenship in biotic community, not just plain members/citizens or minor players
Full citizenship for humans: humans are the nervous system, in charge (this is Turner)

Two: A constructive process involving a positive attitude (not the essentially negative attitude of preservation env.)

Move from too many people loving nature to death (preservation)
To not enough people to keep up with restoration
Restoration will be the principle outdoor activity in next century

Three: A re-inhabitation of nature

Conversion of nature from env. into habitat for human beings
Totally anthropocentric (human-centered: Where is the role for nonhumans here?

Four: A re-inhabitation without having to repudiate achievements of civilization or abandon its accouterments (furnishings/accessories) of civilization

No return to primitivism needed to re-inhabit nature
Easy to imagine reentering nature by shredding "what we have learned on our way to the moon" (Loren Eisley), that is, culture
Leaving behind most of what makes us humans

There is something right about this

No consumption reduction needed? Is Jordan suggestion that no reduction is needed in our wasteful, consumptive lifestyles?
No change from environmentally-harmful to environmentally-friendly technology needed?
Shouldn't Jordan acknowledge that we need to abandon our env. unfriendly technologies (e.g., fossil fuel transportation/agriculture), and move to a sustainable civilization

JORDAN'S ARGUES THAT A HEALTHY HUMAN RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE MUST BE AN ECOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP

Must involve a working relation with nature
Must involve an economic transaction with genuine exchange of goods/services

Why must it be economic? Best relations economic?
Reply: Maybe our relation with nature must be economic; we need it to survive
Rather than trad env. ideals, such as picture taking and hiking need hunting and or berry/mushroom picking

Must be a positive, reciprocal, mutually beneficial relation; taking and giving back
- How do we give back? (E.g., Spraying our waste water back on fields?)

NED'S CRITIQUE OF RESTORATION AS HEALTH PARADIGM FOR HUMAN NATURE RELATION

Restoration involves undoing a harm that you've done and this is not a positive, healthy relationship, for it presupposed harming nature first
Restoration is not mutually beneficial

Compensating for harm done is not to bestow a benefit

To extirpate wolves/savannahs and then restore them is not to benefit wolves/savannahs

To clear cut and replant is not a mutually beneficial relation

A paradigmatic humans relationship to nature should involve participation in nature that does not presuppose degrading nature to begin with (as does restoration relation)

A positive human relation to nature might involve:

Let some ecosystem types of which we have historical samples preserved continue to evolve on their own

This is one thing Jordan misses

Restore naturally degraded ecosystems/species

Preserve classic ecosystems/species going naturally extinct
Return of dinosaur (museum piece)

Enhances biodiversity at expense of naturalness (independence of humanization)

Allow idea that humans can improve on nature

Create new ecosystems/species

Onco-mouse, geeps!
Dogs/tangelos
Gardens, farmlands

But this is not restoration but invention, gardening
Increases biodiversity but at a loss of naturalness

Jordan favors inventing novel ecosystems, perhaps with GE species, as this will increase rather than decrease biodiversity

ONE KEY DIFFERENCE RESTORATIONISTS/PRESERVATIONIST

Preservationists worry about any human influence on ecosystems, restorationists only worry about human influence that damages ecosystems

Preservationists might argue that a certain amount human influence is better left alone than using a much larger degree of human influence to remove it, because preservationists are concerned with minimizing human influence itself

Jordan and other restorationists are worried about the effect of human influence and getting rid of that effect
For Jordan, it doesn't matter how much ongoing human influence you need, as long as the product resembles historic ecosystems you want to "restore"