Robert J. Cabin’s Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawaii details various attempts to preserve and reconstruct various habitats in Hawaii that have been invaded and degraded by alien species. Cabin tells great stories of the challenges in the field of working toward this goal. He has a broad mind and is able to communicate with the very diverse group of people working to restore Hawaiian ecosystems.
He is well aware of irony of people trying to restore a natural environment that humans have destroyed. Is the successful end product of restoration natural in any sense? Cabin comes to no firm conclusion. Restoration, he mulls, may simply be a more exacting form of gardening.
Yet this sentence really encapsulates his ideas:
“Conservation is a kaleidoscope of interacting species, ecosystems, people, and cultures that is fueled by a rich mixture of values, ascetics, science, art, philosophy, ego, and shifting alliances among government agencies, private organizations, special interest groups, local communities, and charismatic individuals.”
No comments:
Post a Comment