Brandom Keim reviews George Monbiot’s Feral, for Conservation Magazine:
“Monbiot’s rewilding encompasses these, but with differences. He emphasizes the richness of ecological interactions, the flow of energy and nutrients across time and form, and also—crucially—the essence of wildness itself. “Rewilding, to me, is about resisting the urge to control nature and allowing it to find its own way,” Monbiot writes. “The ecosystems that result are best described not as wilderness, but self-willed.”
Add a few species, pull down the fences, step back: this is not a fussy sort of conservation, then, bearing lists of favored species and blacklists of invasives, struggling to produce a historical snapshot. The past is inspiration, not blueprint. Neither is it a domineering conservation, managing nature to meet our demands. Services might result, but they’re not the point. The ethos is not of human primacy, but a muscular, can-do humility. Things will fix themselves if we let them.”
Looking? Found nature you have, eh? It needs not us.
