Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Keeping the Wild: Against the domestication of earth edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler

by
October 2015, no. 375

Keeping the Wild: Against the domestication of earth edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler

Island Press, $35 pb, 287 pp, 9781610915588

Keeping the Wild: Against the domestication of earth edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler

by
October 2015, no. 375

In the United States, a battle is raging between two factions of environmental advocates and ecologists. On one side, those who associate themselves with the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold argue for the need to expand protected areas and to reduce the human presence. The other side has embraced the neo-liberal agenda and partnered with corporations such as Dow Chemical and Goldman Sachs. The ‘new conservation’ holds that the purpose of conservation is to benefit the most people possible. The Nature Conservancy, headed by a former investment banker and armed with a budget of up to one billion dollars, is the major force in this camp.

Some would say this is an old debate between intrinsic and utilitarian values for nature. Before the field of conservation biology existed, advocates for the environment could align themselves with Muir’s sacred view of nature or with Theodore Roosevelt’s view that nature should be protected as a human resource. The 1964 US Wilderness Act incorporated elements of both: wilderness was an area ‘untrammelled’ by humankind, but also a ‘resource’ for aesthetic, moral, and recreational enjoyment. Recently, the divisions have become starker, and a new idea presents a challenge to the philosophical foundations of conservation: the Anthropocene.

Cameron Muir reviews 'Keeping the Wild' edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler

Keeping the Wild: Against the domestication of earth

edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler

Island Press, $35 pb, 287 pp, 9781610915588

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.