Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes

by Dwight Baldwin, A. Dwight Baldwin, Dwight Baldwin

Beyond Preservation was first published in 1993. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Addressing current ecological issues, from the philosophical to the practical, Frederick Turner and William R. Jordan III here offer a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between the humans and nature. Challenging the idea that preserving nature is the only solution to environmental problems, they advocate going beyond preservation to restoration and actual construction of our landscape. Fifteen respondents reflect on the implications and consequences of Turner's and Jordan's bold proposals. "Ecological restoration is the most helpful and provocative contribution to our thinking about nature to come along in many years, and Beyond Preservation is without a doubt the best book on the subject to date". Michael Polan, Harper's Contributors include Gary W. Barrett, Ann Cline, David L. Gorchov, William Jordan III, G. Stanley Kane, Jack Temple Kirby, Dora G. Lodwick, Orie L. Loucks, Kimberly E. Medley, Constance Pierce, Ellen Price, Frederick Turner, John E. Wierwille, and Gene E. Willeke.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1993

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bill Cronon and Aldo Leopold sort of set the stage for ecological restoration philosophy in America. Cronon killed the wilderness myth and freed us to think of ourselves as an integral and healthy part of the biosphere (though most people didn't get the memo). Leopold got us started actually practicing restoration, and he gave our culture an environmental ethic that urged us to see the non-human world as part of our moral community. From what I've gathered, few thinkers (outside of the radical environmental movement, of course) have explored these ideas and tried to get them to sink in more than William R. Jordan and Frederick Turner. They are philosopher-poets of restoration ecology, and Beyond Preservation seems to be an attempt to get their works to become the focus of a larger conversation.

Jordan's The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature raised a couple of really good points (restoration as ritual, community is less warm fuzzy and more constant sacrifice and compromise) and then dissolved into pet theory chaos. Turner, who seems to be a much better thinker and writer, has a penchant for the grandiose that leads him to Manifest Destiny thinking - interesting, compelling ideas, but seemingly irrelevant or impractical. Both authors would have benefited greatly by consulting more environmental history (then again, I think everyone should consult environmental historians before they do anything, which might be impractical).

Jordan and Turner both suggest the possibility of "synthetic" ecosystems, new assemblages of species that function together like historical ecosystems. However, they never actually discuss what this could possibly mean - intuitive if you just dwell on how complex ecosystems are and think this is the sort of thing much more advanced knowledge might bring, but really dumb if you think about the huge diversity of such managed landscapes throughout human history. The ecological intricacies of the Aztec chinampas system, or the Chagga homegardens, or the chestnut forests of New England, or the "wild orchards" of the pre-contact Amazon rainforest, could all have been mentioned, among many others. Hell, Jordan and Turner could even have branched out and acknowledged permaculturists' efforts to create precisely the synthetic ecosystem they prescribe. In the absence of such tangible examples, their exhortations feel empty and the philosophy is just sort of bland.

The same applies to Jordan's ritual bit. In a post-Cronon world (sorry) it's clear that restoring ecosystems requires restoring the human place in those ecosystems as well. If pre-contact American landscapes were managed and even designed by humans, then historical ecosystem restorations must also restore human cultures that are capable of these beneficial relationships. Jordan never states his argument in quite this way (though in his very ponderous book, he covers a lot of other permutations); his point is essentially that ritual can offer us a way to develop a deep sense of community with the ecosystems we are restoring. The catch-22 inherent in here seems to have escaped Jordan, as did the fact that restoration efforts could easily pay for themselves monetarily if crop plants were integrated (something that seems like it should have been a key element of his platform, given his willingness to consider "synthetic ecosystems").

While money may be crass etc, the truth is that a subculture with deep ties to restoration-ritual as the core of a community-relationship with nature isn't going to emerge without a lot of people getting paid to spend their time on the work. What seems to be happening instead is that restoration is just one more outdoor recreation, tailored for the older, upper-middle class book reading birder set (as one of the contributors in this book dubs them, the "LL Bean/J Crew crowd" - one of the few cogent points made). The introduction of ritual into the mix is extremely unlikely to create a new wave in American culture, something that represents a deeply felt and understood land ethic. It is much more likely to play into the appropriative, kitchsy New Age spirituality that is already rife in the environmental movement. A decent environmental history of these subjects would have made it clear to Jordan that a real land ethic evolves over generations and can't just be thought into existence.

Okay, so what about Beyond Preservation? Jordan and Turner's ideas are flawed by blandness and in several other ways as well, but almost none of the discussion essays here level any legitimate or interesting criticisms. Instead, they seem to be echoing old, hopefully dead paradigms or completely, seemingly willfully misreading Jordan and Turner's points. Most attack them for drawing a line between preservation and restoration, when clearly both are necessary - something literally everyone involved with the book agrees on. Others accuse the authors of bigotry or something like intellectual laziness for advocating invasive species control in restoration projects - as though it were discriminatory to prevent buckthorn from wiping out plant biodiversity in your restoration just because it is a Eurasian plant. This, again, seems willfully obtuse. Worst of all, many authors simply repeat canards of the old paradigm, the pre-Cronon/Leopold paradigm whose replacement Jordan and Turner are trying to develop. They argue that restoration represents an attempt to dominate and control nature, or that restored areas are "tainted" and can never be as pure and good as remnant ecosystems. One author insists it's insensitive to advocate restoration when there are hungry people in Africa, missing almost every point completely.

Jordan and Turner respond to the essays at the end of book, and their chapters both seem completely bewildered and kind of frustrated. They are forced to reiterate basic elements of their ideas and bat aside the majority of the book's contents out of hand as irrelevant and poor readings of their ideas. To be honest, I don't know why I finished this book :s