'Making Hay': a Conditional Defence on Ecocentric Grounds of Various Co

www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE ‘Making hay’: A conditional defence on ecocentric grounds of various co-created habitats This article begins with an argument and delimiting conditions for the place of certain traditional Joe Gray anthropogenic, or ‘co-created’, habitats within ecocentrically minded conservation. Next, four examples of such co-created habitats are explored: lowland meadows, heathland, coppiced About the author woodland and old orchards. The examples are drawn from the lowlands of Great Britain but Joe is a field naturalist and their discussion has geographically broader implications. Such habitats, it is argued, have a eco-activist based in St Albans, UK. place within an ecosphere that elsewhere evidences a major stepping back of humans; within this wider context, they can act as ‘reservoirs’ from which biodiversity can radiate again once Citation the time comes. In other words, they represent a means of widening the bottleneck through Gray J (2019) ‘Making hay’: which life is passing. They also offer not only a liberation from the destructive nature of A conditional defence on approaches to land management forged by industrialism but also a roadmap for a revival of ecocentric grounds of various forgotten skills in a future culture of simplicity and creativity. co-created habitats. The Ecological Citizen 3(Suppl A): 43–54. t was the right book at the right time. wildlife too is this: Ecocentrism calls for all When I read Keeping the Wild (Wuerthner land to be returned to a self-willed state, free Keywords Iet al., 2014) shortly after it was published, of major human intervention, except where Biodiversity; co-created I was nearing the completion of a personal humans have their homes or are managing habitats; conservation journey to ecocentrism.1 This anthology land to produce the most essential of goods, brought together new and republished such as food.3 As Batavia and Nelson (2016) writings that emphatically defended the have noted: protected-areas movement against the attacks of Anthropocene boosters.2 At the This position is characteristic of what same time, it provided a deliciously radical ethicists call “natural law theory,” in challenge to the things I was beginning which what is “natural” is right and to loathe in my life in a small city set in a ought to be. [This is] often used to justify a human-dominated landscape. I’m almost “hands-off” approach to management or certain that I will never read a book that nonintervention. influences me more strongly. In regard to Earth’s biodiversity crisis – I reject this outlook’s inherent human– the focus of this special issue – the message nature dualism, but in doing so I’m from that anthology and subsequent mindful of the potential trap that is set related pieces is a compelling one. For the when humans are rolled into the concept sake of wildlife, wild places, and ecological of ‘natural’ applied here. The poisoning of processes, we need to protect all remaining a river, say, would thus become ethically intact ecosystems (e.g. Watson et al., 2018), acceptable. On the one hand, then, not all and we must also scale back the negative human interventions in a landscape can be impacts of modern human society on considered good just because humans are the ecosphere (Crist, 2019), opening up part of nature. opportunities for ecological rebounding. On the other hand, it seems perverse from As coherent as this is, though, a dangerous an ecological perspective to automatically caricature of ecocentrism can emerge from judge human intervention in landscapes such a grand vision. The caricature, which, as necessarily bad, when examples abound if taken seriously, will harm not just the of non-human species, from African ecocentric worldview’s credibility but elephants to yellow meadow ants, shaping The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 43 A conditional defence of various co-created habitats www.ecologicalcitizen.net habitats and engineering ecosystems. For even in conservation areas, set aside for just as these ants – to use the example nature protection, humans take a lead of the smaller of those creatures – build in evolutionary processes, with limited mounds with altered soil properties that understanding of the results. provide biodiversity-enriching micro- niches (Boots and Clipson, 2013), there are Responding to this warning, I proposed, well-known and cherished examples of with Patrick Curry, the concept of human interventions that, in a similar way, conservation “exit strategies” (Gray can benefit biodiversity, at least on a local and Curry, 2015).4 In short, this involves or regional scale. drawing up intervention plans for protected Hay meadows provide one example of areas that still meet the short-term, often such an opportunity, hence the wordplay urgent, needs of wildlife (e.g. through in this piece’s title. Later, I will consider in placing bird boxes), while also including a Evolution and “ detail these and several other instances of longer-term vision to allow these needs to other unguided traditional anthropogenic habitats that I be met without human direction (by letting ecological dynamic feel can have a place within ecocentrically trees – using the same example – reach processes are minded conservation. As will be seen, maturity and senescence so that nesting ethically good in their changing economic circumstances mean holes abound). In areas where agents of that the human interest in these habitats major disturbance, such as wild free- own right, as well has shifted away from production, opening roaming bovines, have been extirpated, as being unrivalled up opportunities for an alternative focus. reintroductions of ecologically similar life in their creation Before this, I will offer a tentative set forms will be necessary for conservation of complexity and of conditions to delimit my support for exit strategies to be fully realized. The traditional anthropogenic habitats within empirical examples discussed later are diversity, and we the framework of ecocentrism. drawn from the context of Great Britain, should be neither In proposing these conditions, I must and so it is pertinent to mention that the quelling nor stress that I am not clearing an intellectual aurochs – the wild ancestor of domestic guiding them on a path towards treating the Earth as a global cattle – was extirpated from this island, garden (rambunctious or otherwise). First, owing to habitat loss and other factors, at grand scale. ” on a pragmatic note, ecospheric ecology some point between 2000 and 3500 years is far too complex for us to hope for ago (Wright, 2013). anything approaching universal success By raising here the ecological in determining positive, gardening-type importance of lost agents of disturbance, conservation interventions, even if the I have looped back to the subject vast financial resources necessary for such of traditional anthropogenic habitats: gardening were channelled in its direction. human interventions, as will be discussed Secondly, on a philosophical level, evolution in the empirical examples, are of a greater and other unguided ecological dynamic significance as biodiversity-enhancing processes are ethically good in their own disturbance processes in light of our right, as well as being unrivalled in their ancestors’ extirpation of certain other creation of complexity and diversity, and habitat shapers. we should be neither quelling nor guiding them on a grand scale. To do so would be to An ecocentric delimitation of behave not as a “plain citizen and member” traditional anthropogenic habitats of the “land-community,” in Aldo Leopold’s Immediately below, I present four indelible wording (Leopold, 1968: 204). conditions that delimit my support for On the subject of grand interference in traditional anthropogenic habitats within evolution specifically, Christof Schenck ecocentrically minded conservation. The (2015: 100) cautioned: first three refer to individual sites, while the last relates to such sites en bloc. I offer Human-directed conservation is changing this as an unofficial addendum to Keeping species in the long run. This means that the Wild and a counter to the dangerous 44 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various co-created habitats potential caricaturing of ecocentrism that Example habitats I mentioned earlier. Lowland meadows n Quality: Such sites should be more At temperate latitudes, grassland typically biodiverse than they might otherwise occurs in places that are too dry or too be – over a short or long time frame – if far above sea level for trees to dominate interventions ceased. The biodiversity (Rackham, 1994), or where there is considered in this qualitative reckoning sustained pressure from herbivores. Great should comprise native species and long- Britain is mostly low lying and relatively established non-invasive alien species. wet and its land thus tends to a forested “Opportunities for Species that are rare, especially on a global state. Non-anthropogenic fires play only a reducing human scale, should be given greater weighting in minimal role in the island’s ecology, while intervention in considerations. the challenges to tree establishment – the long term n Focus: The focus of the interventions and prospects for grassland – presented without a negative should be supporting biodiversity for by free-roaming grazers have lessened biodiversity’s sake. Material goods that are in recent millennia through the decline overall impact available and non-material

Load more