By John Wiens

Conservation has historically focused on protecting areas of essential wildness — those areas untrammeled by people.

But two recent publications have brought the issue of "wildness" and its place in the conservation agenda into sharp relief. Should we be attempting to introduce wildness back into nature? Or is it just a matter of domesticating nature more wisely?

Re-Wilding Nature

In a 2005 paper in Nature, Josh Donlan and his colleagues propose "re-wilding" parts of North America.

The paper’s authors advocated reintroducing proxies for the large animals — camels, elephants, cheetahs and lions — that once roamed North America but became extinct 13,000 years ago. The move, they argued, would restoring the ecological and evolutionary processes that existed during the Pleistocene.

Tim Flannery has suggested a similar re-wilding of Australia, restoring ecological communities to their pre-Aboriginal state of 50,000 (or more) years ago. Such re-wilding is ecological restoration at its most ambitious.

But the idea of "re-wilding" has generated considerable debate among conservationists.

The relevant point is that such proposals aspire to restore wildness to a previous state — not just by protecting threatened populations or mending degraded ecosystems, but by aiming at an endpoint that few believe possible (or even desirable). Proponents of re-wilding imagine a much wilder world than many conservationist believe possible.

Protecting Only What We Need

At the polar opposite, Nature Conservancy scientist Peter Kareiva and his colleagues suggest in a 2007 issue of Science that there are no places on Earth untainted by people — that "ours is a world of nature domesticated’ and further domestication of nature is inescapable. ("Domesticated nature" means nature exploited and controlled for human benefits.)

Sure, they argue, there is a spectrum of degrees of domestication. But the game of preservation of the wild is essentially over and wildness lost. Better, the Science authors say, for conservationists and ecologists to help humanity domesticate nature wisely, to preserve a balanced mix of ecosystem services.

Rather than protecting nature from people, Kareiva and his co-authors argue, conservation stewardship should manage the trade-offs among ecosystem services so that both people and nature thrive.

Designer Ecosystems?

It is the proposition of domesticated nature that I wish to challenge. Part of my concern is pragmatic: Once one admits to the domestication of nature, one embarks on a utilitarian pathway.

It’s fine to talk of people and nature thriving together. But if recent history is any guide, that doesn’t often happen. If it’s a choice between people and nature, nature rarely wins.

The emphasis on ecosystem services opens the door to "designer ecosystems" — ecosystems engineered to perform vital ecological functions and provide essential goods and services to people in the most efficient (read: cost-effective) manner.

Under an ecosystem services approach, the imperative is to conserve only those parts of nature that have utilitarian value. Biodiversity is diminished in such a world, leaving little room for wildness.

But nature has value in its own right — what environmental ethicists call an intrinsic value. When Thoreau observed that "in wildness is the preservation of the world" or Aldo Leopold spoke of watching the "fierce green fire" die in the eyes of a dying wolf, they understood something of the intrinsic value of nature.

And that’s not something we should easily give up.

A Balancing Act

It’s true that there are probably no places on Earth that are not tinged by human actions — global climate change is making sure of that. The Pleistocene megafaunas of North America and Australia are gone forever. No amount of re-wilding, even with proxies, can recreate the communities or ecosystems of those past millennia.

Better to focus on the wildness we still have.

And there is still much wildness in the world — whether in the Serengeti of Africa, the Great Basin shrubsteppe of North America or the Bialowieza Forest of Poland. Wilderness areas in the United States are crown jewels of wildness that should be cherished, and managed, in that context.

But wildness also persists in many of the places where people live and work — overgrown fields, hedgerows, urban parks, military training areas and the like. Instead of creating a dualism of wild nature versus domesticated nature, we should recognize that these are simply points along a continuum of "naturalness" and values.

"Where the wild things are" should be more than a product of Maurice Sendak’s fertile imagination. Yet we should also focus on "where the people are." As we seek that elusive balance between people and nature, we should be sure to leave some room for wildness.

John Wiens is a former lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy.

Nature picture credits (left to right): © Tom Middleton (Lion with cub in Africa’s Rift Valley, Kenya); © Mark Godrey/TNC (John Wiens)