Summary Of Rambunctious Garden By Emma Marris

Rambunctious Garden Critical Book Review Emma Marris opens Rambunctious Garden by dedicating the book to her mother for sending her to Audubon Day Camp. Though her statement is unexplained, Marris seems to reference how she began to care about nature. In his A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote about how direct interactions with nature can lead one to care about the land, to develop a land ethic (Leopold 223-225). Audubon Camp was how Marris developed her land ethic. Though this information may seem superficial, Marris writes her books with this formative experience in her background. She approaches protecting nature partially as a concerned citizen who cares about the land. Today, Marris is an environmental journalist who writes on ecology …show more content…
Once nature is no longer equated with untouched wilderness, Marris claims that humans can begin to “make more nature” (Marris 56). Before evaluating how Marris envisions this “more” nature, one can see that she makes the case against the pristine wilderness well. Marris seems to draw heavily from the work of environmental historian William Cronon, whom she cites, as he famously argued for an end to the wilderness myth in his “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” At first glance, Marris almost seems to parrot Cronon’s points verbatim as her chapter “The Yellowstone Model” moves through the same points as Cronon’s essay. However, Marris moves beyond Cronon’s analysis as she places a clearer focus on ecology’s focus on pristine wilderness than Cronon, and, of course, she explicitly extends the end of the myth to impact the field of restoration ecology. Nevertheless, one area from Cronon that Marris could have drawn upon was his discussion of the inherent classism of the wilderness myth. Cronon explains how “celebrating wilderness has been an activity mainly for well-to-do city folks” as only those who could afford “enormous estates in the Adirondacks” or “big-game hunting trips in the Rockies” enjoy nature (Cronon 15). Therefore, most of the population that does not have the resources for expensive nature excursions are barred from experiencing …show more content…
Marris does this by delving into some key aspects of the new age of ecological restoration: Pleistocene rewilding, assisted migration, exotic species, novel ecosystems, and designer ecosystems. Her chapters on all of these topics have the same strengths and weaknesses. While Marris presents both sides of the debates surrounding these subjects, she focuses heavily on the experiences of the side she most agrees with, naturally, as she makes an argument with this book and does not just summarize scientific material. Additionally, in response to detractors of these techniques, she primarily refers to two reasons why less conventional methods need to be utilized. First, Marris explains that these new ideas are already a given new reality. For example, novel ecosystems exist in places like Puerto Rico and the forestry industry already engages in assisted migration. In this way, she conflates what is happening with what ought to be happening. Second, she argues that the threat of climate change is a reason to embrace more radical techniques since the whole world heads for ecological ruin and something should be done to prevent this. Of course, Marris never uses this aggressive of language herself, but the undercurrent of climate change runs strongly through her work. Another constant through her