Published in 2013
7 hours 15 minutes
Emma Marris grew up in Seattle, Washington and now lives in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she writes about the environment, evolution, energy, agriculture, food, language, books and film. Her goal in writing is to find and tell the stories that help us understand how to increase the flourishing of both humanity and the rest of the planet’s species –how to move towards a greener, wilder, happier and more equal future. Her magazine stories have appeared in Conservation, Wired, Grist, Slate, OnEarth and above all, Nature, where she worked as a staffer between 2004 and 2007.
What is this book about?
A paradigm shift is roiling the environmental world. For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity. Emma Marris argues convincingly that it is time to look forward and create the “rambunctious garden,” a hybrid of wild nature and human management.
In this optimistic book, listeners meet leading scientists and environmentalists and visit imaginary Edens, designer ecosystems, and Pleistocene parks. Marris describes innovative conservation approaches, including re-wilding, assisted migration, and the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems.
Rambunctious Garden is short on gloom and long on interesting theories and fascinating narratives, all of which bring home the idea that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by us.
