Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When setting limits on how many animals we take from the sea — be they fish, whales or horseshoe crabs — we must combine science with an ethic of restraint enforced by public outcry.
Conservation, restoration, and participatory management of ecosystems (i.e., from the inside-out) are not only hands-on forms of “engagement with nature,” but also reciprocally restorative practices: restorative for the people involved as well as for the ecosystems undergoing restorative actions.
This is the story, in large part, of my own life journey (which is, I earnestly hope, not quite over yet), from breeding endangered breeds of domestic farm livestock at its beginning to restoring a broad array of the most marvellous native creatures back into habitats they have lost at its end.
Given the documented superiority of stewardship on Indigenous-managed lands around the world, Housty and his colleagues argue that the place-based, values-based approach to conservation outlined in the paper should be emulated elsewhere. It’s time to “go back to what works,” he says, “because we’re going in the wrong direction.”
“As a nation, we have to ask ourselves this question,” says Dietz. “If we can’t protect these federal public lands that are some of the last of our country’s wild, ecologically intact and unroaded forests — that also provide habitat for the majority of our most vulnerable wildlife species — what can we protect?”
Efforts to protect the páramo overlap with Indigenous struggles for recognition and environmental justice. Local leaders know that the future of all these actions depend on one group in particular: young people.
We believe that a world with more protected areas could be a much better place. But that hinges on the types of protected areas that are promoted and the means by which they are sustained.
We argue for an alternative approach to conservation policy moving forward, one that seeks to move beyond both protected areas and economic valuation. Our proposal is less concerned with the targets specified by the current post-2020 framework, and more focused on the means and processes by which these are achieved.
If you’re already toting a canvas bag or your home is running on renewables, you need to do more. And if you’re brand new to the world of conservation, welcome to the fight.
A national service for the environment would see individuals taking a direct role in mitigating climate change, but there is also an emerging political project aiming to capitalise on public support for action.
Today some 500,000 bison have been restored in over 6,000 locations, including public lands, private ranches and Native American lands. As they return, researchers like me are gaining insights into their substantial ecological and conservation value.
I want you to imagine the streams that existed before global capitalism purged a continent of its dam-building, water-storing, wetland-creating engineers. I want you to imagine a landscape with its full complement of beavers.
