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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (27788)	1/24/2010 3:07:52 PM
From: Elmer Flugum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Conservation as a Matter of Managing People nytimes.com "Proponents of rewilding — a relatively new ecological idea that stresses the restoration of animal habitats and the importance of migration corridors — argue that healthy ecosystems need large carnivores. The people who’ve got to co-exist with these beasts tend to be less enthusiastic about this prospect. Mr. Tharu’s sanguine response to losing his eye made him a rare specimen indeed. Ms. Fraser’s book is a continent-hopping examination of the rewilding movement in action, a movement she calls “the great project of conservation in recent years” and “a Marshall Plan for the planet.” The three central requirements of rewilding, she notes, are sometimes called the three C’s: “cores, corridors and carnivores.” Cores are national parks and wildlife refuges that already exist. Corridors are links among these cores, Ms. Fraser writes, vital “because isolation and fragmentation of wilderness erode biodiversity.” And carnivores? “Because large carnivores regulate other predators and prey, exercising an influence on the ecosystem far out of proportion to their numbers, their protection and reintroduction is crucial.” One better-known example of a rewilding project is the so-called Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y. It proposes to provide corridors between those two areas in the United States and Canada, allowing wolves and other animals to travel freely between them. “Rewilding the World” examines Y2Y and many other projects, and it’s a thoughtful examination of rewilding and its discontents. The benefits of corridors to the natural world are fairly obvious. The problem is the human aspect. People are hard-wired to be fearful of large carnivores. What’s more, it’s hard for the poor to see the economic advantage of rewilding. Humans don’t like conservationists telling them what they can and can’t do with the land that surrounds them. As one conservationist counterintuitively points out to Ms. Fraser: “Conservation is about managing people. It’s not about managing wildlife.” “Rewilding the World” is an important book but it’s never an interesting one. You know what this meal will taste like by the fifth page, and no surprise courses await. Ms. Fraser visits project after project, racking up frequent-flier miles like a khaki-wearing extra from “Up in the Air.” Book excerpt: nytimes.com