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55 ChaPter tWo l For the Sake of the Wild Others Restoration Meanings for Nature Every time an ecosystem is restored, a particular view of nature blooms brighter. Hence, restorationists are central agents in the definition and redefinition of what is, and what counts as, nature. —Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration D efining what is and what counts as nature has been one of the main preoccupations of contemporary environmental ethicists. Depending on the philosopher one converses with, all biological life (Arne Naess), trees (Christopher Stone), sentient animals (Peter Singer), whole ecosystems (J. Baird Callicott and Holmes Rolston), and even larger bioregions (Peter Berg) count as part of nature and have value that makes certain moral claims on humans.1 Religious environmental ethicists too have argued in favor of recognizing a moral status for parts and/or wholes within the nonhuman creation. In this case, however, the natural world and its beings hold intrinsic worth that appeals to moral sensibilities based on nature’s relationship to the sacred. Creatures are endowed with the glory of God (Sallie McFague), for instance, or the whole creation is characterized by an integrity that originates and participates in God’s very being (Larry Rasmussen). But what about when we consider the value of nature where land has been damaged and then repaired by human practices? How does this change the assessment of nature’s moral standing? What understandings about nature bloom brighter, as Eric Higgs asserts, when land is restored? And why dig in our heels and restore degraded ecosystems in the first place? Why not just let nature take over where it may (or may not), and move onto greener (or browner) pastures? Chapter two 56 My reasons for explicitly considering the value and meaning of nature,despite its well-wornness as a philosophical and theological subject, are twofold: First, the notion of nature serves as the orienting concept for restorationists in particular and environmentalists more broadly. Second, and more significantly, experiences, beliefs, and activities in relation to nature take on new meanings in restoration light, for now these phenomena are interpreted from within the medium and activity of healing damaged land. As we saw in the previous chapter, for example, some types of restoration narratives about nature’s value border on the religious, despite restoration’s scientific basis. Further, in theological tropes, considerations of a wounded and healing earth help concretize well-worn notions such as the integrity and sacredness of creation. In this chapter I explore key ways in which dominant environmental ethical notions of nature’s value and creation’s sacredness are recontoured when damaged and healing land in particular is considered. In chapters 5 and 6 I broaden this exploration of the meaning of nature, proposing that restoration thought and practice can contribute significantly to the symbolic re-storying of our relationship to the natural world. Here, I begin by responding to the charge (seen before in the introduction) put forward by restoration’s first philosophers, Robert Elliot and Eric Katz, that restoration is actually a form of human domination over an otherwise wild and free nature, for the premise and argument of this book offer a different view of restoration; as I argue, restoration, contra Elliot and Katz, is a positive and constructive movement that can create meaningful and ethical views of nature and the human relation to nature. In further elaborating this point about restoration’s value, I consider the issue of deconstructionism and the debate between constructed and essentialist views of nature, proposing that restoration thought,based on the material hands-on activity of working with natural processes, offers a middle path between these extremes. With this middle view of nature in mind, I propose six dimensions in a meaning for nature based on both restoration and religious environmental understandings. In closing I argue that this complex restoration meaning of nature, including the element of its intrinsic-sacred value, can and should be drawn on as a strand in building a broader restoration narrative and ethic. for the sake of the Wild others—don’t restore! To a large extent, the philosophical questions that dominated the field of ecological restoration in the 1980s echoed those initiated a decade previously within the broader field of environmental ethics. Does nature have nonanthropocentric, intrinsic value, and if so, which natural features make moral claims on humans? Is it possible, and desirable, for human beings to replicate (as in restoration) or [3.129.39...

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