Extinction: A Radical History by Ashley Dawson

Author:Ashley Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: e9781682190418
Publisher: OR Books
Published: 2014-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Rewilding also promises to rework environmental space. Looking forward to the calamitous impact of climate change, biologists have proposed radical new doctrines with the ominous-sounding names assisted colonization and ecological replacement. As habitats are transformed by climate change, the static spatial boundaries of existing parks and refuges are likely to strand animal and plant species in increasingly unsuitable sites. The pace of change in this regard is shocking: some plants are literally running up mountains at the rate of tens of feet per year in order to cope with climate change-induced habitat change.92 Under such conditions, fears about the negative impact of invasive species must be tempered by the need to sustain entire ecosystems threated with annihilation.93 Assisted colonization responds to this mutation of habitats by relocating endangered species to new, ecologically appropriate reserves.94 Ecological substitution, conversely, involves introducing appropriate substitute species to restore an ecological role that has been lost when an original indigenous species goes extinct. In responding to the increasing instability of habitats likely to result in the all-too-near future from anthropogenic climate change, forms of rewilding such as assisted colonization and ecological substitution also challenge what Rob Nixon calls the eco-parochialism of conservation. All too often, Nixon suggests, conservation has hinged on hermetically sealed definitions of ecosystems, downplaying the permeable boundaries of bioregions and ignoring the spatial networks and exchanges that have always linked diverse natural spaces.95 By challenging such inherently exclusionary ideologies of environmental space, rewilding offers an important alternative to the potentially xenophobic spatial foundations of environmentalism.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.