As the human species floods Earth, changing the climate, driving species to extinction, exploiting and degrading the natural world in many ways to provide for the needs and wants of eight and soon ten billion people, questions rise like mosquitoes out of wet summer grass.

In this book, two scholars invited colleagues who have written extensively on human relationships to nature, to consider two questions: “What do we need to observe, experience, and value in nature and the wild as it changes under human influences in order to square our role within it, now and in the future? And how can we keep a love of nature and wild things alive in an increasingly human-defined age?”

They divided the essays submitted into three parts — Part I. Conservation’s Shifting Ground; Part II. Wilderness, Wildness, Wild: Legacies and Liabilities; Part III. Knowing Nature in the Human Age. The result is a thought-provoking read.

The 16 respondents to the editor’s questions range widely in their backgrounds and their thoughts about the questions posed. As a reviewer of this book, I should disclose that I am an “old school” wilderness advocate, an admirer of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and others who have argued that a measure of wild places must be protected as much as possible. I am a critic of those who argue that there is no such thing as “wild” nature anymore, that we are in the Anthropocene epoch, defined by human influence on nature everywhere, so since no place is untouched by human influence, the very idea of wilderness is passé.

I am ecocentrist rather than an anthropocentrist in my thinking about relations with nature, though I certainly consider humans part of most ecosystems. I am all for exploration of questions like those posed here. The world is unquestionably changing and is rapidly and severely strained by many human population-related influences, so reflection on where we are and should be in relation to nature is essential, which makes this an important book, not merely an abstract exercise.

The views of contributors on wildness, wilderness, and human relations with nature vary widely. At one end of the spectrum, journalist Emma Maris argues that while “autonomy” might be valuable to “individual selves” like the badger she has been observing in an urban neighborhood, for us humans she does not think “one even needs the concept of wilderness or wildness to create a robust environmental ethic.” Furthermore, she sees “Wilderness” as mostly a “colonial myth” and doesn’t use the word “except to debunk it.”

Eileen Crist, a scholar who has written extensively on wilderness, extinction, and human relations with nature, disagrees in her essay “Affirming the Wilderness Ideal.” She critiques what she calls “New Environmentalism,” writing that “Wilderness criticism, and new environmentalism in its wake, thus enshrine a founding principle of Western civilization: that humans are sole creators of meaning and that humans are sole stakeholders when it comes to the fate of the natural world. Upholding that age-old Western anthropocentrism, which ideologically bankrolled nature’s destruction over centuries and millennia, it is deeply ironic that wilderness critics repudiate wilderness as a putatively Western ideal.” She makes the case for rewilding, “a type of ecological restoration with the goal of returning natural areas to wild self-governed states.”

Other contributors fall between these positions, Richard Shine arguing that shifting baselines require careful thought about how we value nature, and what we value in it. Jonathan Losos sees the necessity of rethinking the concept “invasive species,” concluding that “Keeping a love of the wild alive will require us to love a different kind of ‘wild,’ one that has less fidelity to historical assemblages and older notions of ecological ‘integrity’ and that is more about healthy and sustainably functioning systems.” Hal Herzog discusses some of the moral dilemmas involved in keeping cats as pets. Peter Raven briefly recounts what big trouble we are in and how we got into this fix, asking whether we are capable of recognizing that acting in the general interest “is actually the way to serve our own interests too.” He recognizes that acting for the “eco” can be at the same time in the interest of the “anthropo” as well.

Keeping Wild Nature Alive

As to the second question, how to keep “a love of wild nature and wild things alive in an increasingly human-defined world,” the essayists also take diverse positions. Ben Minteer visits the work of renowned landscape photographer Ansel Adams, explaining how Adams taught generations “how to see and photograph natural scenes and the wilderness, and above all how to appreciate them.” He concludes that though we live in human-centered times, we still need his pictures “if only because they remind us that we haven’t grown ‘too big for nature,’ as some of the more exuberant boosters of the Anthropocene have asserted.”

Philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore, in her inimitable personal style, argues with Henry David Thoreau that, “No. Wildness is not enough for the preservation of the world.” In feral land, land formerly controlled by humans but now on its own, “is the preservation of the world.” Thomas Lowe Fleischner eloquently makes the case for the practice of natural history, defining it as “a practice of attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy.” It is, he says, “a practice of paying attention.”

Other contributors agree with Fleischner, but assert that for many, physically encountering nature to pay such attention to is simply impossible or very difficult. Few have access to wilderness but, Martha Crump writes, likely can find nature in backyards, gardens, vacant lots, and urban and suburban parks where they can learn to practice natural history. We who recognize the need to connect with nature should go all out to help others, especially children, discover wild and human-altered natural places so they can be appreciated and respected.

Others suggest that alternative ways of observing nature, such as videos and virtual nature experiences, can be useful, though Susan Clayton explores the limitations of this approach. For those who might scoff at the value of digital images of animals, Bill Adams makes a good case for the value of “digital avatars” that is well worth considering. Veteran wildlife scientist Joel Berger agrees, a bit reluctantly, that, “In bizarre ways, the digital world can help connect with nature.” An informative nature documentary, with the incredible photography done today, might motivate people, especially the young, to seek out their own adventures outside.

In his afterword Harry W. Greene, mentor to many scientists and naturalists, asks us not to be boxed in by our long-established ideas about how we can and should relate to the natural world because, whether we like it or not, change in that world is happening and our thinking needs to change with it if there is to be any hope of addressing questions like those posed in this book. In his “futuristic daydreams,” he sees woodland-savanna ecosystems meeting human needs as well as those of big predators and herbivores. Parks would keep wildlife populations healthy and “provide benchmarks for sparing versus sharing, and offer places for wilderness recreation and contemplation.” Indigenous people would play prominent roles in rewilding “shared and spared lands.”

“In other words,” Greene writes, “pulling together ecological, cultural, economic and political pieces of a wickedly difficult puzzle — conserving predators on working landscapes — well, maybe someday . . . In the meantime, inspired by the Indigenous perspectives of Salmón and Kimmerer, ‘attitudes with actions, gratitude with reciprocity’ feels to me like a worthy mantra for these perilous times.”

Several authors in this collection caution, as Susan Clayton writes, that environmentalists may hurt their cause “by disparaging an anthropocentric perspective on nature and insisting the only valid perspective is one that is not swayed by human interests or values.” Is this a sincere criticism, or a straw man? Many environmentalists I know, some of whom prefer the term “conservationist,” do not take the extreme position that “human interests or values” should not be part of the reason to be concerned about protecting the wild, be it the backyard or the “big wild.”

There is a clear element of what I would call enlightened self-interest in their advocacy for if the natural world upon which we depend collapses, we will all suffer the consequences. As many argue today, as much as half the world should be protected from human degradation, but this doesn’t mean half the world should be wilderness. Some of it should be, but much of it should be cared for far better than it has been.

Harry Greene likes the term of his colleague Daniel Janzen who says humans should be “wildland gardeners.” They would be motivated by far more than the profit-driven system that dominates today, inspired by their appreciation of the world gained from natural history. Yet perhaps “gardening” wilderness is not the right metaphor for it connotes so much calculated human involvement that the wild character of land and its other-than-human community is negated. Human restraint, which is the core of the wilderness idea, would likely be absent, humans in charge. I love gardening, but do we know enough to be able to garden all land? No way, as natural history teaches us! How about a dash of humility here?

Yet, while perhaps the disparate visions of the contributors to this book are  “futurist daydream[ers],” are they not worth considering along with the idea of just leaving some of nature alone? Reading the essays in The Heart of the Wild stimulated much thought for this reader and will hopefully do so for many others. It is impossible to do justice to all the contributors to this volume, but a taste of their thinking should whet appetites to sit down with this book and carefully consider what the authors have to say, and with “attitudes with actions, gratitude with reciprocity,” get to work in the interest of all beings, human and the myriad other fellow travelers on our finite Earth.