Restoration requires thinking like the whole ecosystem, not just the target species

Evidence

“The unknowns pervading my work were as pervasive as shade in the forest,” Franz wrote. His plan to grow cedars on the stream banks was a good one, except that’s where the beavers also live. Who knew that they eat cedar for dessert? His cedar nurseries were gnawed to oblivion. So he planted them again, this time with a fence. The wildlife just snickered. Thinking like a forest, he then planted a thicket of willow, beavers’ favorite meal, along the creek, hoping to distract them from his cedars. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1072

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Thinking like a forest’ recapitulates Aldo Leopold’s ‘thinking like a mountain’; pairs with Kimmerer’s claim that members must know each other’s gifts to practice reciprocity (ch31). — connects to: Buffalo restoration is tied to restoring Native social and political structure — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 804; Ecological restoration requires first knowing the organisms by name as individuals. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 298; Ecological restoration must also repair humanity’s relationship with the world — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 709 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Restoration’s enduring product is the human-land relationship, not ecosystem state #expands (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1233
• Environmentalism needs a worldview shift to relationality, not just policy fixes. #expands (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1036