Well-intentioned habitat restoration can destroy other creatures’ homes

Evidence

Then something, perhaps a movement glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, perhaps a silent plea, made me stop. In the last stem left standing was a beautiful little nest, a cup woven sweetly of Juncus rushes and threadlike roots around a fork in the tree, a marvel of homemaking. I peered inside and there were three eggs the size of lima beans lying in a circlet of pine needles. What a treasure I had nearly destroyed in my zeal to “improve” the habitat. Nearby, the mother, a yellow warbler, flitted in the bushes, calling in alarm. I was so quick and single-minded about what I was doing that I forgot to look. I forgot to acknowledge that creating the home that I wanted for my children jeopardized the homemaking of other mothers whose intents were no different from mine. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 310

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradox of this whole chapter and a hinge idea for the polyad: good-mothering for one species is destruction for another — an unresolvable care collision that eco-justice pedagogy must sit with.
• XREF: connects to: Conserving wildness by exposing it to people destroys what it protects. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 352; Builders destroyed the very natural features their subdivisions were named for — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 51; Preservation can kill a place by removing its living use — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2919 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Nursery-grown native plants can masquerade as ecological restoration #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 530
• Preservation can kill a place by removing its living use #expands (0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 2919