Carving Up the Woods

Abstract

work is misguided. I n this paper we raise concerns about the direction of management in natural areas, particularly management strategies whose stated goal is the restoration of savanna communities in northeastern Illinois. Our principal example is The Nature Conservancy’s Palos/Sag Project in Cook County, Illinois, specifically the work occurring in Cap Sauer’s Holding, a dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. We begin with some thoughts about the relationship between nature and humans, for it is against this background that the value of restorations must ultimately be judged. Natural systems are always in a process of becoming. The essence of nature lies not in the organization we perceive, but in the creative act itself. The creativity of nature, however, is not preceded by a plan or idea comparable to a blueprint or design. Instead, in the words of the philosopher Eugene Hargrove (1989), nature creates her works indifferently. What we perceive as organization in nature--species, communities, ecosystems--arises through the interactions of organisms with one another and with their physical environment. These interactions have no overarching purpose, nor do they result in an inevitable pattern. Henry Gleason (1975) recognizes this in his summary of an idea that has influenced several generations of ecologists: "There is the birth of my theory on the plant association. All the glamour has disappeared. Far from being an organism, an association is merely the fortuitous juxtaposition of plants. What plants? Those that can live together under the physical environment and under their interlocking spheres of influence and which are already located within migrating distance." Yet it is these "fortuitous juxtapositions," endlessly varied, never duplicatable, these products of creative indifference, that make the natural world so fascinating. Restorations are inherently different from these products of natural creativity. In a restoration, some set of ideas about how nature should look or how nature should behave precedes and dictates management strategies. The result must inevitably reflect human ideas, perceptions and values. Restorations are forever subject to the limitations of our understanding and to the imposition of our values. We see this increasingly in the destruction of species deemed, for one reason or another, "unsuitable’ to a particular restoration. Subject inevitably to these constraints, all restoration plans and projects should be carefully evaluated against the alternative of letting natural processes continue, whatever their direction, without human interference. This is especially important when human conceptions are imposed on areas where the vast majority of species present are indigenous, and where ecosystem processes are intact. It is in such areas that we have the unique opportunity to watch the panorama of successional change unfold naturally.