Xenonature
I've seen visions of the future and they are brightly green. They are xeno. I am what I call a xenowilder. It has to do with my vision of evocentrism that I am in the progress of developing. I value speciation, well-being, spontanity (uncertainty), autonomy (no control or completion), antifragility, resilience or robustness, biodiversity, biomass (densities) the flourishing of evolutionary distinct species, ecological creativity, spatial diversity (disorder) and the filling and creation of niches. So far this mainly means introducing more non-native species. I call that xenowilding (rewilding with non-native species) or ecological accelerationism (continueing introducing non-native species). It also means making back-up populations of evolutionary distinct species.
Ecological creativity is when a niche is filled by a different species. Weta filling the niche of mice is of high ecological creativity. So is tree kangaroos filling the niche of monkeys. House sparrows filling the niche of Cape sparrows is of low ecological creativity. The combination of red foxes, polecats and badgers is ecologically less creative as is the combination of armadillos, oppossums and red foxes. The first are all carnivores, the other two not. Red foxes can be found in the whole northern hemisphere while armadillos and oppossums are unique to North-America. These latter species are evolutionary distinct.
I am crazy about nature. At some point I started becoming obsessed with weeds, especially non-natives. I used to just tolerate them. But I have found that accepting non-natives is not enough. I do not want them gone, except for example rats and mice on small islands. This is metamorphosis. This is the next episode.
When worlds exchange, such as they did with the Suez-canal and the Panama-canal, or in the prehistoric past, species richness increases.
What I do not value, following Emma Marris, is naturalness, wilderness, ecological and genetic integrity and purity in general. I say: nature is wabi-sabi: it is imperfect, incomplete and temporary.
A lot I borrow from Nassim Taleb. The way we work with nature in the Netherlands seems to be a form of naive interventionism. We work with species managment (goal species) and nature goal types (this type of vegetation should grow here). I would like to abolish this view. When we abolish this, we gain a view full of chances. As I understand it, when you work with the past there are more chances of failure. Here in the Netherlands we also work with references of other areas. I would still like to work with references - but only as inspiration – of the future and the past, and all ecoregions (for the Netherlands this would be all areas with a temperate or subtropical climate - perhaps even montane climate - and of the Pleistocene as well as before that). As example, I do not want to recreate the Eocene, I want to move beyond the Eocene. In the future I see, we do regain the diversity of tree species. However what tree species they are does not concern me, as long as they prosper and not overpower the ecoystem. I might even prefer it to be species from the southern hemisphere. Evocentric values could be the argument.
Following Nassim Taleb I want stochastic tinkering or bricolage with nature. Within this framework we work opportunistic instead of teleological. In practice this means a bit of weeding but never full control over the ecosystems we work with. This nature keeps a state of spontanity and autonomy. We focus on the future instead of the past. We are Prometheusian instead of Epimethuesian. I think us conservationists idealise the past too much. I would prefer to work with visions of the future. Going back will more likely fail, while creating the future offers more opportunities. I call this nature that creates its own structure ubernature. It is odd or xenomorphic new nature. It is avant-garde: we do not know how it will end up like.
How do we work with references? In practice it means the following: let’s say we take a look at Asia. We could look at the mammal diversity there and increase the European mammal diversity with introductions. I think we should look at how well the individual species fit in the here and now. The past is not better, but we can use it as inspiration. I would also like to look at the southern hemisphere. This process of moving from the south to the north is exceptional. Out of the diversity there we could pick species that we wish to introduce into the north. We could also look at millions of years ago and use that as inspiration (here with trees):
Inheritors of Earth: “Jens-Christian Svenning, a tall, crazy-golf-playing scientist from Aarhus University in Denmark, worked out that as many as thirty-one genera of trees that were native to Europe between 5.3 and 2.6 million years ago have since become extinct, whereas thirty-five have survived in the region. If you had taken a grand tour of Europe 3 million years ago, you would have encountered double the diversity of native trees.
Europe lost its evergreens and frost-sensitive species. Now they are making a comeback. This seems to be laurophyllisation. Should this be celebrated?
Next: Let's take the hypothetical introduction of the yellow-tailed black cockatoo in Europe as an example. What arguments do we have? We could say it will eventually speciate and – in the future - we gain a species. We could say it fills a niche and that we value the filling of niches. Maybe the cockatoo creates a niche, and another species can come into the ecosystem. The cockatoo could be argued to be an evolutionary distinct species and hence we would like a back-up population (we need to research this); to make it more robust to disturbances (maybe even antifragile). We could argue it increases ecological creativity (we would need to research this). We could say it increases local biodiversity. We could say its well-being is good and the species flourishes. Perhaps the exchange of northern hemisphere with southern hemisphere increases local biodiversity and ecological creativity (we also need to research this).
To get back to the references, I think we could investigate the diversity of regions and compare them. We could compare the niches, we could compare ecological creativity. In my rude opinion: New Zealand is poor in bird diversity, however the ecological creativity is high. What should we do? Leave it alone? I must confess, I am a bit interested in the feral polecat in New Zealand, it already takes different prey species and could evolve in that way. Should we remove the polecat? I am unsure. What I am absolutely sure of is that I wish to xenowild Europe. The way I see it, Europe is poor in species. But again we should investigate this. If we wish to xenowild I think I would prefer Australian species in Europe as compared to European species in Australia. There is some asymmetry here.
I see a future in which genera have their own species in regions just as the case is with Populus, Betula, Quercus and so on is in the northern hemisphere (North-America and Europe have their own species of Betula).
I also wish to green the Middle-East (it used to be greener, see Rob Hengeveld), the Sahara (also greener) and the Outback (same). So, can we harnass the evolvability and antifragility of the biosphere? Can we terraform our planet (especially deserts) and other planets?