Lucas Foglia's new book, Human Nature, explores the grey area between two narratives about the Earth he feels we have become overly focused upon: ecological disaster caused by humans and the discovery of a pristine ecology we must protect.
The area's isolation has allowed it to maintain a pristine ecology relatively untouched by human interaction, and the park hosts a biome ranging from alpine glaciers on the volcanoes' peaks to tropical forest on their flanks.
The ecology of the valley was indeed pristine, showing little evidence of human entry for a very long time, perhaps centuries.
Moreover, the natural ecology in our forests is nearly pristine, and biodiversity is secured despite, or rather because of, management for generations.
The ecology of Big Cypress is not, however, pristine.
Scientifically, our understanding of dryland ecology has moved on from seeing drylands as pristine environments existing happily until humans came along, to an understanding that humans and environments coexist; change is constant; and there is no one size fits all.
The Pantanal of Pocone: biota and ecology in the northern section of the world's largest pristine wetland.
"The original idea that ecology involved trips to faraway places that people would consider to be pristine reflected a very deep-seated belief that people and nature are separate, which has been dominant in ecology," said Steward Pickett, a senior scientist at the Institute of Ecosystems Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., who is conducting a major long-term study of the environment of Baltimore.
With the continuing deterioration of coral reefs worldwide, the few remaining pristine coral reef ecosystems provide a valuable opportunity to obtain baseline information on shark ecology useful for evaluating human impacts on exploited coral reef systems.
The notion of a virgin, pristine wilderness was understandable in the days of Captain Cook — but since the emergence of modern ecology and archaeology, it has been systematically dismantled by empirical evidence.
Heckenberger's discoveries have been documented in numerous scholarly journals; in 2003, he published a paper in Science titled "Amazonia 1492: Pristine Forest or Cultural Parkland?" He also recently published a book detailing his discoveries, called "The Ecology of Power".
