Eric Katz

In the 1920s and 1930s, an attempt was made to resurrect the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius), the extinct wild ancestor of contemporary domestic cattle. The back-bred species that was produced are called ‘Heck cattle’. I argue that the attempt to create the Heck cattle as a form of resurrected aurochs, and their subsequent use in rewilding projects (as in the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands) is a prime example of the continuous human project of the domination of nature. The consideration of domination as an extreme form of management serves as a critical lens on the policy of rewilding, similar to long-standing critiques of the policy of ecological restoration by this author. Rewilding projects do not re-create a ‘wild’ nature free from human intervention and activity. Rewilding is another form of the human management of natural processes to achieve anthropocentric goals. My examination of the Heck cattle in the rewilding process is intentionally provocative because there is a connection to Nazism. I will argue that policies of rewilding have historical antecedents (and parallels in philosophical meaning) to the Nazi plans for re-creating an authentic Aryan landscape in the lands of Eastern Europe. The case history of the Heck cattle projects illustrates the danger of pursuing radical forms of management of the natural world.

Consider the existence of six identical trees of the same species across a variety of environments. The first tree is in a wild and isolated landscape. The second is in a wilderness park. The third is in a heavily forested “tree plantation” owned by International Paper. The fourth is in the Ramble in Central Park. The fifth is in a suburban yard. The sixth is inside the six-story atrium of a Manhattan skyscraper. This paper begins with the intuition that the identical trees have different values because they exist in different environments and biological-social contexts. To understand the different evaluations of the trees we must think along a spectrum that incorporates both axiology and ontology. This thought experiment is useful in exploring arguments about both the management and the preservation of the natural world. The conclusion is that we must think along a spectrum of natural being and value to understand the dualism between humanity and nature and thereby avoid the domination of the natural environment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with NatureEric Katz (bio)Review of William R. Jordan III, The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. 256, Index.In The Sunflower Forest, William Jordan presents the process of ecological restoration as a new environmental paradigm for a "new kind of environmentalism" which will be "adequate to the task of ensuring the survival of the world's natural landscapes or of providing the basis for a healthy relationship with them" (p. 3). It is unfortunate that this overall vision for the process of ecological restoration (if not for the argument of the book) begins with an equivocation on the task of this new environmental paradigm—is the task of ecological restoration to ensure the survival of natural landscapes or is it merely to provide humans with a healthy relationship with these landscapes? Jordan, who for many years was in charge of publications and public outreach at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum (a leading research center in the science of ecological restoration), as well as the founding editor of the journal Ecological Restoration (originally: Restoration and Management Notes) and a founding member of the Society for Ecological Restoration, should be the perfect candidate to explain and to justify the processes and goals of ecological restoration. But the equivocation noted above is a warning that the book's main theses are poorly argued and expressed; Jordan's arguments [End Page 97] and presentation do not serve to advance the understanding of restoration as a fundamental and essential task of contemporary environmentalism. On the contrary, the book bolsters the arguments of critics, such as myself, who believe that ecological restoration is a misguided and inappropriate environmental policy.Ecological restoration is the process by which we humans attempt to bring an ecological system (such as a prairie, lake, river, wetland, mountain) back to some prior or original state before it was modified (usually negatively) by human impacts and interventions. Sometimes this means re-creating an entirely new ecosystem that no longer exists; in other cases it means the repair and rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems. Jordan does not, in this book, defend this practice directly. Although he mentions the main anthropocentric benefits that restored systems will maximize (e.g., "rebuilding the ecological capital of soil, air, water, biological diversity, and productivity that is the basis for all human economies" [p. 50] ), his chief interest lies in other directions. He is critical of traditional environmentalism because it has failed "to provide the basis for a satisfactory relationship between culture and nature as it is represented by classic landscapes" (p. 8). Ecological restoration, for Jordan, does provide the basis of this relationship: "Understood not merely as an emergency measure, to be deployed in response to dramatic or acute insults to ecosystems... but as an ongoing process of ecological compensation, restoration quite simply defines the terms of our relationship with natural landscapes, and the terms on which they will survive..." (p. 15).Ecological compensation seems to be the key idea here. Restoration provides a means for humans to inhabit a landscape in a respectful manner and overcome the so-called "dilemma of use" (p. 16)—for we must use the natural world as we simultaneously try to preserve and protect it. But for Jordan, the mere concept of "use" is too mild; the fact is that the human species is self-conscious of its "contributions to the violent process of creation"—the domestication of animals and the invention of agriculture are cited as two primary examples (p. 39). The self-consciousness of our participation in this necessary violence against the non-human natural world creates in us a deep sense of shame, and it is this shame, and our attempts to overcome it, that explains and justifies the process of ecological restoration, which is itself shameful. Thus, for Jordan: [End Page 98]Restoration is shameful because it involves killing and a measure of hegemony over the land; because the restoration effort is never fully successful and never complete; because it dramatizes not only our troubling dependence on the natural landscape, but—equally troubling—its...

De-extinction raises anew ontological and epistemological problems that have engaged environmental philosophers for decades. This essay re-examines these issues to provide a fuller understanding—and a critique—of de-extinction. One of my claims is that de-extinction as a philosophical problem merely recycles old issues and debates in the field (hence, “zombie” arguments). De-extinction is a project that arises out of the assertion of human domination of the natural world. Thus the acceptance of de-extinction as an environmental policy is an expression of a human-nature relationship that disvalues the natural world and subjugates nature completely to the interests of humanity.

Abstract:Should the process of ecological restoration be considered a type of moral reparation? In a recent issue of this journal, Ben Almassi (2017) has argued that ecological restoration should be understood as a moral repair, i.e., as "a model for rebuilding the moral conditions of relationships" (20). Ideas of restorative justice and moral repair are appropriate to address human injustice and wrongdoing. But these concepts are vacuous and lose their meaning when addressing the ethics of human activities regarding the natural world because of the essential character of the restoration process: the replacement or substitution of new entities for pre-existing entities in an attempt to reverse the irreversible. At best, the idea of moral reparations to nature is a weak metaphor with no practical efficacy; at worst, it totally misconceives the relationship between human activity and the natural environment in the process of ecological restoration and provides yet another dangerous and disingenuous justification of human arrogance and domination of the natural world. In the guise of the act of moral reparations, humans are instead attempting to assume the powers of God, to control the natural and human world. My previous criticisms of the ethics and meaning of ecological restorations—especially regarding the substitution of new individuals and the artifactual nature of restorations—can be used to undermine Almassi's thesis of moral repair as a goal of ecological restoration practice. In addition an analysis of the Book of Job in the Old Testament demonstrates that not even God—much less humans—can restore and replace what has been destroyed.

An old book by children’s author Dr. Seuss can be an inspiration to examine the ethical and ontological meaning of geoengineering. My argument is based on my critique of the process of ecological restoration as the creation of an artifactual reality. When humanity intentionally interferes with the processes and entities of nature, we change the ontological reality of the natural world. The world becomes a garden, or a zoo, an environment that must be continually managed to meet the goals of human purposes. Geoengineering is a more radical and comprehensive example of this process of planetary management. Thus, as with ecological restoration, geoengineering reinforces the paradigm of human mastery and domination of nature. To counteract this dream of domination, we must, as Dr. Seuss instructed us when we were children, learn to live in the natural world with humility.

Consider the significance of Anne Frank's horse chestnut tree. During her years of hiding in the secret annex, Anne thought of the tree as a symbol of freedom, happiness, and peace. As a stand-in for all of Nature, Anne saw the tree as that part of the universe that could not be destroyed by human evil. In this essay, I use Anne's tree as a starting point for a discussion of the domination of both nature and humanity. I connect the concept of domination to the policy of ecological restoration, to national and historical narratives of the connection to forest landscapes, and to the environmental policies of the Third Reich, the specific evil entity that confronted Anne Frank. Domination is also intertwined with the idea of the “paradox of progress,” viz., that human progress cannot be separated from acts and policies of domination.

Holistic accounts of the natural environment in environmental ethics fail to stress the distinction between the concepts of comnlunity and organism. Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” adds to this confusion, for it can be interpreted as promoting either a community or an organic model of nature. The difference between the two concepts lies in the degree of autonomy possessed by constituent entities within the holistic system. Members within a community are autonomous, while the parts of an organism are not. Different moral conclusions and environmental policies may result from this theoretical distinction. Treating natural entities as parts of an organism downgrades their intrinsic value as individual natural beings, since the only relevant moral criterion in an organic environmental ethic is the instrumental value that each natural entity has for the system. This ethic allows instances of the “substitution problem”-the replacement of one entity in an ecosystem by another provided that the overall functioning of the system is notharmed. However, since substitution violates environmentalist principles, for example, calling for respect for the integrity of the entities in a natural system, an organic environmental ethic must be rejected. A community model focuses on both the functional value and the autonomous intrinsie value of natural entities in a system. A community environmental ethic thus avoids the substitution problem

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 138-146 [Access article in PDF] Understanding Moral Limits in the Duality of Artifacts and NatureA Reply to Critics Eric Katz Ned Hettinger and Wayne Ouderkirk present some cogent criticisms of my ideas in environmental ethics, especially those ideas closely associated with my attacks on the process of ecological restoration. Both trace the source of my alleged problems to a pernicious dualism of nature and humanity that they perceive in my environmental philosophy. In this reply I accept their basic analysis of my work but deny that my overall position leads to the problems they suggest. I explicitly endorse the dualism of human artifacts and natural entities, and I argue that this dualism exists along a spectrum of "more-or-less" natural or artifactual. I claim that this dualism is not pernicious, but on the contrary, it is the first necessary step to understanding the moral limits of human action in the natural world.I begin with a consideration of the formal structure of these critical papers—there is a remarkable formal similarity between these two essays. Each author begins with a brief review of the positive aspects of my position or "theory" in environmental ethics; then there is an analysis of the problems within the position, and the problematic consequences or implications [End Page 138] of my position for environmental policy and environmentalism generally; then there is an attempt to begin a solution to the problems encountered "on my own terms" so to speak—each author points out that within my position there are ideas that could be used to solve the problems uncovered. Thus I am urged to develop specific strands of my own thought—a recommendation that I (logically) cannot avoid.Now on one level this formal structure is commonplace in polite scholarly discourse. Before offering criticisms of an author—especially when he is in the same room—we cite a few positive things about his work, and we end by noting that the position of the author is not completely hopeless. So perhaps the structural similarity between these two papers is not particularly noteworthy. But in this case I think it is. For the structure of the papers points out a distinguishing feature of my work that I recognize: My work is essentially negative and critical. I believe that I am raising problems and provocative questions. My criticisms apply to both traditional ethics (especially as it relates to environmental issues) and to the standard (policy-driven) versions of environmental ethics (especially the anthropocentric and individualistic variations). My criticisms also create questions for mainstream environmental policies—or I so hope, for this is my chief purpose in doing environmental philosophy. Since it is essentially critical, the most one can derive from my work in a positive vein are suggestions or hints for directions in which solutions may be found. I readily admit that I have not followed these paths to work out solutions—at least not yet. Thus in a formal or structural sense I am in substantial agreement with my critics: my essays raise a lot of problems; I do not offer fully worked out solutions; but the seeds of possible solutions may be present in the body of my work.But I have to make one distinction concerning the nature of "problems." Ouderkirk and Hettinger raise two distinct kinds of problems when they interpret my work. First, there are (possibly) internal contradictions in my ideas that make the theory itself incoherent in some mostly formal way. (For example, my argument for the importance of nonanthropocentric value might hide a latent anthropocentrism—Ouderkirk says at one point that I may be letting anthropocentrism in through the back door.) And second, there are (supposedly) problems in my position because my view has serious negative consequences for standard environmental policies. (For example, both Hettinger and Ouderkirk claim that my view of the distinction between artifacts and natural entities makes impossible all restoration [End Page 139] efforts in the natural world.) Does my position lead to unacceptable consequences for standard environmental...