Attentional Ecology
Ecologists do not control nature. The pretense to control nature is what got us into most of our problems: wetlands drained, rivers dammed to destruction, apex predators hunted to extinction, all under the assumption that humans could reshape the landscape into something more efficient.
the greatest ecologists succeeded not by controlling but by studying the leverage points, the places where a small intervention cascades through an entire system.
Consider the ecologist’s approach to an invasive species. She does not declare the invader evil and demand its elimination. That demand is both impossible and creates harmful ripples that tear at the very thing she’s trying to protect. When humans have tried to eliminate invasive species through direct force, they can create ecological chaos worse than the invasion.
