For all their interest in conserving nature as it was in previous times, conservation practitioners remain poorly informed about the past. We have been all too ignorant of the fields of palaeoecology, archaeology and historical ecology and what they can offer us to help achieve conservation outcomes. With this volume Lindsey Gillson sets out to remedy the situation, in particular by showing how long-term information on ecosystem variability and resilience can be used to help conserve ecological function and process.
The author's approach is to work through case studies, starting with elephant management in southern Africa and then with increasingly complex cases including rewilding, fire management, climate change adaptation and the provision of ecosystem services. Although rich in detail, these studies are not tightly linked and read like dense review papers rather than book chapters. They are packed with detail and references and ornamented with complicated figures that will be of interest only to those with great commitment to the particular case.
The case studies are framed within what the author refers to as ‘the conservation paradox’—the desire to conserve ecological systems that are continually changing. He concludes that the science of ecosystem management is a vital tool when informed by study of the relevant temporal dimensions and applied to conservation goals based on a realistic view of the change inherent in a system. This core argument is an updated version of those made by Steward Pickett and Buzz Holling in the 1990s, is imbued with the work of resilience thinkers, and follows in the line of a number of recent books in focusing on the much-ballyhooed arrival of the Anthropocene. The author likes to ask questions more than to answer them and loses the power of the central argument in a rich and up-to-date review of the literature. If the reader is new to the fields reviewed in this volume this is a useful place to obtain an introduction but those looking for more synthesis and practical suggestions for moving forward will be less satisfied.
