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After a discussion with the group, it became apparent that Stephen Meyer’s main point in The End of the Wild is that a change in focus is necessary; the wild has been lost, and we must therefore focus our efforts on protecting those parts of the natural world that are important for human lifestyles, such as ecosystem services.  There should be little human interaction in the affairs of nature, but sometimes these are necessary, suggesting a human selection towards or preference of some aspect of nature. 

Concerns with the reading are that Meyer was inconsistent; perhaps the most significant example of which is given by the way in which he describes the loss of wilderness crisis and in what ways it can be protected.  He provides many possible solutions, such as prohibitory regulation, refuges and preserves, sustainable communities, wildlands, and genetic engineering, but for each he describes why the approach is destined to fail, suggesting that the loss of the wild is inevitable.  However, later in the book he supports protecting the wild (through research, intensive management, and preserving the landscape), despite his stance that such an approach is futile. 

Another criticism of Meyer’s book is that citation was very difficult to follow and was quite scarce.  There were many places where he gave a fact, such as how many species are going extinct per year (page 4), or an idea, such as extinction debt, but does not offer a reference for it, so the fact cannot be legitimized, nor the idea clarified (does the debt include extinctions that would result from the extinction of a keystone species in the system?).  Also, some of his assumptions proved problematic to the group.  For example, Meyer’s arguments rest on the assumption that moving towards populations dominated by generalists is a loss of diversity (an idea that he never proved to be true).  It was also debated as to whether a loss of diversity should be viewed necessarily as a negative event, rather than a stabilizing adjustment to the anthropogenic-influenced changes in the environment.

The 2005 Balmford and Bond paper entitled “Trends in the State of Nature and Their Implications for Human Well-being” suggests that more research is needed to enhance our understanding of nature so that we can better protect it for moral reasons, as well as for the well-being of humans.  We touched on the idea that ecosystems can provide important services to humanity which, in a sense, can be quantified economically.  The concept of hot spots of diversity was briefly discussed, and led into a consideration of global biodiversity patterns.  It was generally agreed that preservation of biodiversity required protection of whole system, not individual species.  Biodiversity was not only viewed as pertaining to species, but was also discussed in terms of genes, populations, and phenotypes.