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The return of the wolf

"Preserve the ecosystem", but which one? Nature has no state of balance to defend: we are the ones who choose the one that suits us.

Objects to Ecocentrism

1. Ecocentrism judges an action by whether it preserves the integrity and stability of the biotic community.
2. Having come back from Italy in the early 1990s, the wolf has reconquered the French Alps, where it kills thousands of sheep every year. Some hail an ecosystem regaining its balance; others defend high pastures shaped by centuries of herding, themselves rich in flowers and insects. Where does "integrity" lie: in the wolfless mountain of the 1950s, the medieval one, the one before farming?
3. Nature never stops changing: ice ages, migrations, extinctions. It singles out no state as the right one, and even an ecocentrism attentive to processes rather than a fixed balance must choose which to favour. Choosing which to preserve means deciding by our own values, aesthetic, economic or emotional.

Therefore So the "health" of an ecosystem is not a good that nature carries within it, but a human judgment: behind ecocentrism may lurk an anthropocentrism unaware of itself.