386 Ecological Restoration and Design
programmes, consumer-supported ecolabels and land trust collaborations, farm-
ing at the landscape level might remain limited to wealthy landowners and isolated
conservation initiatives. Ultimately, success must come through collaboration and
the articulation of a new vision for agriculture: consumers who support local pro-
ducers because they are protecting biodiversity; skilled ecologists who can point
the way toward restoration; local resource conservation districts, transportation
departments and other programmes that promote and practise restoration in rural
areas; financial mechanisms that ensure long-term protection of truly viable wild-
life corridors.
The challenge of making agriculture more harmonious with biodiversity, par-
ticularly in the face of other social and economic factors, conjures more questions
than ready answers. How wild is wild enough? Which species are benefiting and
which species are losing from our management decisions? At whose expense should
these efforts be made? What is the appropriate balance between agriculture and
native biodiversity? Can we make a large-scale shift away from industrial feedlots
and toward a more sustainable grass-fed meat economy, including migratory bison
populations in appropriate areas and a mosaic of domesticated livestock husbandry
in areas where the conditions of local ecosystems and access to markets are suita-
ble? Can a new conservation ethic muster the political, economic and cultural forces
necessary to accomplish a vision of farming with the wild? After decades of working
in relative isolation, conservationists, farmers and sustainable farming activists are
beginning to view agricultural areas as critical terrain in the effort to restore large and
healthfully functioning ecosystems throughout the continent. New dialogues, new
collaborations, new programmes indicate that such changes are indeed reshaping life
down on the farm. We can only hope that time is on the wild’s side.
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