A Chronological Frame of Reference for Ecological Integrity and Natural Conditions

Abstract

The concepts of biological environmental health, and naturalness are increasingly relevant to the management of conservation lands. Biological integrity and environmental health, integrated via the concept of integrity, imply the recognition of natural conditions. A holistic and adaptable approach to ascertaining natural conditions recognizes geological and evolutionary processes and the role of humans in modifying such processes. For policy purposes, a reasonable frame of reference for natural conditions extends from the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period at approximately 800 A.D. to the advent of the industrial economy approximately 1000 years later. Data sources for ascertaining natural conditions are primarily ethnographic, historic, archeological, and paleontological. This pre-industrial frame of reference for natural conditions acknowledges a fundamental transformation in the relationship of humans to nature corresponding with proliferation of the human economy at the competitive exclusion of nonhuman species in the aggregate. Ecological integrity remains at its highest level in areas where natural conditions have been least compromised, but some level of ecological integrity exists everywhere and may be maintained accordingly. Ultimately, ecological integrity relies on macroeconomic prudence.