ABSTRACT
According to Franciscus Vera’s chapter, we might believe that nature exists independent of culture and was at its most perfect before humanity interfered by the intervention of farming. For him there was an “original-natural” state which forms a baseline that we need to understand if we are correctly to direct our attempts to restore natural processes and achieve a rich biodiversity. For him, nature conservation is about process. It is not about fi ddling with little nature reserves to which one or two endangered species have retreated, or turning the clock back to one particular century. It is about understanding a time when human beings were without history, certainly without agriculture, in order to recover and release forgotten process. In the context of his own interests, it is about using large herbivores to create a landscape of groves, glades, and wood pasture which he believes was the true baseline for an “original-natural” Europe.
