ABSTRACT
In a passionate diatribe against excessive pesticide use on species invading North American ecosystems, Herman proposes that “sometimes the best management is no management.” This sentiment is also surprisingly common in Western Europe, perhaps as a backlash against decades of prescriptive conservation management. Although focus on virgin wilderness (and stupendous scenery) has been described as one of the true idiosyncrasies in the American character, the emotional pull of “self-willed land” has extended across the Atlantic, despite the fact that nearly all European ecosystems are certainly not wilderness in the untrammelled sense.1
