Human engagement in place-care: Back from the wilderness

Prominent framings of the wild and of wilderness adopt and perpetuate a human/(non-human) nature binary. ‘Fortress-conservation’ approaches continue to promote the separation of human from (non-human) nature. In Australia this duality is unsettled by Indigenous approaches that define the ‘wild’ and ‘wilderness’ as environmentally degraded, uncared for lands, while properly cared-for country is ‘quiet’ (Rose 1988). This reframing is used as the spur for an empirical case study exploring other potential barriers to human participation in place-care. Previous research suggests that place attachment and landscape preference may impede place-care behaviours because caring for place enacts changes which may be resisted by those attached and attracted to degraded places. The results of an empirical case study of place-care in the degraded New England region of Australia demonstrates that even in highly modified areas, in which endemic biodiversity has been decimated by replacement land uses, place attachment and landscape preference may support rather than hinder place-care. Conservation projects therefore need not avoid public participation for fear of a place attachment barrier. Nor should landscape preference be feared, for it too may be supportive. Approaches that support human engagement in place-care may provide an avenue towards a better cared-for, quieter country.