Listening to the Birds: A Pragmatic Proposal for Forestry

Recently, natural scientists have begun to support an interpretive turn in ecology. Yet the ethical implications of interpreting nature have not been sufficiently addressed. In this essay, I use different interpretations of nature to make three distinct but related points relevant to forestry: (1) ecological narratives should be evaluated on the basis of ethical norms, (2) the choice of which interpretations of nature and ethical norms to use in environmental policy should be conducted by a process of public deliberation, and (3) scientific narratives should be denied a priori privilege over non-scientific interpretations of nature for policy purposes.