Authenticity in Nature: Making Choices about the Naturalness of Ecosystems
"Dudley’s book is ... similar to Simon Levin’s Fragile Dominion (1999), E. O. Wilson’s The Future of Life (2002) or Carolyn Merchant’s Reinventing Eden (2003). An established environmental scientist, Dudley also uses his travels to bring colour to his writing, but his hypothesis comes from a thoughtful examination of various attempts to define ‘natural’ and ‘wild’ — by scientists, philosophers, managers, non-governmental organizations and policy-makers. Dudley demonstrates that there is neither coherence nor consensus as to what constitutes naturalness or wildness. He suggests that we focus instead on "authenticity".- Shahid Naeem, Professor of Ecology, Columbia University, USA, in Nature (1 September 2011).