Reconciliation Ecology, Rewilding and the San Joaquin River Restoration

Abstract:

Recent events, perhaps reaching their climactic convergence in the current drought, have exposed the fragility and imbalances of the socioecological system of the San Joaquin river. We see that our triumphant march of progress onfolds on a thin, and unstable crust. What lies below is lava. Our agricultural systems progress only while extracting an ever-untenable social and ecological debt. Our successive regimes of accumulation by appropriation have brought us to the brink of ecological exhaustion.

Have we reached our day of reckoning? This is not the first time this question has been asked of this particular system of irrigated agriculture? "Insurmountable" ecological barriers have been eyed down and promptly obliterated through magnificent features of physical and social engineering.

But lets us consider for a moment that we have at last reached some sort of edge, a threshold past which we experience a sudden socioecological regime shift.

Staring out over this edge can we begin to come to terms with the fallacies of our stories, our ignorance, our foolishness?

We need an acknowledgement of the needs of the agriculture systems, it’s connections and dependencies. What desperate measures are we willing to take in order to sustain this system? How much further can we go? How far is too far? Is there another way to produce and distribute food?

We then turn to the past. We imagine the ecosystem as it once was. The pelagic fish species that formed the biological connection between this river system, the delta, the Ocean, the Mountains. What would it mean to restore this diversity and repair these relationships? What would it take to cede control to the non-human forces that sustain these connections?

How do we reconcile restraint and the cessation of control with the human needs of the system? How do we rewild our river in such a way that our needs are met in a way that is more resilient and equitable?

We will need systems of agriculture and flood control that serve multiple functions. We will need to seek the synergies between objectives which had previously been viewed as mutually exclusive or in conflict. We will fail. We will need to take a hard look at our failures, comparing them to those of past eras, seeking out novel pathways out of our conjunctures.