The balance between guardian and gardener, perfectionist and purist, is the fundamental moral crossroad in defining future human involvement with the environment. Despite the honor of acting as a guardian within the environment, the gardener approach to interaction is a more viable means to produce effective long and short term results by mitigating losses and producing greater net gains of environmentalism.

A few of the main argument topics for this thesis are:

• Although a commonly practiced environmental technique is to  “leave no trace”, the new definition of environmental consciousness necessitates humans to leave evidence of their involvement within nature. 
  
• Systems which generate net gains already exist in many parts of the country. 
  
• The definition of environmental stewardship is among the more ambiguous in the realm of environmentalism. 
  
• Whereas purity is normally the “goal” in society’s interactions with the environment, preservation of the current environment would not be pure; it would resemble the environment that has been created after centuries of human involvement. 
  
• Among the most common opposition to gardening the environment is the development of new infrastructure that is “required” in order for humans to interact positively with the environment. 
  
• In order for any plan to be successful, an end goal must be constructed that reflects the reasonable estimations of what is realistically possible. 
  
• Nature’s vitality is durable, however even the strongest buildings may decrease in strength after long periods of abuse. 
  

First, a picture of a local devastating fire, and below, the efforts of fire mitigation to avoid potential reoccurrences of such a disaster.

Below is a link to a local Colorado Springs,CO firefighter speaking about recent fire mitigation efforts.

http://gazette.com/colorado-springs-fire-driver-engineer-talks-about-mitigation-work/multimedia/video/3772339039001

Although eventually some systems may slowly lean back towards their original state, the involvement of humans for the past centuries has mostly been negative towards the environment. These actions necessitate positive involvement to equalize the relationship between environmental taxation and environmental rejuvenation. If people are willing to sacrifice exploiting the environment for gains and pursue net gains through smart management of systems, eventually the benefits of the environment will become even greater than envisioned today.