The concepts of "wilderness" and "untouched nature" as they are currently used in aesthetics, ecology, conservation and politics, can be seen as a Western invention, dating back to at least the Romantic Era. This romantic notion of a portion of nature that is "virgin" and that must be protected, reflects a strongly anthropocentric view of ecosystems. Knowing this, FFF applies a logic of "deconstruction" to any discourse that is based on these notions. When people talk about "the wild", we must first question the ideological background of their discourse.

Millions of lives have been disturbed by conservationists who have applied simplistic versions of "the wild", in order to create protected areas and nature reserves. (Interesting reads in this regard are:  Brockington, D., Duffy, R. and Igoe, J. 2008.Nature Unbound. Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas . Earthscan, London, and Brockington, D. 2009. Celebrity and the Environment. Fame, Wealth and Power in Conservation. ZED books, London.) Notwithstanding these errors, a lot of analysis has gone into improving and de-ideologising conservation and "the wild".

FFF helps in framing current conservation options within these broader perspectives of politics and ideology. When such an analysis and contextualisation is made, conservation may cause less damage to those whose environments are transformed by it. 

We think there is a great future for those who want to  put things back to wild. But we urge these experiments to take place first there where there is enough capital and room to play - that is: in the wealthy West. Conservation in the West is mainly an imaginary venture: there is no longer any "untouched nature" in these regions, so any conservation attempt is a mere simulacrum. (Note: the same could be true for those ecosystems which we thought to represent real wilderness, such as the Amazon basin. But even these ecosystems, we now know, might largely be man-made ). 

In short, knowing that we are living in the "Anthropocene " - a globe the natural environment of which is entirely manipulated by man - we must be carefully aware of the fact that conservation can never be seen as an action undertaken in the name of some pristine form of nature.