on being "reluctant gardeners"

Today's New York Times opinion piece, Rethinking the Wild: The Wilderness Act is Facing a Midlife Crisis, is an interesting example of "changing our story." The argument here (that, given the ravages of climate change, we now "need to accept our role as reluctant gardeners," rather than keep "hands off" the country's wilderness) also makes a fascinating contrast to the commentary offered  @ ASLE by Wes Jackson last summer: that agriculture was "the bomb, the big mistake" in human history, that "the plowshare has destroyed more than the sword," and that we must now "bring agriculature into phase with nature's economies." So I'm thinking that advocates for intervention in wilderness area should take care with that (very fraught, however reluctant) metaphor of "gardening"....