What is ecological restoration?

The practice of ecological restoration is a dynamic one and, therefore, is open to various interpretations and definitions.

In its most ideal sense, ecological restoration is defined as:

A return to a former or historic (not a "natural" or "original") condition. (William Jordan III, 1995)

The practice of reestablishing the historic plant and animal communities of a given area or region and the renewal of the ecosystem and cultural functions necessary to maintain these communities now and into the future. (Dave Egan, 1996)

The return of an ecosystem to a close approximation of its condition prior to disturbance. (The U.S. Natural Resource Council, 1992, Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems.)

Many people have pointed out that this ideal may be impossible to attain because: 1) we know very little about historic ecosystems, 2) some key species may be lost, and 3) such efforts may be prohibitively expensive. They, therefore, shy away from using the term 'restoration' and settle on the more broadly applicable and attainable term, 'rehabilitation.' This term--known to the medical community--suggests a practice that aims to repair or replace "essential ecosystem structures and functions that have been altered or eliminated by disturbance." (G.D. Cooke and W.R. Jordan III, 1995).

The Society for Ecological Restoration has opted for the this inclusive approach in their definition of ecological restoration:

Ecological restoration is the process of renewing and maintaining ecosytem health. (SER Board of Directors, 1995)

Here are what various ecologists have said about ecological restoration (All quotes are from Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Restoration.. 1987. William R. Jordan III, Michael E. Gilpin, and John D. Aber, editors. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.)

"Like watch repair, restoration is a considerable intellectual challenge requiring that we understand not only the nature of the ecosystem itself, but also the nature of the damage and how to repair it. Hence my assertation...that land restoration is an acid test of our ecological understanding." Anthony D. Bradshaw, Dept. of Botany, University of Liverpool

"We've heard that the goal of restoration should be to recreate a natural community, or to recreate a self-sustaining community, or perhaps to perserve a community for posterity in essentially its natural state. This goal--this formulation of the goal--isn't itself a self-evident mandate, however. It's a choice based on values, and it is only one of many possible choices. We know that different people with different values would make different choices about the same site. And even if we adopt the goal of a natural community, it is important to recognize that this goal is extremely ambiguous and needs to be defined very carefully in order to be useful."
Jared Diamond, University of California-Los Angeles

"Ecosystem restoration is an activity at which everyone wins: when successful, we are rewarded by having returned a fragment of the earth's surface to its former state; when we fail, we learn an immense amount about how ecosystems work, provided we are able to determine why the failure occurred."
John J. Ewel, Dept. of Botany, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida


"Restoration ecology is just this process of assembly, carried out specifically to test ideas about how communities and ecosystems work."
John L. Harper, Unit of Plant Population Biology, University College of North Wales


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