Comments on: Ecological restoration is imperative http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/conservation/ecological-restoration-is-imperative/ EcoTone focuses on ecological science in the news and its use in policy, conservation and education. Mon, 20 May 2013 03:06:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Andrew Park http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/conservation/ecological-restoration-is-imperative/comment-page-1/#comment-355 Andrew Park Fri, 09 Mar 2007 23:50:56 +0000 http://www.esa.org/esablog/?p=40#comment-355 I believe that complete ecological restoration (meaning a full spectrum of ecosystem services and complete, pre-degradation biota) is probably impossible in most cases. Notice I say “most”. Guanacaste National Park in Costa Rica may be an example of near-complete restoration.

On the other hand, our attempts to rationally “manage” ecosystems have generally failed. Look at marine ecosystems, the degradation or deletion of old growth forests, and a host of other examples.

So what is possible? My belief is that it is most definitely possible to restore selected ecosystem services and attributes. This requires us to carefully articulate which attributes we are going to restore. For example, we might wish to restore riparian zones as nutrient filters. This is possible to do and has been done. By default, the establishment of nutrient buffers would also facilitate the restoration of non-target attributes of the ecosystem as well.

Acknowledging that we have to choose which aspects of an ecosystem to restore (1) gets us away of the guilt inducing belief that we have to “restore everything”, and (2) probably represents a better way to use the very limited funds that are available for restoration.

]]> By: Warren W. Aney http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/conservation/ecological-restoration-is-imperative/comment-page-1/#comment-321 Warren W. Aney Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:09:11 +0000 http://www.esa.org/esablog/?p=40#comment-321 Both George Gann and Cliff Duke are saying the same thing, that ecological management is important. Cliff chooses to dance on the head of a pin when he says “restoration” can never occur because the system is constantly changing, with or without human interference, and because of that we can never get it back to what it once was. Then he says “. . . ecological restoration is impossible, but thoughtful, science-based ecological management is not.” So what is the goal of ecological management? Perhaps to repair a damaged system? And what do we use to guide our efforts and measure our success? Perhaps these are returning that system to some semblance of what it once was. So what’s the problem in calling that restoration?

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