Challenges for Restoration Ecology

Ecological restoration typically relies upon public involvement and volunteers.

Updated May, 2021–Restoration, like all other human endeavors faces a number of challenges inherent in its basic design and fabric.  Because ecological restoration deals with complex problems it is not surprising that uncertainties are nearly everywhere:  weather, sociopolitical conditions, global climate change, and the very historical uniqueness of the communities and ecosystems being restored.

Some of the more important and real challenges that interfere with accomplishing the desired outcomes of restorations are these: 1) that natural systems are constantly changing; 2) that humans have an imperfect understanding of natural systems; 3) the lack of available information about earlier successes and failures; 4) the fear that natural remnants will be destroyed, because people assume restoration projects can replace them; 5) that restoration is situational–there is no single restoration formula, and each project is very time-consuming; 6) that the project stakeholders often have conflicting desires; and 7) the lack of sufficient resources to support long-term projects.

Encounters With Ecological Time and Our History
But, there is another group of overriding restoration challenges, or encounters with trying to reconcile the irreconcilable that we will take up here. These are challenges not only for ecological restoration but also for society as a whole. We might refer to these challenges as “encounters”. The first is the irreversible nature of ecological time and the other three have to do with America’s three original sins.

Ecological Time
“Ecological restoration is an encounter with the irreversible nature of ecological time.” (Bill Jordan, III personal communication, 09.18).  Jordan is stating the obvious, that the effort to restore ecosystems is essentially impossible because time and its effects can’t be reversed.  More importantly, Jordan is  suggesting that the impossibility of pure ecological restoration derives its very meaning and value from that impossibility.

Jordan is talking about the biological, ecological and scientific challenge to ecological restoration posed by America’s history.  But if there is remedial value in merely recognizing past sins and in trying to correct past ecological damage then there should be the same remedial and restorative value in ecological restoration trying to reckon with other aspects of America’s history.

Collection of prairie seeds in the fall is a popular volunteer activity.

Encounters With America’s Three Original Sins
America’s original sins, or birth defects, make the job of ecological restoration even more difficult than trying to reverse ecological time. These original sins include:

1. The enslavement of African-Americans (which continues to this day in one form or another as in suppression of voting rights, a forced life of poverty, and systematic murder by police and vigilantes). 
2. The forced dispossession (Saunt, 2020) of Native Americans from their ancestral lands through deportation, expulsion, and extermination.  This  unequal treatment continues to this day.
3. The destruction–in the name of America’s “Manifest Destiny”–of the environment and natural resources. The material riches that thus flowed from the subjection of land and native peoples are tainted and compromised. 

For example, William Carlos Williams, the poet and physician, has said of America and its conquest of lands and peoples: “History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery.” (William Carlos Williams,  “In The American Grain”,  New Directions, 1925 page 44).  

Likewise, Robert Kaplan in his 2017 book, “Earning the Rockies”, describes as “irreconcilable” the American dichotomy between its “manifest destiny” to conquer the landscape, and the material riches that flowed from the subjection of land and native peoples.  These two strands of American history cannot be reconciled.    This un-reconcilable “chicken” has come home to roost, in the words of Charles M. Blow in the New York Times on June 1, 2020.

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  Prescribed fire is an essential tool of ecological restoration.

“Not Only Repairing Ecological Damage but Improving the Human Condition”–SER

For example, the SER Mission is: “SER advances the science, practice and policy of ecological restoration to sustain biodiversity, improve resilience in a changing climate, and re-establish an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture.”
And, SER’s Vision states: “Ecological restoration becomes a fundamental component of conservation and sustainable development programs throughout the world by virtue of its inherent capacity to provide people with the opportunity to not only repair ecological damage, but also improve the human condition.”

So, it seems lots of people are coming to this view but is it really possible to work productively within such a deeply flawed system; one burdened with three original sins and birth defects?  What can reasonably be expected of ecological restoration to accomplish in this compromised system?   At the least, ecological restoration must broaden its scope to attempt to heal the social and cultural ills of this country before it can expect that there will be progress on the ecological front.
Maybe it will be impossible but as Jordan says, there is value and meaning in trying.”

References
*Charles M. Blow in the New York Times on June 1, 2020.

*Robert Kaplan. “Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World”. 2017. Random House.

*Claudio Saunt, 2020 “America an “Unworthy Republic” The Dispossession of Native Americans and Thea Road to Indian Territory”  W.W. Norton and Company, New York, NY.

*William Carlos Williams,  “In The American Grain”,  New Directions, 1925 page 44.