Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past

by Hall; Marcus

• ISBN13: 9780415871761
• ISBN10: 041587176X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Once a forest has been destroyed, should one plant a new forest to emulate the old, or else plant designer forests to satisfy our immediate needs? Should we aim to re-create forests, or simply create them? How does the past shed light on our environmental efforts, and how does the present influence our environmental goals? Can we predict the future of restoration? This book explores how a consideration of time and history can improve the practice of restoration. There is a past of restoration, as well as past assumptions about restoration, and such assumptions have political and social implications. Governments around the world are willing to spend billions on restoration projects #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; in the Everglades, along the Rhine River, in the South China Sea #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; without acknowledging that former generations have already wrestled with repairing damaged ecosystems, that there have been many kinds of former ecosystems, and that there are many former ways of understanding such systems. This book aims to put the dimension of time back into our understanding of environmental efforts. Historic ecosystems can serve as models for our restorative efforts, if we can just describe such ecosystems. What conditions should be brought back, and do such conditions represent new natures or better pasts? A collective answer is given in these pages #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; and it is not a unified answer.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
List of Tables	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Introduction: Tempo and Mode in Restoration	p. 1
Restoration in History
Reflections on Humpty-Dumpty Ecology	p. 13
Spontaneous Rewilding of the Apostle Islands	p. 35
Changing Forests, Moving Targets in Finland	p. 46
Sidebar: Clementsian Restoration in Yosemite	p. 58
History in Restoration
Does the Past Matter in Scottish Woodland Restoration?	p. 63
Palaeoecology, Management, and Restoration in the Scottish Highlands	p. 74
Conservation Lessons from the Holocene Record in "Natural" and "Cultural" Landscapes	p. 87
The Shifting Baseline Syndrome in Restoration Ecology	p. 98
Regardening and the Rest	p. 111
Sidebar: Reforestation, Restoration, and the Birth of the Industrial Tree Farm	p. 125
Restore to What? Selecting Target States
Informing Ecological Restoration in a Coastal Context	p. 131
South Yorkshire Fens: Past, Present, and Future	p. 143
Uneasy Relationships Between Ecology, History, and Restoration	p. 154
Sidebar: Designing a Restoration Mega-Project for New York	p. 164
What to Restore? Selecting Initial States
Reflooding the Japanese Rice Paddy	p. 171
American Indian Restoration	p. 182
Restoring for Cultural-Ecological Sustainability in Arizona and Connecticut	p. 193
Models for Renaturing Brownfield Areas	p. 208
Sidebar: Conflicting Restoration Goals in the San Francisco Bay	p. 218
Changing Concepts in Restoration
Nature Without Nurture?	p. 223
Toward a Multiple Vision of Ecological Restoration	p. 236
Rewilding the Restorer	p. 253
Implementation: Rewilding, Regardening, and Renaturing
Implementing River Restoration Projects	p. 275
Cloning in Restorative Perspective	p. 284
NLIMBY: No Lions in My Backyard	p. 293
Conclusions
Restoring Dirt Under the Fingernails	p. 309
Contributors	p. 315
Index	p. 321
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