1. Green Oaks Field Research Center
With respect to the ESA: how ecological is ecological restoration? A brief history and a look to the future By
Stuart K. Allison
Knox College
Green Oaks Field Research Center
Illinois, USA

2. What are we trying to do in our ecological restorations?
“Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.” (Society for Ecological Restoration, Primer of Ecological Restoration 2002)
Define Ecological Restoration.
Give out line of format of talk – quick summary of history of ER – both the commonly told version of ER beginning at U. of Wisconsin and then a deeper history of ER. Then a discussion of ER and ESA. Ending with a consideration of where the interests of today’s (or at least my) students lie.

3. Another definition
Ecological Restoration- the full or partial replacement of biological populations and/or their habitats that have been extinguished or diminished.
Ideally the restoration will return normal ecosystem function to an area and hopefully the project will also have social or economic value to humans
Perhaps include this to better explain what ER is all about.

4. Ecological restoration begins in Wisconsin in the 1930s
History of Ecological Restoration
The Received Wisdom
When I first began working in ER in about 1992, the received wisdom was that ER was born at the University of Wisconsin in the 1930s – it is a nice story with quite a bit of truth to it, but it is incomplete. However for many people it continues to be the preferred origin story for the field.
Ecological restoration begins in Wisconsin in the 1930s

5. Aldo Leopold planting at the Shack - 1936
Aldo Leopold is central to the story – he began doing restoration on the land he bought on the banks of the Wisconsin River, in what he called the Sand Counties, in an attempt to return a landscape badly damaged by poor farming practices to its original pine and savanna ecosystems.
Aldo Leopold planting at the Shack

6. CCC crewman planting Curtis Prairie - 1936
At the dedication of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, Leopold suggested that the Arboretum should restore in the correct context, the ecosystems native to Dane County that previously existed at the site. One of the first projects was planting tallgrass prairie at the Arboretum – work initiated by Norm Fassett and mostly supervised by Ted Sperry, working with CCC crews. How to restore prairie was learned via a trial and error process. And the story goes, this lead to development of modern field of ecological restoration.
CCC crewman planting Curtis Prairie

7. A more complete history of Ecological Restoration
But the roots of ER go back much further than Madison, Wisconsin in the 1930s.

8. Early examples of ecological restoration
Hunter gatherers practice management that includes elements of ecological restoration
1300s – forest restoration Nurnberger Reichswald
1660 – John Evelyn – restoration of English landscape
Late 1700s, early 1800s – restoration of Italian and French mountain forests
1859 – restoration of the Thames River, London
1878 – restoration of the Back Bay Fens, Boston
Early 1900s – restoration of rangeland in American West
1936 – Restoration of Curtis Prairie – U. of Wisconsin Arboretum
ER may be a very ancient activity. Hunter gatherers today practice land management techniques that include replanting sites to replace native species they harvested or which have been lost due to things like fire. This looks a lot like ER and presumably this is something their ancestors practiced for thousands of years.
First recorded use of the word restoration in a way we would recognize it comes from forest restoration projects in Germany in the 14th century.
After the English Civil War, John Evelyn advocated ‘restoring’ the English landscape to repair the damages caused by the war and overharvesting of trees – also seen as a way of restoring English culture.
Overharvesting of trees and overgrazing of hillsides lead to devastating floods in Italian and French valleys – leading to government sponsored efforts to restore forests upstream to prevent flooding – these efforts begin in late 1700s.
Urban areas saw a huge decline in local ecosystems – especially rivers and marshes due to sewage inputs – leading to early river and marsh restoration projects in London and Boston.
Overgrazing damaged rangelands in the American west – leading to formation of science of range management and restoratoin projects in early part of 20th century – work Leopold was familiar with.

9. Restoration – an ancient activity
Native people continue to practice traditional land management techniques – sometimes augmented by modern equipment.

10. John Evelyn, English landscape restoration – late 1600s

11. Restoration of Italian mountain forests
Forest restoration in Italian and French mountains has been quite successful – utilizing both construction of physical changes to stream valleys and planting of trees

12. Restoration in London – after the Great Stink of 1858

13. Response to the Great Stink – Improve Drainage and Restore Streams

14. Restoration in Boston - 1879

15. Environmental Restoration in the American West
Arthur Sampson – one of the original members of the ESA was also a founder of range management and range restoration

16. University of Wisconsin Arboretum
Curtis Prairie – planted
Greene Prairie – planted
University of Wisconsin Arboretum

17. Relationship of Ecological Society of America to development of Ecological Restoration
As we shall see, the ESA has not been heavily involved with the development of the field of ER

18. Some early members of ESA were interested in ER
From 1917 directory of 307 members:
Arthur Sampson – studied “natural and artificial reseeding of rangelands”
Edith Roberts – established early restoration at Vassar College – native species restoration in 1924
The directory of original members of the ESA listed 307 members – at least were involved with early restoration efforts – the previously mentioned Arthur Sampson, who managed the Great Basin Experimental Station and then taught at UC Berkeley; and Edith Roberts who started a project to restore native ecosystems on the campus of Vassar College – predating a similar effort at the University of Wisconsin arboretum. Aldo Leopold became a member of the ESA several years later.

19. Post-WW2 – field of ecology develops new emphasis on theory – developing it and testing it
Early in its development, the science of ecology was largely a descriptive science. Efforts to make ecology a more predictive and quantitative science began in the 1920s, but that direction became even more pronounced post WW2. Some of this was a response to advances seen in physics with the development of quantum theory (physics envy) and also evolutionary biology following the Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1920s and 30s and the subsequent rapid development of molecular biology following Watson and Crick’s identification of DNA as the genetic material in 1953.

20. Some major papers
Watts 1947 – Pattern and process in the plant community
Cole 1954 – The population consequences of life history phenomena
Hutchinson 1959 – Homage to Santa Rosalia: or, why are there so many kinds of animals?
Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin 1960 – Community structure, population control and competition
Connell 1961 – The influence of interspecific competition and other factors on the distribution of the barnacle Chthamalus stellatus
Teal 1962 – Energy flow in the salt marsh ecosystem of Georgia
Paine 1966 – Food web complexity and species diversity
MacArthur and Wilson 1967 – The Theory of Island Biogeography
Just quickly note this is a brief sampling of important papers in Ecology published between 1947 and 67 – all show an interest in either developing or testing theoretical ideas

21. Some interest in applied problems, but it was a minority interest
Charles Elton worked on many applied problems and interactions between applied and pure science were more common in the UK than the US. Ecology of Invasions published in 1958
Published 1958

22. Modern development of Ecological Restoration
Nachusa Grasslands, The Nature Conservancy, Illinois

23. The Founders of Green Oaks – Henry Green, George Ward,
Back of history of ER – part of the reason why the story of a Midwestern birth of ER has such a hold on the ER community, is that the work at the U. of Wisconsin Arboretum planted seeds that soon spread across the Midwest leading to a rapid increase in ER activity – much of it focused on prairie restoration. Restoration at Green Oaks began in 1955.
The second location of a tallgrass prairie restoration was Knox College’s Green Oaks Field Station – in a project started by Knox professors Paul Shepard and George Ward.
The Founders of Green Oaks – Henry Green, George Ward,
Alvah Green, and Paul Shepard

24. Expansion of ER across the Midwest – 1960s and 70s
The 1960s and 70s was a time of rapid increase in knowledge of prairie restoration techniques. Much of the work done by Peter Schramm at Green Oaks, Ray Schulenberg at the Morton Arboretum (outside Chicago) and Bob Betz at the Fermi Lab (also outside Chicago). First North American prairie conference held at Green Oaks in 1968 – with a focus on prairie conservation and restoration.
Bob Betz Pete Schramm Ray Schulenberg

25. Ecological Restoration meets Mine Reclamation
Over a similar time period – beginning in the 1920s and 30s, followed by rapid development in the 1950s, 60s and 70s – was the establishment of the field of mine reclamation. This began especially early in Europe due to need to make almost every acre of ground useful in some way – so waste mine sites couldn’t be allowed to lie fallow near cities; also release of toxic run off near cities was a problem. Mine reclamation started a bit later in North America – most mines located far from cities and large area meant not as much need to repair the damage. Mine reclamation began mostly as an engineering project, but repairing the ecology was an increasing focus from 1950s on. In 1980 Bradshaw (English) and Cairns (American) both published books about restoration based on their experience in mine reclamation that became very important in intellectual development of the field.
Tony Bradshaw John Cairns

26. Key events in the development of modern Ecological Restoration
1983 – journal Management and Restoration Notes first published (today known as Ecological Restoration)
1985 – (Society for Conservation Biology founded)
1988 – Society for Ecological Restoration founded
1993 – journal Restoration Ecology first published
Both SER and SCB came out of a concern for ways for scientists and practitioners to address and hopefully correct or prevent damage to the Earth’s ecosystems. SER founded in Madison, WI, although many of the founding members worked in California.

27. “Restoration: an acid test for ecology”
“This has crucial implications for ecology and ecological restoration, because for any natural phenomenon there is only one ultimate test of our understanding. That is to see if our ideas actually work in practice. Restoration provides such an acid test because each time we undertake restoration we are seeing whether, in the light of our knowledge, we can recreate ecosystems that function, and function properly.”
– Tony Bradshaw, 1987
Bradshaw clearly stated that ER was a true test of our knowledge of ecology – if we could actually repair damaged ecosystems then we could truly say we understand how ecosystems work

28. Pure vs. Applied Science
“The way you describe pure science sounds like applied science without the usefulness.”
“We don’t have better engines because first we had a theory of thermodynamics and then we applied that to building engines. Instead, the discovery of thermodynamics was a by-product of our efforts to build better and better engines.”
- Brian Cox, The Infinite Monkey Cage, BBC Radio 4, 2010
For a long time there has been conflict between the pure and applied ecological sciences. Relate my experiences at Berkeley – in PhD program from 1985 to 1991, working with classic community ecologist Wayne Sousa. At Berkeley (and I think at most ecology grad programs at the time) the emphasis was on pure or basic research. Applied problems were to be handled by people working in applied fields – forestry, range management, wildlife management, fisheries, etc – and was often felt to be less intellectually interesting and less well done that real ecology – a kind of snobbery reigned.

29. The ESA responds to environmental destruction
1991 – Lubchenco et al. publish “The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: A report from the Ecological Society of America” (Ecology 72: )
Focus on importance of basic (pure) science as we attempt to develop sustainable relationship with our environment
Restoration featured as key component of SBI – mentioned many times, given as an example – Box 8 “Restoring Ecological Systems”
The scope of environmental problems was so huge, and the growth and success of SCB and to a lesser extent, SER, meant that the ESA had to respond. Jane Lubchenco directed an effort to produce an ESA response to damaged ecosystems and the need for better science – the SBI. Key feature was a focus on need for basic research as a way to learn how to respond to environmental damages. Restoration was a featured tool – with emphasis on Bradshaw’s view of restoration as a test of what we have learned.

30. However, seems to have had little effect on what members of ESA do – at least as reflected in ESA journals. I used Web of Science to search for articles published in ESA journals with ecological restoration as a key word. First such article appears in 1992 in Ecological Applications. After that – not many more. At most 5 in one year. A total of 46 in Ecological Applications, 4 in Ecology, 2 in Ecological Monographs and 6 in Frontiers from 1990 to 2014 (admittedly could be more published in remainder of 2014).

31. Overlap between ESA membership and leadership of Society for Ecological Restoration
20 founders of SER, 2 are deceased; remaining 18 are active in field – 3 are members of ESA
20 current members of board of directors of SER – 3 are members of ESA
I didn’t have time or opportunity to survey all members of SER, but based on a couple of samples – SER’s founders and current Board of Directors (which I am a member of) there is little overlap between ESA and SER – why?

32. Perceptions of ESA and SER by members of SER (anecdotal)
Highly academic
More practitioner focused
Hierarchical
Egalitarian
Theoretical
Practical
Scientific star system
Interested in results, not reputation
Anecdotal evidence based on conversation with SER members and written comments on SER member surveys – but ESA is not seen as being much interested in ER or research into ER

33. Ecological Restoration in the Future

34. Where are my students coming from?
“Had a dream, you and me and the war of the end times And I believe California succumbed to the fault line…”
Again anecdotal but I think accurate – this spring I was teaching a field course in which we made many field trips up and down the Mississippi watershed – from Missouri, all through Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. Our theme song while driving in the van became the Decemberists “Calamity Song” – a bright, cheerful poppy sounding tune with dark lyrics. And this is where my students live – in a world they see as almost doomed due to climate change, environmental destruction, constant warfare and paralyzed politicians (and based on the news who can disagree with them?). They have no interest in pure or basic ecological questions – like say some classic problems like relationship of complexity to stability or biodiversity or ecosystem function or resilience (all still hot topics 25 years after I first encountered them). Unless those questions/problems are framed in an applied setting – will understanding complexity and say resilience help them better restore or conserve ecosystems and species? If so, then they are interested. If not, they don’t care. They are committed to ecology, conservation and restoration – but only to solve immediate problems. They do not care about theory abstracted from those problems – and that makes the ESA’s usual approach to ecology not so interesting to them.

35. In the future we must use ecological restoration to:
Maintain ecosystems of both ecological and socio-cultural value
Promote ecological and evolutionary processes and functions in a restored landscape
Prevent the development of a completely domesticated, ecologically monotonous world – promote the value of areas and ecosystems that do not solely serve human needs

36. Always Remember:
As Frank Egler said, “Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think, ecosystems are more complex than we can think.”

37. Thank you