1. Ecological Restoration
Title

2. Florida Everglades Drained for agriculture and urban development
Only 50% original today
Largest restoration in world
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
Water flow and quality
Native, endangered and exotic species
Habitat restoration

3. What is Ecological Restoration?
Defined as providing assistance to the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed
General principles:
Ecosystems are dynamic.
No simple set of rules.
Adaptive management is necessary.
Consider life, geology and hydrology.

4. What is “natural”? “Balance of Nature” - Major Tenets
Left undisturbed, nature achieves a permanency of form and structure that persists indefinitely.
If disturbed and disturbance removed, nature returns to exactly the same permanent state.
In this permanent state of nature, there is a “great chain of being” with a place for each creature.

5. Science and Values
Science to discover what used to be, what is possible, what an ecosystem or species requires to persist, and how different goals can be achieved
Selecting goals for restoration is a matter of human values

6. What is Usually Restored?
Forests
Wetlands
Streams and Rivers
Lakes
Beaches
Habitats of threatened and endangered species

7. Rivers, Streams and Wetlands
Degraded due to urbanization, agriculture, timber harvesting and channelization
Kissimmee River
Yellowstone National Park
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

8. Prairie Restoration
Once covered more land in the US than any other kind of ecosystem
Two kinds: original prairie and plowed
Cemeteries and roadways

9. Prairie Restoration
Managed properly, grazing by bison can restore or improve the biodiversity of tallgrass prairie
Fires enhance growth of dominant tall grasses that bison prefer

10. Reclamation Strip mining for coal
Water pollution
Sediment clogged streams
Damage from landslides
Fumes
Mine fires
Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program
Coal production tax

11. Success Criteria The restored ecosystem has
The general structure and process of the target ecosystem
Is capable of sustainable supporting the system
Is linked with and appropriately integrated into the larger landscape community of ecosystems
Minimal potential threats
Adapted to normally respond to expected disturbances
Is self-sustaining as possible