Ecosystem restoration is the return of a damaged ecological system to a stable, healthy, and sustainable state, often together with associated ecosystem services[1]
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There are many reasons to restore ecosystems. Some include:
There is also the dissenting opinion that ecosystem restoration is not a valuable use of our time. Reasons for this opinion can include:
The problem is that we cannot restore an ecosystem to exactly the same state it was in before we disturbed it. This is because, as Anthony Bradshaw claims, “ecosystems are not static, but in a state of dynamic equilibrium…. [with restoration] we aim [for a] moving target.”
Even though an ecosystem may not be in its original state, the functions of the ecosystem (especially ones that provide services to us) may be more valuable than its configuration (Bradshaw 1987). One reason to consider ecosystem restoration is to mitigate climate change through activities such as afforestation. Afforestation involves replanting forests, which remove carbon dioxide from the air. Carbon dioxide is a leading cause of global warming (Speth, 2005) and capturing it would help alleviate climate change.
Many people take the view that ecosystem restoration is impractical. One reason for this view is that restoration of ecosystems does not always work. There are many reasons for restoration failure. Hilderbrand et al. (2005) point out that many times uncertainty (about ecosystem functions, species relationships, and such) is not addressed, and that the time-scales set out for ‘complete’ restoration are unreasonably short. Other times an ecosystem may be so degraded that abandonment (allowing an injured ecosystem to recover on its own) may be the wisest option (Holl, 2006). Other negative impacts of ecosystem restoration can include the introduction of large predators, which may inspire doubts in people’s safety, and plants, some requiring disturbance regimes such as regular fires (MacDonald et al. 2002). High economic costs can also be a perceived as a negative impact of the restoration process. Public opinion is very important in the feasibility of a restoration; if the public believes that the costs of restoration outweigh the benefits, then support for that project is unlikely to be big, especially in small towns (MacDonald et al. 2002). In these cases people might be ready to follow the abandonment route and let the ecosystem recover on its own, which can sometimes occur relatively quickly (Holl, 2006).
Many failures have occurred in past restoration projects, many times because clear goals were not set out as the aim of the restoration. This may be because, as Peter Alpert says, “people may not [always] know how to manage natural systems effectively”. Also many assumptions are made about myths of restoration such as the carbon copy, where a restoration plan, which worked in one area, is applied to another with the same results expected, but not realized (Hilderbrand et al. 2005).