Restoration Ecology: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past (review)

This useful collection features short essays by historians, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and ecologists about ecological restoration. The first premise is that many previous attempts at restoration have not adequately considered history; instead, they have often either misinterpreted or simply imagined an undisturbed, pristine past. The second premise is that the practice of “restoration” can be improved only with an adequate consideration of history. Most of the authors are practitioners who are actively involved in restoration. Their hope is that a better understanding of history will clarify goals and guide further attempts to reach them.

Most of the essays are case studies; a few of them take a broader view of the issues that these studies raise. The first section, which treats “restoration in history,” starts with David Lowenthal’s reflections on art and politics as well as ecosystems. This section also introduces contrasting approaches to restoration in Europe and North America during the past century. The book then examines the uses (and misuses) of “history in restoration,” especially regarding the ancient forest of the Scottish Highlands, which disappeared thousands of years ago from largely climatic causes. Next follow case studies about restoration on California coastlines, Yorkshire fens, Japanese rice paddies, American Indian reservations, and urban New Haven, Chicago, and Leipzig—all engaging and illuminating. These projects make use of everything from pollen cores to archival documents to reconstruct complex histories of ecological change. Many of them endorse the importance of past cultural practices in creating prized ecological systems, even today.

In sharp contrast are two essays, representing a more radical vision, that try to discover an earlier ecological state in which human impact was minimal or nonexistent and that propose novel human interventions to restore that state on a large scale—the central paradox of “rewilding.” Franz Vera advocates “naturalistic grazing” by large ungulates to restore supposedly ancient wood pasture systems in Europe. Josh Donlan and others argue for a “Pleistocene rewilding” of the North American plains by introducing African proxies for extinct American megafauna. This use of history is implicitly rejected by almost every other essay in the book. Chris Smout and Jan Dizard explicitly oppose it, questioning both the possibility and the purpose of trying to restore “original” landscapes on a large scale; they endorse the use of history to do a better job of stewardship that meets today’s needs.

As Smout points out, however, this recommendation leaves room for areas that are set aside for minimal management, or for attempts to restore versions of earlier ecological conditions. Smout praises Vera’s results in promoting biodiversity, without giving much credit to the idea that it broadly represents Mesolithic Europe, which does not seem to be supported by the pollen record. In other words, rewilding has a useful place within a broader array of stewardship across the landscape, if shorn of the claim that it represents the most ecologically virtuous condition and that everything else is mere gardening.

Eric Higgs closes the circle by reaffirming (even as rapid climate change makes literal restoration even less possible) the cultural and ecological benefits of mustering people to work on restoration projects. Reconnecting people to nature is all to the good, and history can help to make the process more meaningful and effective ecologically.