Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land by Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney, and: The Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land Workbook by Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney (review)

With experience comes wisdom, and with considerable experience comes commensurate wisdom. Authors Steven Apfelbaum and Alan Haney together have over seven decades’ accumulated knowledge about ecological restoration and ecosystem management, so their advice and guidance for conducting ecological restoration projects as collected in these companion volumes warrant substantial attention.

“Ecological health” is a vague term that is often tossed off casually with the expectation that the listener or reader intuitively grasps the concept. To their credit, Apfelbaum and Haney recognize the imprecision inherent in the term and take great care to define what they mean by ecological health in both books.

Apfelbaum and Haney produced Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land first. This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 focuses on the principles of ecological restoration and their application as strategies and field techniques through a sequential 10-step process. The resurrection of a riparian woodland-prairie-savanna landscape after many decades of intensive agriculture on Apfelbaum’s Stone Prairie Farm in southern Wisconsin serves as an inspirational case study for the application of the process. In Part 2, the authors broaden their focus to review the major biomes of North America, and then examine the special challenges confronting restorationists working in each biome. Despite highlighting the differences between such disparate ecosystems as forests and deserts, the authors unify this second half of the book by employing a conceptual framework involving taking time to understand each ecosystem and then developing and implementing a restoration plan tailored to the characteristics of the ecosystem.

The Workbook was published two years after Restoring Ecological Health. Expanding upon the same 10-step restoration process introduced in the Part 1 of the earlier book, the Workbook provides detailed step-by-step instructions for preparing, implementing, and managing an ecological restoration project. In the Workbook, the 10-step process is further refined by dividing the restoration steps into 32 discrete tasks. In addition, the text is supplemented with four appendices that include customized data forms, a list of recommended equipment, four sample contractual documents, and sources for additional resources, including a link to an interactive website that augments the Workbook.

The two volumes complement rather than duplicate or supplant one another, and each book stands on its own merit. Restoring Ecological Health introduces ecological restoration to individuals with little formal biological training or practical experience who may be considering a restoration project but don’t know how to begin or what to anticipate. The Workbook, in contrast, is designed to provide guidance to a restorationist who has decided to undertake a project and wants to ensure that the project is planned and executed correctly.

Both books are very well written and accessible. In particular, the Workbook is comprehensive and exhaustive in its treatment of the planning, implementing, and monitoring required for a successful ecological restoration project. In fact, the book is so thorough that an individual or organization contemplating a restoration project might be intimidated; however, the authors point out that undertaking a restoration project with anything less than a full appreciation for what the project is going to entail in terms of time and money is almost certainly doomed to failure. In fact, one of the most sobering and useful sections of the Workbook is a short review beginning on page 61 of the reasons why restoration projects can fail, and how restorationists can—indeed must—address long-term governance and institutional commitments to give a project the best possible chance for success. The discussion of preparing of budget for a project beginning on page 63 is also among the best portions of the book.

In both books, the authors...