BOOK REVIEW

Restoring ecosystems: a history, and some humandimensions

Mohan K. Wali

Received: 28 March 2012 / Accepted: 9 April 2012 / Published online: 19 April 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

W. R. Jordon III, G. M. Lubick. Making Nature

Whole—A History of Ecological Restoration. Island

Press, Washington, DC, USA. 2011, 254 pp., Paper,

ISBN 9781597265133, US$35.00

D. Egan, E. E. Hjerpe, and J. Abrams, editors.

Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration—

Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture. Island

Press, Washington, DC, USA. 2011, 407 pp., Paper,

ISBN 9781597266901, US$45.00

On September 14–15 in 1968, Peter Schramm of Knox

College in Illinois convened the first Symposium on

Prairie and Prairie Restoration in Galesburg (Schramm

1970). This symposium initiated the Midwest Prairie

Conference(s), held biennially; renamed in 1978, it is

now the North American Prairie Conference. These

meetings have brought together a rare blend of

professionals and interested citizens. Bearing witness

to how Schramm’s idea has endured through time, the

23rd North American Prairie Conference will be held

in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 6–10 August 2012.

Attending the Second Midwest Prairie Conference

at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (September

18–20, 1970), I had the opportunity to visit the Curtis

Prairie, circa 24.3 ha (60 acres) of the ‘‘oldest restored

prairie in the world.’’ Our field trip leader was a first-

rate botanist, the late James H. Zimmerman. His

passion for ecological restoration did not only show

through but it was also contagious. Stirring! Curtis

Prairie is at the core of subject matter in the first book

under review by Jordan and Lubick.

The narrative in Jordan and Lubick is a scholarly

treatment of events that shaped restoration—how they

began, made advances and progressed. The beginning

was ‘‘a mixture of curiosity, scientific, historic, and

aesthetic interest’’ in naturally-occurring ecological

communities ‘‘endowed with distinctive qualities of

stability, beauty, and self-organizing capacity’’ (p. 2).

Thus, the efforts centered on recreating an original

ecosystem literally inclusive of ‘‘all its parts and

processes’’ (p. 2), based on ecological knowledge and

understanding and hence, ecocentric restoration.

Whereas the discourse in the book moves from

‘‘Deep History’’ (Chapter 1) to examples of Euro-

American traditions (chapters 2 and 3) for the major

part of last century, both the enthusiasm and pro-

nouncements of eminent botanists of Wisconsin and

the wildlife biologist, Aldo Leopold are on the radar in

full view. Restoration for restoration’s sake became

the hallmark of a number of professionals and

enthusiasts aided greatly by capable professionals in

biology, soil science and other sciences.

The book notes that ecocentric restoration was the

finest example of interactions of ‘‘amateurs or [and] by

professionals working at the margin of their disci-

plines and in a context protected from insistent

M. K. Wali (&)

School of Environment and Natural Resources,

The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

e-mail: wali.1@osu.edu

123

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DOI 10.1007/s10980-012-9742-3

pressures of markets, politics and constituencies’’

(p. 62). Really, it was more than a ‘‘spirit of play’’ (p. 61);

it was deep attachment. Listen to Elsie Rose, a native

prairie enthusiast from Nebraska summing up her

eloquent and emotive lecture, What is Prairie? at the

Fourth Midwest Prairie Conference in 1974 (Rose

1975):

It is simple; it is complex.

It is harsh; it is tender.

It is barren; it is lush.

It is a love affair between a few special people.

and a special kind of land.

Detailing in chapter 4 how during the 1920s and

1930s conservation took an upper hand, ecocentric

restoration was ignored, even resented, by profession-

als of many stripes. Chapters 5–10 narrate how

ecological restoration gained momentum again with

efforts at the University of Illinois, Knox College, and

at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ‘‘In Love

with Prairie’’ (p. 116) rekindled the restoration efforts

again and these chapters make an interesting reading.

These efforts ended with where we are now: ‘‘a broad,

inclusive… idea of restoration, tailored to allow a

wide range of land management practices to claim the

rubric of ‘restoration,’ currently a best seller in

conservation circles’’ (p. 215). As I note later, the

ground reality of original ecosystems in the ecogeo-

graphic regions as we have known them may not last

for much longer.

The second book is on some human dimensions of

ecosystem restoration. It has 26 chapters by 28 authors

and is edited by Egan, Hjerpe and Abrams. The

narratives in this book cover many places in the

world—from Australia, England, Spain, the United

States, and others. Four chapters each are grouped in

Parts I–V, namely, Participation: Volunteers; Partic-

ipation: Collaborators; Power: Politics, Governance,

and Planning; Power: Restoration Economics; Per-

spective: Eco-cultural Restoration; Part VI, Perspec-

tive: Restoration-based Education has five chapters.

This grouping points to what the editors think holds

the respective chapters somewhat together.

I had looked forward to Part IV on economics,

especially the chapter by Kim and Hjerpe on ‘‘Merging

Economics and Ecology’’ which opens with the

unexcelled line of the late Ken Boulding: ‘‘Mathemat-

ics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately it also

brought mortis’’ (p. 191). I was reminded of another

eminent economist, Joseph Stiglitz who opened his

Nobel Prize Lecture in 2001 with an excerpt from John

Maynard Keynes thus (in part): ‘‘The ideas of econ-

omists and political philosophers, both when they are

right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than

is commonly understood…. ‘‘Practical men,… are

usually slaves of some defunct economist.’’

The chapters in this section left me looking for

more, a lost opportunity. Thoughtful scientists have

concluded by now that humans have carved for

themselves an exclusive category on the geological

time scale, the Anthropocene (‘‘The dawn of a new

epoch’’). Thus, referring to environmental impacts

merely as human dimensions in this book and in recent

university curricula, is a vast understatement of the

human prowess. Discussion on economics, the biggest

of all human dimensions, is central to every environ-

mental issue and the need for restoration (of any kind)

is at the top of the heap.

As applied to ecosystems, restoration is a feel-good

term, different from the restoration of paintings,

monuments or buildings. Given the dynamism of

living systems, it is impossible to place each sand

grain and organism in its place. One should neither

expect or lament this but acknowledge and appreciate

the time involved (‘‘[A]fter five years of waiting the

plants are still juvenile, and have not yet borne a flower

stalk,’’ Aldo Leopold is quoted as saying, p. 93).

Neither is the cost of such undertakings too trivial a

matter. But now, given climate and other changes,

even the thought of approximate ecocentric restoration

is a dream.

Literally, thousands of scientific papers from nearly

all scientific disciplines clearly document the envi-

ronmental changes that are underway. To just cite two:

first, Holtgrieve et al. (2011); see also Elser (2011),

report that humans have more than doubled the

amount of reactive nitrogen. Those who tend lawns,

know well the enormously quick responses of turf

grasses to nitrogen fertilization, most other species are

no different. How differentially this will boost some

species to the detriment of others will take years to

document. Second, modeling the responses of climate

change, Iverson et al. (2008), extending their earlier

studies, show the significant distributional shifts for

134 tree species that are likely in the eastern United

States. Their continuing research has confirmed these

findings with much elucidation of responses to climate

change not just of trees but of bird species as well.

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With tremendous changes likely in the phenology

of species, the ensuing mayhem that will result in the

altered and yet-unknown ecological processes will

take scientists a lot of time to sort out. But history at

any level is important. Together with Marcus Halls’

Earth Repair (2005), the book by Jordan and Lubick

makes a good pair of treatises on the historical

development and underpinnings of ecosystem resto-

ration in Europe and the United States. The human

dimensions, of course, will continue to multiply and

prove fertile ground for more case studies.

References

Elser JJ (2011) A world awash with nitrogen. Science 334:

1504–1505

Hall M (2005) Earth repair: a transatlantic history of environmental

restoration. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville

Holtgrieve GW et al (2011) A coherent signature of anthropo-

genic nitrogen deposition to remote watersheds of the

northern hemisphere. Science 334:1545–1548

Iverson LR, Prasad AM, Matthews SN, Peters M (2008) Esti-

mating potential habitat for 134 eastern US tree species

under six climate scenarios. For Ecol Manage 254:390–406

Rose E (1975) What is prairie? In: Wali MK (ed) Pages 3–6 in

Prairie: a multiple view, The University of North Dakota

Press, Grand Forks

Schramm P (ed) (1970) Proceedings of a symposium on prairie

and prairie restoration. Biological Field Station, Knox

College, Galesburg

Stiglitz JE (2001) Information and the change in paradigm in

economics. Prize Lecture, December 8, 2001. The Nobel

Foundation, Stockholm

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