Category Archives: Ecological Restoration

1: The Harsh Reality – Why Full Restoration Is No Longer an Option

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(This article is part of a six-post reality-check. Concepts and examples are drawn from “Silent Earth: Adaptations for Life in a Devastated Biosphere.”)

In the grand narrative of our species, we have arrived at a pivotal, sobering moment. The Earth’s biosphere, a delicate and complex tapestry woven over eons, now bears the deep imprint of our civilization. A noble and understandable impulse urges us to restore the planet to its former glory, yet a clear-eyed look at the evidence suggests this may be beyond our grasp. The inertia of our planetary systems is immense; even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, significant warming is already locked in and would persist for centuries as a new equilibrium is slowly reached (King et al. 2024).

The sheer scale of the challenge is written upon our landscapes and in our waters. Consider the Chesapeake Bay, once North America’s largest and most productive estuary. Despite decades of concerted effort and billions of dollars in investment, its ecological health remains precarious, a testament to the profound difficulty of reversing systemic degradation (Rust and Blum 2018). Look to the Amazon, the lungs of our planet, where the cost to restore even a fraction of what has been lost is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars (Lennox et al. 2018). The financial and political will for such an undertaking on a global scale is simply not present.

The very social and political conditions that hinder restoration are the same ones that will impede large-scale adaptation. It is time, therefore, to pivot our focus toward achievable survival strategies. This is not a message of despair, but a necessary recalibration based on the evidence before us. We must learn to navigate a new world, one where our role is not to restore the past, but to thoughtfully and ethically adapt to the future we have created.

References

King, A. D., et al. 2024. Exploring climate stabilisation at different global warming levels in ACCESS-ESM-1.5. Earth System Dynamics 15: 1353-1383.

Lennox, G. D., et al. 2018. Second rate or a second chance? Assessing biomass and biodiversity recovery in regenerating Amazonian forests. Global Change Biology 24(12): 5680-5694.

Rust, S., and Blum, S. 2018. Chesapeake Bay: A journey to restoration. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/chesapeake-bay-a-journey-to-restoration/

Can you put a price on nature? A Californian nonprofit thinks it can

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“Everyone agrees that nature has value. It clothes, feeds and shelters us – and provides a spectacular playground. Yet we have never put a value on everything nature offers.

“Now, environmental and sustainable business consultants want to change that by forcing corporate leaders to take stock of the economic impact of how they manage natural resources. By accounting for this so-called natural capital, the advocates hope to see more businesses adopting practices that are both good for the environment and long term profitability, especially as climate change will further deplete natural resources, causing their values to climb and increase the cost of running business. In a 1997 paper in Nature that first introduced the natural capital concept, the 13 researchers involved pegged the Earth’s worth at $33tn. A 2014 revision raised that figure to $134tn.”  From: www.theguardian.com

GR:  Natural ecosystems are the outcome of hundreds and thousands of years of trial and failure. The high cost of replicating the process and thus the high value of nature will not make many businesses happy.  Perhaps “natural” is a standard too high.  Unfortunately, so many attempts to create man-made versions of nature have failed; natural may be the only goal that is reasonable.

Fighting Climate Change with Trees in Africa

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“Restoration holds the potential to shield us from those dangers while also providing a wide range of benefits: trees as a source of energy; trees as a source of nutritious food; trees to bind the soil so that agriculture thrives; trees that make our landscapes beautiful. And especially in the developing world, restoring landscapes and planting trees is something we can do right away — we have boots on the ground! By investing in this amazing opportunity, we can tackle a suite of problems with one useful tool.

“A new movement called AFR100 is poised to take advantage of this opportune moment. This new pan-African, country-led effort aims to restore 100 million hectares (386,000 square miles) of degraded and deforested landscapes in Africa by 2030. It’s an ambitious goal, but within reach — at the initiative’s launch in Paris during COP21, African countries have already committed to restore more than 30 million hectares (116,000 square miles), an area larger than the nation of Gabon or the United Kingdom. And AFR100 partners are earmarking more than $1 billion in development finance and $600 million in private sector investment to support restoration activities.”  From: emiliocogliani.wordpress.com

GR:  There is no mention of population control in this article, and without it, the program is doomed to failure.  Perhaps not in the next 15 years during which it proposes to restore 386,000 square miles of forest, but in the 30 years after that.  The reason? Deforestation is taking place to make room for crops to feed meat animals and people.  Ignoring the influence of demand by a growing population makes the whole thing appear sham-like.

Nature News Digests

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GarryRogersNature News Digests:

Harvesting invasive cattails to restore marsh biodiversity

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CHEBOYGAN, Mich.—The diesel-powered harvester roars as ecologist Shane Lishawa crashes through dense, 7-foot-tall cattails toward an experimental plot established in the marsh in 2011.

“It’s now four years later, and we still have a persistently more diverse community,” said Lishawa, pointing to various native grasses, sedges and rushes that have sprung up in the test plot still dominated by an invasive hybrid cattail.

“None of these were here prior to harvesting the cattails,” said Lishawa, a 2001 University of Michigan graduate who is now a research associate at Loyola University Chicago.”  Sourced through Scoop.it from: ns.umich.edu

GR:  Looks destructive, but the invasive plant had already damaged the site.

Best conservation practices consider both genetics and biology

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“Restoring diverse vegetation along the Atlantic seaboard after devastating hurricanes or replanting forests after destructive wildfires rests mightily upon one tiny but important ingredient: the seed.

Seeds are also important for conserving rare species, from trees to shrubs to other flowering plants. For example, the recently discovered Trillium tennesseense is only known in three locations in East Tennessee.

“But seeds must be saved the right way.

“Including a species’ biology in sample guideline calculations can dramatically improve sampling effectiveness, according to a new study from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.

“For a long time, seed sampling guidelines have typically been quite general: the same recommended minimum sample applied to all species, roughly 50 seeds per population, whether a towering tree, widespread grass, or a small bee-pollinated herb. Such recommendations were based on genetic theory without considering plant ecology and reproductive biology.

“In the new study, published today in the journal Biological Conservation, researchers tested the importance of three factors in seed sampling: a species’ “selfing” rate, or rate at which a species pollinates itself, its seed and pollen dispersal distances, and whether an annual or perennial.”  –Source: phys.org

GR:  As good stewards, we could be restoring healthy conditions in burned, clear-cut, flooded, and overgrazed vegetation. If we were giving restoration the proper amount of attention, we would refine many of our practices.  In the study discussed above, the researchers studied the genetic variability of seeds and discovered that obtaining adequately variable seed collections requires that seed sample sizes vary with species’ reproductive traits.

Of course, we could consider other things.  For instance, we might find that genetic variability is related to species interaction strategies and to their spatial distribution, their areography.  However, our species has not become a good steward.  We know about many factors that we haven’t taken time to understand well enough to apply to our stewardship practices. And now, the news is that we are going to destroy a large portion of the species that ecosystems need to remain stable and productive.

Conservationists v chainsaws: the RSPB’s battle to save an Indonesian rainforest

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Colm O’Molloy, Guardian:  “In 2007 an RSPB-led group bought up a series of logged-out Indonesian forests to bring them back from the brink.

“Over time, Harapan aims to become the leading centre of knowledge on how to bring damaged forest ecosystems back to health. Tropical rainforests develop over thousands of years. It is not yet known how long it takes to fully restore a damaged rainforest to health, or if it is possible at all.

“There is little doubt that the forests that make up Harapan would have been completely destroyed by now was it not for the efforts of the RSPB and its partners to protect and restore them.

“Despite ongoing losses to encroachment, Harapan still has a relatively large percentage of forest cover within its boundaries. Much of the surrounding forests have been completely decimated and replaced by palm plantations.”

Source: www.theguardian.com