237

13
Ecological Restoration: Conservation’s Ideal Partner

The conservation vs. restoration debate was largely worked out during the ‘90s, but the dialogue wasn’t heard beyond the circle of practitioners and insiders. The initial furor has died down, but it’s by no means over. It is, however, becoming increasingly moot, as one conservation NGO after another becomes more involved in restoration.

The old, combative approach of environmentalists has resulted in phrases like “this is good for the environment.” Such language separates society from the environment, implying that what’s good for “the 238environment” is not good for humans or not good for business, and even suggesting that we are not a part of the environment. Hopefully, that language is being replaced in the Restoration Economy, with less-exclusionary catch phrases, such as “making the world healthier and wealthier.”

Although there’s no question that we need more conservation, that’s not what this book is about. Conservation does not repair the damage already done (unless one is comfortable with geologic timescales), it does not repair the damage still being inflicted, and it does not offer a viable economic alternative to new development. As stated earlier, when our environment is being attacked so relentlessly, equally vigorous counter-measures must be taken. Such countermeasures mean restoration, plus conservation. The only defense, in our current situation, is a good offense. Restorative development doesn’t improve—or combat—new development: it supplants it as our path forward.

CONSERVATION JUST CAN’T DO THE JOB BY ITSELF: IT’S ACHIEVED SOME GREAT VICTORIES, BUT IT’S LOSING THE WAR

Until now, conservation has mostly operated within the context of new development—as its opponent—rather than within the context of the entire life cycle, where maintenance/conservation is a discrete mode of development unto itself, with its own realm of industries and values. This has cast conservation in the role of business’s adversary—a role that “can’t get no respect.”

The conceptual leap that needs to be made is twofold: (1) to stop defining conservation as what it isn’t (an absence of new development), and (2) to start defining conservation as what it is, an essential mode of the development cycle that retains resources needed by the other two modes (new development and restorative development). As item 1 implies, the context of new development tends to devalue conservation, whereas the restorative development paradigm revalues it.

Conservation has a vitally important place in the scheme of things, but, to use a medical analogy, relying on it to keep the world’s ecosystems 239vigorous would be like relying only on safety precautions to maintain one’s health. Yes, it’s important to avoid accidents, but there are plenty of other threats to our health (pathogenic microbes, parasites, bullets, industrial toxins, etc.). What’s more, accidents do happen, in spite of precautions, so radical surgery is sometimes our only alternative to death. Saving only what’s healthy, while failing to actively restore what’s ailing, is not much of a wellness program.

How ineffective have most conservation efforts been? Rain forests and coral reefs have received a huge share of the conservation movement’s attention, so you’d think we would have made substantial progress in these areas, right? The sad truth is that, despite decades of hard work and sincere efforts, less than one-tenth of one percent of the world’s rain forests is under sustainable management, and 80 percent of the world’s coral reefs are dead, dying, or extremely sick.

Despite over two decades of constant international attention focused on Brazil’s Amazonian rain forests, deforestation there in the year 2000 was greater than in any of the four preceding years. The mean annual rate of gross deforestation in Brazil was 7,658 square miles (more than twice recent estimates). A year earlier, it had been 6,663 square miles per year. It’s been far worse in the forests that didn’t “enjoy” the limelight, such as in the Solomon Islands, where Mitsubishi has long been ravaging the homelands of many tribes and undermining the integrity of the national government.

Not even the CMVs (charismatic megavertebrates) that garnered superstar levels of media attention have made much progress; quite the reverse is often true. The plight of elephants has been in the news for a quarter of a century, yet “[m]uch of what has changed has been for the worse,” says Steve Osofsky of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Vietnam, for instance, was down to 150 wild elephants in 2000, a tenth of the 1990 population. Everyone’s favorite poster-child, the giant panda, is in similar trouble, despite its having been the logo of the largest conservation NGO in the world. Imagine what has been happening to the smaller, less-glamorous species that haven’t “benefited” similarly from having so many champions, so much public funding, and so much sympathy.

The Restoration Economy (at least, that part of it dealing with the natural environment) is based on the kind of honesty demonstrated in Osofsky’s statement. We must not confuse our love of conservation’s goals with a love of tools and methods associated with those goals that have now proved ineffective. For instance, the United States has received 240

much praise for its system of national parks, preserves, and wilderness areas, but the focus has been too much on quantity, and too little on quality and connectivity. A 2001 study by the U.S. Geological Survey documented what biologists had long suspected: the lands set aside for wildlife were generally selected for their lack of interest to developers or resource extraction companies, not for their biodiversity or other ecological value.

Trying harder at the wrong activity isn’t going to help much, just as digging a deeper hole in the wrong place won’t uncover the treasure. The partnering of conservation with restoration has begun just in time. Of course, it’s only “just in time” if you don’t mind chalking off as unimportant the 800 or more recently expired mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish species, and a larger number of plant, insect, and microorganism species. Those are only the known losses (or those intelligently surmised to be lost): species that went extinct before they were discovered and classified probably outnumber the known.

Conservation of the natural environment is obviously essential, because maintenance/conservation is the second basic “mode” of the development life cycle, but we need to stop thinking it’s the only tool we have with which to “save Nature.” In fact, it’s often not even the best tool for rescuing nature, considering the present dire state of affairs.

Conservation is more appropriate early in the economic development of a country, when there is plenty to conserve. After widespread damage has been inflicted, conservation must be teamed with restorative development in order to save what’s left, and to retrieve some of what should never have been lost. Depending on conservation alone, when the natural world is under attack from all sides, is like an army’s relying solely on defensive maneuvers, never taking the offensive, even when the enemy is vulnerable. Expanding conserved areas, by restoring degraded land and water surrounding remnant ecosystems, is the strategy of the twenty-first century.

241

Vast expanses of dead land, polluted water, and severely damaged ecosystems await restoration—far in excess of those that are in pristine condition awaiting protection. Conserving many of these ecosystems would be like embalming a corpse: it keeps the smell from getting worse, but it doesn’t bring them back to life. When keystone species are missing and macroenvironmental changes have taken place (such as global climate change), remnant ecosystems can do little self-repair, unless one assumes a million-year viewpoint. Such damaged ecosystems have small hope of returning to a state of health, nor can they expand their borders on any practical timeline; at least, not without active assistance.

Some intellectual purists point to our ignorance of natural system function, saying we should trust nature to heal itself. This makes for pretty philosophy, but such a cold, ivory-tower approach ignores the unconscionable suffering of wildlife every moment of every day, as well as the simple, bumper-sticker-obvious fact that extinction is forever. Sure, nature in general will eventually rebuild and create new species, but cavalierly chalking off the chimpanzee, the jabiru stork, or the hawksbill turtle makes me shudder in revulsion.

I must confess some queasiness about talk that combines gardening concepts with wilderness. Attempting to re-create wildness seems the worst form of hubris: the kind that results from blending arrogance with ignorance. But I travel too much, and spend too much time in what’s left of the wild, to indulge in the paralyzing luxury of such sentiments. Massive, immediate intervention is necessary. 242

Fortunately, much of the philosophical clash is mere semantics: the simple truth is that we can’t create wildness, any more than we can create a zucchini. Just as the best doctors focus more on empowering the body to heal itself, rather than allowing their egos to convince them that they are doing the healing, so, too, with ecological restoration: all we can do is give nature the ingredients, assistance, and time needed to do the job. The difference between a wilderness area and an area undergoing ecological restoration is often just a matter of how long the component ecosystems have had to develop and express themselves, and to work out their relationships with each other.

I’ve seen what’s possible when open-minded, highly knowledgeable, learning-oriented people work with nature to repair what others have destroyed. These restoration ecologists are not just helping nature heal her wounds: they are building the knowledge that future generations will need for survival.

The grandest, most efficient, and most intelligent ecological restoration vision is probably that of The Wildlands Project, the brainchild of Dr. Reed Noss and legendary conservationist Dave Foreman. It dreams of connecting protected areas via a network of strategically located wild farms, restored habitat, parks, and other corridors. It restores North America’s ecological functions by restoring its flows.

The necessary connectivity would come primarily from restoring the land between protected areas, thus creating a functional whole of all public and private protected lands. The project’s slogan is “reconnect, restore, rewild.” “Rewilding” is an emergent property, deriving from the size and roadlessness of a protected area, the presence of top predators (wolves, grizzlies, and pumas), and the age of its restoration.

We are in a most severe ecological crisis. In any crisis, continued reliance on inappropriate solutions is every bit as dangerous as failure to address the causes. The heroes of conservation have done a wonderful job of identifying the causes over the past few decades, but they have been crippled by a dearth of efficacious remedies.

THE DANGERS OF RESTORATION

Reparation of new development’s rampage, as well as reconstruction of the world in the wake of disasters and war, are both so profitable that a dark thought has probably occurred to you: Industrial leaders might, after reading this book, simply create “restoration divisions” to complement their “destruction divisions.” Less profitable modes (such as conservation Ecological Restoration 243or peace) would go by the wayside. Many would say this is already the way of the world.

An example is West Virginia, where state policy requires the restoration of streams and mountaintops that have been damaged by coal mining. But that same policy allows companies to mine via the “mountaintop removal” process, which is even worse than strip-mining. As West Virginia Secretary of State Ken Hechler says of the restoration that follows this horrendous damage, “It’s like putting lipstick on a corpse.” Fortunately, the coal industry’s stranglehold on West Virginia’s younger politicians is beginning to slip, so such egregious examples of misusing restoration to green-light unnecessary destruction will hopefully disappear.

Restoration-as-a-profitable-substitute-for-conservation is certainly attractive—even irresistible—to leaders in the new development realm. There’s nothing theoretical about it, either: witness how so many of the twentieth-century’s worst polluters landed 9- and 10-digit SuperFund contracts to clean up their own pollution. Short-circuiting this deadly feedback loop is actually quite simple, though not necessarily easy. The solution comprises three steps, which will be revealed a few pages hence.

As discussed earlier, restorative development is the mirror image of new development. It’s every bit as dynamic economically, but it moves in the “opposite direction,” increasing rather than decreasing resources, which makes it eminently sustainable. Thus, only restorative development has the power to stand up to new development; conservation gets trampled almost every time. But conservation plus restorative development… ah, now, there’s a marriage made in heaven.

HOW ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION AND CONSERVATION ARE TYING THE KNOT

The landmark (and still very relevant) 1993 book Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes was the first to directly address the relationship of restoration to preservation, compiling essays from a range of viewpoints. But it only dealt with ecology. The realm of restorative development includes the built environment—along with the socioeconomic environment that emerges from the interaction of the two—so let’s address the argument on all of these fronts.

Restoration Resolves Two “Intractable” Conservation Problems

Restorative development helps overcome two of conservation’s biggest problems: (1) what to do with small but unique pieces of habitat, and (2) how to justify the price of conservation. In nature, size matters … a lot. If a tract of property isn’t large enough to withstand the encroachment of its borders by suburban or agricultural chemicals, domestic animals, poachers, etc., it is normally sacrificed to development, or allowed to degrade into pretty but biologically barren greenspace. It’s hard to get support for a conservation project that has no biological future. (On the other hand, we shouldn’t let the general rule about the value of size blind us to the value that some small reserves can have. When the goal is to restore individual species—especially birds, which are so mobile—rather than entire ecosystems, very small patches of strategically placed food-producing and nesting habitat can have an enormous impact.)

These small “islands” of nature, despite being surrounded by development, often contain endemic species that are on the verge of extinction. Or, they might be the last remaining example of what used to be the dominant ecosystem (ecosystems come in “species,” too, and can also suffer extinction). Such little ecosystem patches, although of little value or viability as a park or wilderness area, can have untold value as seed stock for restoration projects that seek to bring back such ecosystems. Their small size is thus transformed from a liability to an asset, 245because it makes them affordable. Combining their bargain price with the “newfound” biological importance they have to restoration, saving these postage-stamp-sized patches of ecological history suddenly becomes far easier (such ecological restoration is discussed more fully in Chapter 8).

Restoration thus increases both the biological and the economic value of conservation projects. Justifying the “cost” of conservation has always been an elusive goal: it might, in fact, be conservationists’ single greatest barrier. This is another example of operating according to new development’s rules. Conservation actually has no intrinsic cost: What’s mistakenly called an expense is actually just a forfeited or delayed new-development opportunity.

The cost of restoring land is real, however, and it’s much higher than the “cost” of conserving it. Yet restoration gets funded with comparative ease, because it’s more politically saleable: people almost universally get excited at the prospect of restoring something. “Merely” conserving it too frequently elicits yawns. This is especially true in the United States, where we love action (and spending money) above all else.

Restoration can, in fact, be astronomically costly when the standards are high, such as remediating a contaminated site for agricultural or residential use. The lower standards of decontamination involved in turning a brownfield into recreational greenspace, or into a site for new industry, is much cheaper. But even the cheapest restoration projects cost far more than simply protecting the land from pollution or destruction in the first place. The key point is that partnering conservation with restoration allows both to do their jobs more effectively.

Conservation-Restoration Partnership Strategy #1: True Costing of New Development

Again, restoration is usually far more expensive than conservation, but the costs are generally known. New development, on the other hand, has twisted and manipulated our current accounting systems to hide the costs of pollution, sprawl, and extraction. This Soviet-style system passes the costs to society (or future generations), while the income accrues to the politically connected companies. Most extraction firms—oil, gas, coal, mining, lumber, and nuclear power—are built on this model. But, as with the Soviet Union, this model is on the verge of imploding, and for much the same reason: increased transparency is making its victims aware of their being violated. 246

True costing (also called “full costing”) allows society, and responsible businesses, to make better-informed decisions by reflecting new development’s real costs. By doing so, it lowers the comparative cost of both conservation and restoration. In fact, under true costing, restoration funding would already be figured into the life-cycle cost of new development’s damage. As a result, many ill-advised new-development projects would never get financed in the first place, and those that did would automatically fund the eventual restoration up front.

The true costs of new development need to appear in the form of higher prices for its products and services, rather than in our tax bills (to support government funded projects like the Everglades restoration, Superfund, etc.). The clandestine manner in which new development firms’ costs are currently underwritten by the public constitutes subsidization… corporate welfare.

Restorative development’s treasure trove of new revenue opportunities offers a migration and evolution path for those who would otherwise lose out in the transition from “New Development Economy” to “Restoration Economy.” With true costing doing the pushing, and with restoration opportunities doing the pulling, new development-based firms will be weaned from subsidies and other government welfare, and it will be “restore or starve.” The result will be what conservationists always dreamed of: a massive reduction in wasteful, polluting industries, and a great reduction of threats to greenfields.

Conservation-Restoration Partnership Strategy #2: Recognition of Conservation’s Essential Role in Restorative Development

Extinct species can’t be restored (see Chapter 8 for a partial exception). Ecosystems that no longer exist can’t be expanded or replicated. Similarly, in the built environment, historic buildings that are demolished can’t be rehabilitated and reused. But, as we saw in post-WWII Warsaw, our built heritage can be rebuilt, provided we have the original plans, materials, and skills. Likewise, conservation of ecosystems, combined with an understanding of restorative processes, provides the components, information, and skills for restoration.

Knowledge deficits are an especially important factor in ecological restoration: We are decades away from a real understanding of the complexities of ecosystem functionality. We have little choice but to let nature do the bulk of the restoration work, while we merely provide the opportunities 247and reduce the constraints. As already noted, the greatest value of conservation projects might soon be their role as “seed banks” for future restoration projects.

Conservation for the sake of conservation is fine, but conservation for the sake of restoration has far more promise. It’s like the difference between perpetually leaving our savings in a bank account, and saving that money for the eventual creation of a business that enhances our income, lifestyle, freedom, and personal satisfaction (and which allows us to put more into our savings account as a result).

The loss of genetic resources in the natural world is mirrored by the loss of cultural assets and knowledge-based resources in the built and socioeconomic environments, and the result is similar: loss of restoration resources and opportunities. The demolition of one-of-a-kind built structures, just as in the extinction of species, therefore goes from being “merely” a loss of cultural and natural assets, to a loss of ability to restore. There is a powerful psychological difference between a restorable and an irrecoverable loss: We humans usually adjust quickly to the loss of our assets, but we rebel at a visceral level to the loss of our potential. It’s like the difference between getting an infection, and having one’s immune system impaired: One merely makes us sick. The other destroys our ability to regain health.

The penalties for destroying irreplaceable resources must therefore skyrocket. They must reflect the loss of that asset, the theft of our capabilities, and our abandonment of hope for the return of those assets in the future.

Conservation-Restoration Partnership Strategy #3: Appropriate Use of Restoration (Recognizing Its Legitimate Roles and Limitations)

In his response to Professor Loucks’ humility-engendering caution above, pioneering ecological restorationist Frederic Turner responded (also in Beyond Preservation), “It also rather misses the point to argue, as Orie Loucks does, that there exist ecological ‘originals’ of which humanly 248

mediated reproductions can only be copies; part of the new paradigm is precisely the reminder that nature is already in the business of reproduction and copying, and thus the linear and dualistic distinction between authentic original and artificial reproduction is profoundly questionable.”

Even Loucks, also from his article quoted previously (and immediately after he compared restored landscapes to art forgeries), admitted, “One truth is that the remaining natural systems dispersed across our landscapes show the subtle effects of pesticides, air pollution, exotic species, and the absence of fire. Virtually no site is truly an ‘original.’ Some level of restoration is a sine qua non for the preservation of natural systems, as it is for great works of art.”

The argument over what is “original” also tends to obscure the obvious: the vast majority of restorative processes are actually carried out by the organisms, not by us. The fact that humans might determine when and where a plant should grow doesn’t diminish the plant’s own power. Its multimillion-year-old DNA, along with its DNA-derived chemicals, mechanisms, and behaviors, still remove nitrates from the water, still perform carbon or heavy metal sequestration, still produce oxygen and biomass, and still perform the other functions vital to a restorative process. Ecological restorationists are installing natural, adaptable beings, not machines.

But Loucks had a good point, nonetheless: we must clearly acknowledge that a restored ecosystem will (when young, anyway) usually be— biologically, economically, and aesthetically—a very poor substitute for a well-conserved, centuries-old one. On the other hand, a failed attempt to restore an ecosystem (when properly documented) is usually a far superior learning experience to a failed attempt at conservation, and that knowledge enhances both future restoration and conservation.

For at least the next four decades, restorative development, especially of ecosystems, should thus be treasured as much for the knowledge it generates as for the tangible results it produces. What’s more, the value of that learning must be accounted for as an asset in our financial ledgers, and the insights must be codified and taught in our universities. Using restorative development as the ultimate learning experience also helps us avoid that most toxic of compounds, ignorance plus arrogance, which typifies so much of the new development realm’s business, science, engineering, and government players.

One last time: ecological restoration is a lousy substitute for effective conservation. I can’t say that too strongly or too frequently. One of the defining characteristics of complex adaptive systems is that they cannot be reversed: too many of a system’s current features—whether it be a metropolitan economy or a wetland—are based on phenomena that emerged and disappeared without a trace along the path of its evolution. That said, it must also be reiterated that there are precious few opportunities these days for effective conservation, sans restoration. Teaming restoration with conservation can combine the profitability of restorative development with the biological value of conservation.

The Future of Conservation NGOs

Despite this chapter’s litany of conservation troubles, there are, of course, bright spots. Some court-based activities do a lot of good, such as those of efficient little groups like the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Some of the best results have been achieved by habitat purchase programs, the premiere one being The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which, as we’ve discussed, has become much more restoration-focused.

Like most highly successful organizations, TNC must reinvent itself regularly, evolving to keep pace with a changing world. TNC’s original strategy was to purchase discrete parcels of important habitat threatened by development and protect them from human intervention, letting nature 250

run its course. This strategy was later modified to allow sustainable resource extraction in cases where this was vital to project financing or community acceptance.

The “prime habitat purchase” element of the strategy worked well only when TNC could afford a huge tract of land. The “walled-off,” passive management approach didn’t work very well, especially on smaller properties. Many human-caused factors—invasive species, domestic cats, feral pigs, global warming, etc.—ignore fences and require vigorous corrective action. “Hands-off” is largely synonymous with degradation in today’s protected areas.

TNC has realized that isolated reserves, no matter how numerous, seldom save species, and never save “wildness”: reserves need to be both expanded and connected. The most recent modification to TNC’s approach is a combination of restoration and active management. The switch was both rapid and quiet. As a longtime member, I never saw an official proclamation embracing restoration; I just noticed that restoration had become a component of an increasing percentage of new projects. Restoration has become a core practice at TNC. This greatly expanded the inventory of potential sites to purchase.

TNC’s effectiveness has been due largely to its talent for partnering with landowners, governments, and local NGOs. Its focus on habitat, rather than on species, is another distinguishing characteristic. Now, TNC’s projects are increasingly integrated, its properties are more linked to other protected areas, and its strategy is more restoration-oriented. Taken together, these changes could soon make The Nature Conservancy the leading environmental organization of the Restoration Economy.

Conservation often resembles the Maginot Line; passive, immovable, and easily bypassed. That’s not to say that those who fight for conservation are passive: There’s nothing passive about the tireless courtroom efforts of groups like NRDC and EDF, nor of the often-heroic, physically dangerous awareness-raising services performed by Greenpeace volunteers. Even the delaying tactics of monkeywrenchers like Earth First can be of tremendous value when the courts move too slowly to prevent the destruction of an irreplaceable treasure.

It’s the mode of conservation I’m referring to as passive, compared to the other two development modes: new and restorative. Those who work in the conservation field full-time are probably thinking of exceptions to this provocative statement right now, but a closer look at these “exceptions” will probably reveal many of them to actually be either active or passive restoration projects masquerading as conservation.

251

For those who make their living from wildlife conservation, it’s fortunate that most restoration projects involve conservation. Protecting pools and patches of genetic resources is essential to restoration efforts: allowing local wild ecosystems to seed restoration projects is vastly preferable, and far more economically viable, than relying on translocation or captive breeding. Captive breeding is, of course, preferable to extinction, but only if the ultimate goal is repopulation of the wild. Otherwise, it’s just torture for the animals, and entertainment/guilt assuagement for us.

The present nascent state of restorative development (compared to where it will be in a decade) means that much, if not most, ecological restoration is carried out under the auspices of conservation groups, since they are already in position to perceive the need and act on it. Many of these groups, like TNC, have apparently joined the “restoration revolution” with no second thoughts. They don’t have the definitional (or self-image) problems that plague some conservation NGOs. Their publications are full of restoration projects that are clearly labeled as such.

As the realm of restorative development grows and matures, this situation will reverse, with most conservation being performed by ecological restoration NGOs. Restoration NGOs will have vastly more resources at their command, especially if they specialize in—or have alliances with— organizations that specialize in multidimensional projects that integrate the restoration of the built and natural environments (which we will discuss in the following chapter). Of course, some of these restoration groups will be former conservation groups that successfully made the strategic switch in time.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Conservation is still mistakenly seen as an expensive sacrifice, but ecological restoration is correcting that, in two ways: (1) the far higher costs of ecological restoration make conservation look like the bargain it is, and (2) by relying on them for seed stock, restoration greatly enhances the biological value of small conservation projects.

I find conserving and restoring our world far more promising and exciting than continuing the losing proposition of a solitary focus on conservation, and it appears I’m not alone. Being on the “side of right” is little consolation for failing to save a million-year-old species. It doesn’t much matter whether it was destroyed to benefit a company that probably won’t exist in 20 years, or destroyed due to a philosophical 252conflict among government agencies and conservation NGOs. Expanding and reviving ecosystems is something most corporations, agencies, and NGOs can support… and already are.

Destruction-restoration is the most basic and constant mode of nature. Destruction is an integral part of all three modes of the development life cycle. It’s obvious that new development often destroys before it builds, but this is also true of much restorative development (dam removal, stream reshaping, etc.). It’s even true of maintenance/conservation: Maintenance workers cut grass and remove old wallpaper, and conservation managers burn land and destroy invasive animal and plant species. As Jim Bishop of the Department of Energy said in the January 2002 issue of Wired magazine, “There’s no such thing as an old plant in the ocean. Each week the biomass changes.”¹

Let’s now move on to a closely related subject: sustainable development. Understanding the difference between conservation and sustainable development will be critical to shaping the development and environmental policies of this century—indeed, of the entire millennium.

---

¹ Jennifer Hillner, “Testing the Waters,” Wired, January 2002.