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Making Nature Whole pp 201–216Cite as

Current Thinking

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Part of the book series: The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration ((SPER))

Abstract

As its history makes clear, ecocentric restoration is an elusive idea that entails troubling contradictions and ambiguities, challenging not only the land manager but also the environmental philosopher. The result, as restoration has gained importance both as a conservation strategy and as a buzzword, has been a fascinating discussion, at times rising to the temperature of a debate, over the ends and means of restoration. Here we conclude our story of the development of this idea with an overview of this discussion during the past decade or so.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    a. www.sanctuary.org.nz/Site/Conservation_and_Research/Restoration /The_fence.aspx. For a discussion of ideas about restoration of prehuman ecosystems in New Zealand developed by paleontologistMattMcGlone, see Lesley Head, Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Change (London: Arnold, 2000), 103–5.

  2. 2.

    b. Andrew Curry, “Where the Wild Things Are,” Discover (March 2010): 58–65.

  3. 3.

    c. Sergey A. Zimov, “Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth’s Ecosystem,” Science 308 (May 2005); www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5723/796.

  4. 4.

    d. Michael A. Soulé, “The Onslaught of Alien Species, and Other Challenges in the Coming Decades,” Conservation Biology 4 (September 1990): 235; Paul S. Martin and David A. Burney, “Bring Back the Elephants,” Whole Earth (Spring 2000), http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2100/article/16/bring.back.the.elephants#content (accessed March 12, 2011).

  5. 5.

    e. Josh Donlan et al., “Re-wilding North America,” Nature 436, no. 18 (August 2005): 913.

  6. 6.

    f. Anne Matthews, Where the Buffalo Roam: The Storm over the Revolutionary Plan to Restore America’s Great Plains (New York: Grove, 1992).

  7. 7.

    g. See Peter A. Bowler, “In Defense of Disturbed Land,” Ecological Restoration 10, no. 2 (1992): 144–49; Ikuyo Okada, “Restoration and Management of Coppices in Japan,” Ecological Restoration 17, no. 1–2 (1999): 31–38.

  8. 8.

    h. William R. Jordan III, “Appellplatz,” Ecological Restoration 15, no. 2 (1997): 115.

  9. 9.

    a. Robert Elliot, “Faking Nature,” Inquiry 25 (1982): 81–93; also Robert Elliot, Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration (London: Routledge, 1997).

  10. 10.

    b. Versions of “The Big Lie,” Katz’s early paper on this topic, appeared in Research in Philosophy and Technology 12 (1992); in Restoration and Management Notes 9, no. 2 (1991): 90–96; and in Katz’s collection of essays Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1997), 93–107. For a discussion of these ideas, see Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, Natural Process and Ecological Restoration (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 218–21.

  11. 11.

    c. Joaquim Woelschke-Bulmahn, “Some Notes on the Mania for Native Plants in Germany,” Landscape Journal 1, no. 2 (1992): 116–26; “The ‘Wild Garden’ and the ‘Nature Garden’: Aspects of the Garden Ideology of William Robinson and Willy Lange,” Journal of Garden History 12, no. 3 (1992): 183– 206; Michael Pollan, “Against Nativism,” New York Times Magazine, May 15, 1994. Bill Jordan responds to this article in “The Nazi Connection,” Restoration & Management Notes 12, no. 2: 113. Pollan explores the idea of restoration sympathetically in his Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), see especially chapter 10.

  12. 12.

    d. Jan Dizard, “Uneasy Relationship between Ecology, History, and Restoration,” in Marcus Hall, ed., Restoration and History: The Search for a Useable Environmental Past (New York: Routledge, 2010), 154–63.

  13. 13.

    e. R. H. Hilderbrand, A. C.Watts, and A.M. Randle, “TheMyths of Restoration Ecology,” Ecology and Society 10, no. 1 (2005), www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art19/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The New Academy for Nature and Culture, Woodstock, IL, USA

    W. R. Jordan III

  2. Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    G. M. Lubick

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  1. W. R. Jordan III
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  2. G. M. Lubick
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Correspondence to W. R. Jordan III .

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© 2011 Island Press

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Jordan, W.R., Lubick, G.M. (2011). Current Thinking. In: Making Nature Whole. The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-042-2_11

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