Protecting the Shifting Quilt

Abstract

If there is one point on which the holist and the individualist can agree, it is that humans have exerted an unprecedented intensity and variety of stress on ecological systems. This is regrettable because it jeopardizes ecosystem services, threatens the quality of human life, and ultimately influences the number of humans our planet can support. It has also pushed numerous non-human species to and past the brink of extinction. Anthropogenic stress has intensified in the past century, even as we have struggled to understand these things we call ecosystems. Our recognition of ecological crisis – late in the game, perhaps, but in earnest – has generated questions of ecosystem status and performance. In the United States and around the world certain aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems have been placed under various levels of protection from human encroachment and development. But protection often seems inadequate. Protection will not immediately negate a history of degradation, nor will it necessarily reverse current anthropogenic stress. And so we feel compelled to act. What can we do to define and achieve recovery in degraded ecosystems?