Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration

Nature by Design

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Nature by Design People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration

Eric Higgs

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

© 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Higgs, Eric S. Nature by design : people, natural process, and ecological design / Eric Higgs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). SBN 0-262-08316-7 (hc. : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-58226-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Restoration ecology. I. Title. QH541.15.R45 H54 2003 333.7¢153¢—dc21 2002040783

To the Society for Ecological Restoration, an organization in which activists rub shoulders with scientists, theory meets action, and hope overtakes despair

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Contents

List of Figures xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 Outline of the Book

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1 A Tale of Two Wildernesses: Jasper National Park, Meet Disney World 15 The Bear in the Kitchen 16 The Palisade 22 A Landscape of Threats 27 Freak Landscapes 35 Restoring an Idea or a Place? 40 Wilderness as Theme 46 Colonizing the Imagination 49 Celebration? 52 One Wilderness or Two? 55 2 Boundary Conditions 59 Florid(ian) Images 59 Meandering Ambitions: The Kissimmee River (Florida) Restoration 64 Beyond the Ecological Curtain: The Morava River Restoration, Slovak Republic 68 Gardening or Restoration? The Robert Starbird Dorney Garden, Ontario, Canada 73 Normal History 78 Contingency and Ideals 82

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3 What Is Ecological Restoration? 93 Words and Taxonomy 96 The Duck Test 101 A Legacy of Definitions 107 Process and Product 110 Assisted Recovery 112 Management 116 Historical Range of Variability 118 Sustainable Cultural Practices 119 Ecological Integrity 122 The Evolution of Words and Worlds 124 4 Historicity and Reference in Ecological Restoration Photographing the Past 132 Nostalgia 143 Narrative Continuity 145 Place 148 Time Depth 154 Reference Conditions 158 Taking History Seriously 170 5 Denaturing Restoration 179 Lines across the Path 179 Commodification 188 A Taut Line: What Kind of Science Do Ecological Restorationists Require? 195 The Commodification of Nature 203 The Commodification of Practice 206 The Promise and Problems of Ecological Restoration 6 Focal Restoration 225 Discovery Island 226 Ecocultural Restoration 236 Focal Restoration 241 Ritual and Restoration 249 Participation in Restoration 255 Landscape Coevolution 259

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7 Nature by Design 265 Remembrances of Landscapes Past 265 The Ambiguity of Design 270 Wild Design 277 Restoration as Conversation: A Storied Landscape Notes 291 Bibliography Index 335

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List of Figures

1.1 Map of Jasper National Park 19 1.2 View of the town of Jasper from Old Fort Point 30 1.3 View of Talbot Lake from Mount Cinquefoil 32 1.4 Paired mosaic showing prominent changes in vegetation 34 1.5 View of the upper Athabasca Valley from Mount Esplanade 37 3.1 Proposed taxonomic relationships for ecological restoration 98 3.2 Two scales: ecological integrity and historical fidelity 127 4.1 Example of photographic cartography 134 4.2 Portion of 1915 topographic map 135 4.3 Paired photographs from Powerhouse Cliff 138 4.4 The past and future shown as two related continuums 147 4.5 Four sources of reference information 166 4.6 Paired ground-level photographs 168 5.1 Expanded conception of ecological restoration 221 6.1 A model of ecocultural restoration 238 6.2 A model of landscape evolution 261 7.1 View of the town of Jasper facing north from Whistler’s mountain 268 7.2 The four keystone concepts of good ecological restoration 271

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Acknowledgments

This book had its first glimmer in 1990 on a city bus in Vancouver. Langdon Winner and I were playing hooky from the Moral Philosophy and the Public Domain conference. I was telling Langdon about my ideas on ecological restoration, and how the meanings of restoration and nature were shifting as restoration became an increasingly technological practice. He said, “Why don’t you write a book on the subject?” It took another five years before the ideas and circumstances fell into place. The project began when I was a visiting scholar in the Science, Technology and Society Program at MIT in 1995. I am grateful to MIT professors Leo Marx and Kristina Hill (now at the University of Washington), Harvard professor Larry Buell, and Wesleyan professor Joseph Rouse. Work continued in 1996 at the Maurice Young Center for Applied Ethics. Michael MacDonald, Michael Burgess, and Peter Danielson contributed to a superb intellectual atmosphere for writing. The book would have been finished sooner had an utterly compelling field-based project not arisen. I spent four summers in the field, the last two ascending mountains in Jasper National Park with Jeanine Rhemtulla to repeat a series of over 700 survey photographs from 1915. Needless to say, this clambering ate into the writing of the book, but I think both I and the book are richer for the experience. The big pieces of the book came together during a six-month sabbatical leave in 2000 in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. I was surrounded by people concerned with restoration in one form or another, including Don Eastman (director of the Restoration of Natural Systems program), Brenda Beckwith, David

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Bodaly, Cheryl Bryce, Kim Chambers, Wendy Cocksedge, Patricia Edmonds, Ann Garibaldi, Trevor Lantz, Lehna Malmkvist, Carrina Maslovat, Nancy Turner and Paul West. My institutional base from 1990 to 2001 was the University of Alberta. I was given the opportunity to do interdisciplinary research and appreciate the generosity of many colleagues: David Anderson, Pamela Asquith, Dave Cruden, Linda Fedigan, Milton Freeman, Harvey Friebe, Jim Hoover, Steve Hrudey, Ron Kratochvil, Hank Lewis, Peter Murphy, and Carl Urion. Graduate students have been a constant source of inspiration: Claudio Aporta, Trish Bailey, Ausra Burns, Craig Campbell, Jennifer Cypher, Ginger Gibson, Lori Kiel, Christina Lindsay, Tricia Marck, Lisa Meekison, Nickie Miller, Carol Murray, and Gaby Zezulka-Mailloux. Jenaya Webb deserves special thanks for her unstinting help with logistics, lab and office management, and problem solving. Trudi Smith helped in the preparation of the illustrations for this book. Present and former staff in Jasper National Park helped at many points along the way: Peter Achuff, Jeff Anderson, Cynthia Ball, Jim Bertwistle, Kim Forster, Ben Gadd, Paul Galbraith, Alex Kolesch, Rick Kubian, George Mercer, Leigh Pitoulis, and Mike Wesbrook. I have benefited from conversations with fellow members of the Society for Ecological Restoration, including James Aronson, Andrew Bergen, Tony Bradshaw, Andy Clewell, Wally Covington, Don Falk, George Gann, Steve Gatewood, Marc Hall, Bill Halvorson, Steven Handel, Jim Harris, Donna Havinga, Kristina Hill, Andrew Light, Nik Lopoukhine, Dennis Martinez, Jonathan Perry, Edith Read, John Rieger, Ted Shear, Julie St. John, and Kellie Westervelt. Financial support for this project was provided by several grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, fellowships from the Maurice Young Center for Applied Ethics, and a Lansdowne lectureship at the University of Victoria. James Aronson, Brenda Beckwith, Albert Borgmann, Cheryl Bryce, André Clewell, Don Falk, Marc Hall, Alex Kolesch, Ian MacLaren, Jeanine Rhemtulla, Nancy Turner, Viv Wilson, and Anne Wong read chapter drafts. I am grateful also to three MIT Press reviewers who offered good advice for honing the final version.

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Staff at MIT Press were a pleasure to work with, and I appreciate in particular Clay Morgan, Sandra Minkkinen, and Elizabeth Judd. A few deserve special mention for their pivotal role in helping me develop this work. I have already mentioned Langdon Winner for his advice on fusing technology and nature studies. Albert Borgmann has been a mentor since graduate school, and his theories of technology are central to my arguments. Dick Buchanan pressed me on issues of design. Larry Haworth, who along with Robert Dorney cosupervised my doctoral studies on landscape change and technological society, stepped in after Dorney’s sudden death in 1987 and ensured the completion of my dissertation. Haworth’s ideas show through in this book, too, and I will never forget his kindness and professionalism. William Jordan encouraged my earliest writings on restoration and bolstered my courage in making controversial claims about restoration. Ian MacLaren taught me about good scholarship and faith. Jeanine Rhemtulla, an ecologist with whom I climbed so many mountains in Jasper National Park, listened, read, and understood my synthesis—this was a true gift. David Schindler, my partner for almost a decade in a joint graduate seminar at the University of Alberta, taught me about ecology, good science, and scientific activism. Nancy Turner shared her wisdom about ethnobotany and the cultural dimensions of ecological restoration. Sheila Gallagher and her family offered much to the early stages of this project with hospitality and support. I finished the writing at Berkenfels, near Ottawa, the family cottage of Stephanie Cairns, and my book was not the first to be completed in that loving, magical place. David and the late Isabel Higgs, my parents, and Sally Thornton, who has been a second mother to me, never wavered in their support. I am, all in all, very fortunate.

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Introduction

Many environmental books begin with a desperate attempt to convince us that we are either not sufficiently aware of the problems facing us or are not acting effectively to correct them. This one takes a different approach. I presume that everyone who picks up this book is doing so because they are searching for a better path, away from the problems and also from the habits of thinking that make those problems so intractable in the first place. You would be unlikely to turn to this book if you thought all was well. Ecological restoration is about making damaged ecosystems whole again by arresting invasive and weedy species, reintroducing missing plants and animals to create an intact web of life, understanding the changing historical conditions that led to present conditions, creating or rebuilding soils, eliminating hazardous substances, ripping up roads, and returning natural processes such as fire and flooding to places that thrive on these regular pulses. Interest in restoration has exploded in the last few years, following a gradual buildup of interest and expertise in past decades. The Society for Ecological Restoration, the lead international organization promoting restoration, was formed in 1987. The roots of restoration dig deep into cultures around the world, and restorationists are just beginning to learn how much is possible when we put our minds and hearts to the task of undoing the mistakes of the past. In studying and practicing restoration I have learned of profound cultural shifts accompanying the ecological work. Thousands of restoration projects take place in North America every year. Many are communitybased efforts that rely on volunteer support. The act of pulling weeds, planting, configuring a stream bank to match historical characteristics,

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or participating in a prescribed fire that returns an old process to the land helps develop a ferocious dedication to place. By investing labor one becomes part of that place. I live on the west coast of Canada, in Victoria, British Columbia, and there is nothing quite so rewarding for local restorationists as learning that salmon have returned to spawn in a stream long dormant. There is more than technical proficiency in achieving these results. To restore a run of salmon means changing the structure and ecological characteristics of a stream, but it also entails reconfiguring the economic conditions and land-use practices that determine the amount of silt ending up on the spawning beds as well as the social relationships that make up the economy. To change one thing in a complex system, as all of us have learned, means changing the whole system. In some ways I find the cultural dimensions of restoration as exciting as the ecological ones. By restoring ecosystems we regenerate old ways or create new ones that bring us closer to natural processes and to one another. This is the power and promise of ecological restoration. Critics worry that restoration will dilute our efforts at preservation and conservation and lead to an even deeper technological attitude toward nature. For the most part the problem of dilution is turning out not to be substantial. Some environmentalists opposed restoration vociferously in the early days of the Society for Ecological Restoration (circa late 1980s). What caught restoration advocates off guard was that the detractors were the very people from whom one would most expect support. Pockets remain of those who believe that restoration would blunt preservationist ambitions. For the most part the detractors, including the late David Brower, have embraced restoration. Restoration works in conjunction with preservation, as is evident in continental-scale ambitions such as the Yellowstone-to-Yukon corridor proposed in North America. Besides, we are clearly running out of places for which preservation is a viable option. I am more concerned about the second kind of objection, that restoration offers an apology for technological excess. By becoming more adept at manipulating ecosystems are we not running the risk of becoming better at controlling ecosystems for our own purposes? It gets even murkier. What if restoration is a mirror of our cultural values about

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nature? Does it not follow that even well-conceived restoration projects are in fact just expressions of human will? How do we honor our relations to place through restoration? These questions energize my concerns about the future of restoration. Moreover, this is the theme that runs throughout the entire book. Do not misunderstand me on this point. It is not that I am arguing against restoration; instead I am pointing out an Achilles’ heel, a tendency within contemporary practice that if not resolved will denature our best intentions. If anything I want restoration to succeed wildly. Restoration offers me the hope that the patterns that have made people so toxic to natural systems can be changed. And in the process we can learn how to live more generously with other living things. Ecological restoration is fast approaching a fork in the path (some would suggest the fork has already been passed), an image that came to my mind years ago sitting with good friends after a candlelit dinner in a small cabin on the Bruce Peninsula, the spit of land that cleaves Lake Huron from Georgian Bay in Canada. Someone had just finished reading several poems by Robert Frost, and again I was touched by the imagery of “The Road Not Taken.” I was completing my doctoral dissertation on landscape evolution in Bruce County and trying to figure out what possibilities lay ahead for a region devastated by intentions that came with people from away: first the displacement of First Nations by European settlers, then distant urbanization that used the resources of the county for feedstock, and finally the nuclear power plant that reshaped and ultimately withered the economy and culture of the region. The possibilities were difficult to imagine, but I knew in some way they had to spring from local sources and involve ecological restoration and cultural regeneration. People in Bruce County had been walking along the main path—what lay along “the one less traveled by?” On the main path beckons technological restoration with all the finery and sophistication expected of a practice that sops up our excesses. Here we find restoration megaprojects, mitigation initiatives, and expanding companies specializing in restoration. “If you destroy it, we can build it again,” is the ethos: confident, mainstream, and just a bit cocky. And what’s wrong with this? Isn’t more restoration better?

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I worry that we confuse grandeur with accomplishment and that we lose elements of participation and engagement that defined many early restoration projects. Focal restoration invites us along the other, less traveled path, the one of community engagement and local culture. To focus means to gather together, whether rays of light or a group of people. People connect more deeply with natural processes when they get their hands dirty, literally, and the lessons learned hold fast. Focal restoration is more precarious and difficult to nurture than other approaches to restoration. I share with many restoration practitioners the hope that our efforts will spread ecologically and socially and that complex new cultural activities that honor such efforts will emerge. For example, I hope that we will become accomplished in returning salmon to urban streams, and that we can restore connectivity to the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to let fierce creatures move with less restriction and at the same time learn to love this wildness genuinely and publicly. These are ambitious examples rooted deeply in communities, and they require the support of citizens, local organizations, and all levels of government and industry. Perhaps eventually the strength of community-based restoration would attract some of those who walk along the main path, and as they walk on over they will break up some of the pavement and allow wild plants and creatures to flourish. Focal restoration leads to one of four keystone concepts of ecological restoration: focal practice. To restore successfully in the long run, people need to be strongly committed to restoration, which points us back to participation and community support. Focal practice joins two traditional concepts, ecological integrity and historical fidelity, which underlie most definitions of restoration. Together these three concepts extend the usual reach of restoration beyond ecological or technical matters. There is one more crucial ingredient. I argue that restoration is about intention or design. Restoring well presupposes an awareness that what is done in the name of restoration constitutes a deliberate intervention. Acknowledging our role as designers of ecological and social processes lends humility to the already-daunting challenge of restoration. In the end it would be a failure if we did not recognize that the reality of nature and society are greater than our capacity to understand and manipulate

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them. In advocating design I am proposing wild design, the kind that operates in sympathy with the vitality of life. My interest in ecological restoration was sparked during my first year as a university student in the mid-1970s after a visit to the home of Robert Dorney, a professor of ecology and environmental planning at the University of Waterloo. He had bought a modest and unremarkable two-story house brand new in 1967. It sat along a street with homes that would be familiar to anyone who has ever lived in suburban North America: cookie-cutter designs, each with the same mown-grass landscaping. Dorney, to the chagrin of many neighbors, ripped up his lawn and planted what he called a “miniecosystem,” a small forest, prairie, and wetland in a hundredth of an acre! He tended the garden carefully, collecting new plants from salvage operations (including several threatened and endangered species), and thinning, weeding, and fussing as necessary. Twenty years later the garden sported over 150 plant species and some of the overstory trees had to be removed. His inspiration for this radical experiment came in part from his undergraduate studies in wildlife ecology in the late 1940s at the University of Wisconsin, when he was fortunate to take several courses from Aldo Leopold. Dorney remembered visits to the Arboretum in Madison, to see the early prairie restorations of John Curtis, Henry Greene, and Theodore Sperry. Dorney died in 1987 cutting down an apple tree in his backyard. Leopold died at the same age, fifty-nine, fighting a grass fire near his shack north of Madison. I took Dorney’s idea for a miniecosystem and created one in my parents’ front yard in Brantford, Ontario, just twenty miles away from Waterloo. It was my first attempt at anything approaching ecological restoration. The project flourished for several years with careful tending until the house was sold in the early 1980s. Despite careful explanations, the new owners backhoed the garden and returned the frontyard to mown grass. This was an early and painful lesson about the transience of contemporary life and the importance of communicating across cultures about the meaning of place. There is some consolation: a neighbor nearby took up the idea of natural gardening with gusto and commissioned an award-winning garden in her backyard.

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Transience has been part of my life, living south of Vancouver, north of Toronto, further west in southern Ontario, in New York State and Ohio, in Alberta, and most recently on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Over the last couple of years I have learned of ecological restoration projects near all my former homes—for example, Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the Black River in Ohio. Most dramatic for me was learning about Burns Bog, a wetland of major significance along the lower reach of the Fraser River in Delta, British Columbia, just south of Vancouver. I spent the first five years of my life in a small suburban community along the Fraser River. My childhood mental map suggested that we lived some distance from the river, but when I returned as an adult I realized the distance was just a few hundred yards. There was a cold snap one winter that lasted long enough to freeze the surface of a local pond, and my mother, who had grown up ice skating in the more wintry climes of eastern Canada, strapped me into training skates and we spent the afternoon on the ice. My memories of that experience are crystal clear, and I had no idea that it was an anomaly to skate on the lower mainland of British Columbia or that we were skating on what is now known to me as Burns Bog. I found this out just a couple of years ago when I made a presentation at the Helping the Land Heal conference in Victoria, British Columbia. A man approached me after the session and wanted to speak about a wetlands restoration project. He unrolled a large map, which had been produced on top of an aerial photograph. I asked him for some orientation, and when he said, “Here’s the town of Delta,” and I looked more closely, it was immediately apparent that the subject of a major restoration initiative had in fact been the scene of my first skating lesson thirty-five years earlier. So much whirled through my mind in that instant: the scope of landscape change from a small rural wetland to one surrounded and threatened by development, the way our values change about what is important, how it is that we reconnect with past landscapes, and the power of restoration to recover memory and sponsor hope. In half a lifetime, a place had gone from vestige to damage to restoration. These experiences have convinced me that restoration constitutes a calling as much as a profession. My intellectual development took some unusual turns and long detours, beginning in ecology and

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heading through philosophy and environmental planning until arriving, most recently, in anthropology. This is admittedly an odd placement for someone with interests in ecological restoration. Let me explain. Robert Dorney’s initial inspiration stayed with me, but for most of my education I regarded restoration and natural-areas protection work as avocational, something I would do on weekends and in my spare time. It was not until the latter part of my doctoral studies that restoration entered my formal line of thinking. It became a way of conceptualizing different meanings for nature, a metaphor for appropriate intervention in natural processes, and an animating social idea. I mentioned earlier that restoration found its way into my dissertation, and just before Dorney’s death we had planned some writing projects about the conceptual bases of restoration. I remember my astonishment on moving to New York City in 1988 and learning of a Hartz Mountain development in Secaucus, New Jersey, Meadowlands near Manhattan, which involved a complex trade of a wetland mitigation project for the permit to develop on an ecologically sensitive site. Ideas flowed together as though I had finally reached a confluence. My interest in understanding technological change, not just in terms of artifacts and devices but also with respect to the distinctive patterns technology represents in contemporary culture, led to further insight into the way restoration threatened to convert ecosystems into commodities. Of course, this did not square with my understanding of grassroots restoration, but it set alarm bells ringing—I grew concerned about how restoration could promote salutary relations with natural process and avoid the pitfalls of a technological culture that was fed on efficiency, novelty, glamour, and velocity. I began to lecture and write on these themes and soon joined the fledgling Society for Ecological Restoration. I remember being thrilled that an organization of practitioners would admit and even encourage a philosopher. My intellectual shapeshifting continued as I moved professionally into anthropology in the early 1990s. This had a profound effect on my activities, among other things by pushing me back to empirical studies. I took an avid anthropological interest in the belief systems of restorationists: what restorationists do and why they do it. I turned to the mountains west of Edmonton, specifically to Jasper National Park, where I fell instantly and completely in love with the landscape, and began to

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understand how ecological restoration might serve as a model for managing such a precious landscape (see chapter 1). Strains of theory and practice are apparent throughout this book, although some have said my philosophical voice remains strongest. Philosophers tend toward generalization and universal theories, while anthropologists focus on description and particular observation. The synthesis has been revealing as I struggle to make sense of the world and of restoration through these opposing vantage points. Philosophy has given me the courage to identify patterns that constitute restoration and that might steer us away from conceptual and practical shoals. Anthropology has strengthened my predisposition toward understanding both what we perceive and what lies beneath, the diversity of cultural expression, the importance of particularity, and the risk of imperialism in restoration. A problem that I do not elaborate on in the book but that is of growing concern is the capacity of restorationists to comprehend cultural diversity in restoration. I have made an effort at expanding my understanding of restoration projects worldwide and moving beyond a strictly North American perspective, but I fear my steps are fitful and inadequate. This book carries with it an explicit North American bias. Much more needs to be done to incorporate an understanding of what restoration means across different cultures, and not just from a North American perspective. We tend often to oppose economic globalization because it constitutes the loss of local diversity but nevertheless support the globalization of a practice such as ecological restoration. The real challenge is what anthropologists wrestle with constantly: interpreting what others believe from their own perspectives. Ecological restoration achieved its early professional identity in North America, and at the time of this writing, 90 percent of the members of the Society for Ecological Restoration live in the United States or Canada. There have been some poignant debates over the meaning of restoration between, say, North American and European members, but this is nothing when compared to the cultural differences that await the further contact of restoration practitioners in all regions. Some perceive the expansion of restoration as a challenge in navigating through or past these cultural differences, and this is where the problems begin. Made-in-America restoration has much to offer by way of sophisticated techniques, practitioner experi-

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ence, and scientific knowledge. Once removed, however, from the particularities of law and custom, it begins to break down. What an American restorationist perceives as restoration, or for that matter as nature or wilderness, is typically different from the perceptions of a Scottish restorationist working on a thousand-year-old cultural landscape, a restoration group in Eastern Europe dealing with complex new institutional demands and lack of resources, and any practitioner in agroecosystems, where cultural practices are as blatantly important as ecological processes. How we define restoration, and how we reach out with our approach to restoration, will determine whether it becomes an inclusive or exclusive practice. There is considerable risk that we will enact without embarrassment and perhaps without broad awareness, yet another chapter in a continuing story of ecological imperialism. I hope that the models presented in this book move against this trend, and contribute to a more inclusive and locally situated approach to restoration. Outline of the Book Chapter 1 begins where my heart has spent so much of the last half decade: Jasper National Park. This large (over 4,000 square mile) national park straddles two provinces, British Columbia and Alberta, just a few hundred miles north of the U.S.–Canadian border and immediately adjacent to its slightly more glamorous cousin, Banff National Park (see map, figure 1.1). The issues here are familiar to anyone working in protected areas in the mountainous west of North America and mountainous regions around the world: a rapid increase in the number of people visiting the region, escalating resource-extraction activities surrounding the park, and decades of management that have left, for example, extraordinary forest fuel loads just waiting for the right spark. Jasper is an icon of wilderness, which leads to wrinkled brows when I mention that my main interest is ecological restoration. Inevitably people ask why restoration is required in a pristine setting. First, I explain that many parts of Jasper are cultural landscapes that have known human activity for hundreds, likely thousands, of years. Next, I take apart the idea of wilderness, suggesting that it manifests our cultural values about nature and not necessarily what is present on the ground; the idea of

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wilderness is a filter for our understanding of nature. Together these issues present a formidable challenge for restorationists in terms of classic questions—for example, that of the role of history in setting appropriate goals, or that of just how much intervention is appropriate in a place that people regard as relatively unspoiled. Almost the same moment I began scribbling notes on Jasper in 1995, I realized that it served as a shining example of the challenges we face in ecological restoration. It became the story around which my account of restoration would be built. I also began to wonder how a growing culture of artificiality, the kind that produces themed environments such as Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, would influence our appreciation of wild places. Thus, in chapter 1, Jasper National Park meets Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. I have written this book to appeal to readers who are new to the idea and practice of ecological restoration, and also for practicing restorationists wanting theoretical perspectives to explain the drift, worrisome in some respects, of restoration toward the shoals of technological culture. Chapters 2 and 3 function in two ways. They can be read together as an introduction to the concept and practice of restoration. Chapter 2 presents three brief cases: the Kissimmee River restoration in central Florida, which is arguably the first restoration megaproject; the Morava River restoration projects in the Slovak Republic, which treat a cultural landscape; and the Robert Starbird Dorney Garden at the University of Waterloo, which in many conventional ways is not a restoration. These stretch some of the limits of what we mean by restoration and offer an expanded historical account of practice. Chapter 3 dives into the dark waters of defining restoration, playing with myriad definitions generated over the last two decades, including those from the Society for Ecological Restoration. These two chapters are not simply descriptive; a specific argument about restoration is advanced. At the end of chapter 3 I propose that when various conventional accounts of restoration are boiled down, we end up with two primary concepts: ecological integrity and historical fidelity. The question is whether this core is sufficient. In the process of writing this book, especially in the last year, the subject of historicity—the condition of being historically authentic—rose

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to prominence from a few paragraphs to a section and finally to a fullblown chapter. I grew concerned that the tide of artificiality would sweep away the traditional moorings of restoration and render it ahistorical. I listened to people describing their restoration work without any reference to historical conditions. Both as a tactic to inoculate restoration practice against the contemporary malaise of virtual reality, where reality seems to matter less and less, and as a way of gaining a clear sense of how and why history matters to restoration theory and practice, I focus chapter 4 on historicity. No discussion of this kind in restoration can proceed without also examining the meaning and significance of reference conditions—that is, the ecological conditions, sometime whole ecosystems, that we use to create our goals and measure our successes (and failures). Ecological restoration is moving into the limelight because it offers a hopeful response to environmental degradation. Considered a “win-win” alternative to conventional environmental practices, restoration projects have been initiated by large government agencies and corporations as well as by the more traditional, grassroots base. The monumental attempt to restore the channeled Kissimmee River in central Florida, for example, is both a remarkable scientific, technological and policy feat and also a harbinger of the future. “Ecological [or environmental] restoration” is a phrase found more and more often in newspaper and magazine articles and television news bites; it has developed a cachet. Typically, the stories are cheerful ones about small armies of experts and volunteers making good where previously only wrong had been done. Dams destructive to fish movement and water quality are being dismantled. Native plants are replacing weedy exotics. Prairies are blooming again. Lakes previously dead are coming alive again. Good news travels fast. What is particularly significant is that restoration is coming to serve as a new metaphor for our relations with natural things: we are in a restorative, as opposed to, say, a conservationist mode. Thus, we are witnessing not simply a change in an environmental management practice, which itself is significant, but a larger cultural shift to restoration. Why, then, am I worried? People have been apprehensive about restoration for several reasons. Not least is the concern that restoration activities will displace concern

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for preservation and conservation and we will end up destroying ecosystems precisely because we can build them up. I think this is a substantive concern, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. There is also the concern that our confidence about restoration is exaggerated, that we cannot achieve what we hope for in restoring damaged ecosystems. Again, I think this warrants attention, but it is a technical matter that deserves careful research. Besides, the veritable successes of restoration point to the fact that some restoration is wildly successful. I propose that we think of restoration in two ways: as technological and focal restoration. Technological restoration is poised to overtake focal restoration. In its most pernicious form we witness the takeover of reality, which is evident at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and so many other beacons of artificiality. Think of focal restoration as a pale and poorly watered endemic plant that is facing competitive exclusion by an invading, exotic species. The fabric of our daily lives is constrained and conditioned by a set of distinctive technological patterns that are growing thicker by the day. We live in a world that is increasingly defined by commodities rather than place. What results from these technological patterns is the conversion of things, such as an ecosystem, and practices, such as ecological restoration, into commodities that are stripped of sinuous connection with social and natural processes. This is the central point of chapter 5. That we do not find such a pattern surprising is, in the end, what is most surprising. Reform must come from an outside awareness of the consequences of this technological pattern, a perspective that grows more difficult in proportion to the rise of the pattern. In chapter 6, focal restoration is presented as an antidote, or at least a precautionary alternative, to technological restoration. At best we can clear a space for the focal practice of restoration and continue to use this as an anchor for restoration as a whole. If only this were the full challenge. A merger of the two, technological and focal, is necessary. They should not be mutually exclusive options. Imbuing restoration with scientific rigor and clarity is essential. We need more and better science to understand the processes of weedy invasions, seed survival, successional pathways, long-term durability, and so on. Conversely, technological restoration needs broad engagement to ensure the success of ambitious

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projects. I am calling for an amalgam of two quite different approaches. The delicacy of this resolution, of course, is dependent on the vitality of focal restoration. The idea of nature by design is anathema to most restorationists, ecologists, and environmentalists. It suggests the capacity to bend natural things to human ends. The title of the book is intended to cut in two directions. The first amplifies the obvious: that ecological restoration is an intentional manipulation of ecosystems in accordance with our values, or what we think ecosystems ought to value. Design connotes a master plan, a framework for rewriting the book of nature. It is, in one main sense, preeminently technological. We are right to be queasy. The title reflects the inspiration of two major thinkers. First, Ian McHarg’s 1967 book, Design with Nature, was a touchstone for so many who sought a way of working and planning that took ecology seriously. McHarg was not the first to advocate ecological thinking in planning and design, but he gave it the widest professional and public expression. Second, I admire the work of historian David Noble, whose book America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism forced in me a radical reconsideration of productive processes and the character of technological change in the United States (he lives in Canada now!). Noble was one of the authors who motivated me as a graduate student to reconsider the role and significance of technology in contemporary life and ultimately to understand ecological restoration in technological terms. I propose in chapter 7 that design in the best sense is creative intervention according to common and well-discussed ideas. Good design is secured by cultural norms, physical (in this case ecological) realities, and imagination. Some projects seem to endure and stand the test of time as good examples: the Curtis prairie at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum and the North Branch prairie project in suburban Chicago, both works in progress. Others, I would argue, are moving into this pantheon, mostly because of a judicious blend of creative vision, clear intention, and sound implementation. There is every likelihood that the restoration of Frederick Law Olmsted’s nineteenthcentury design for core areas in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which involves honoring the past ecological and cultural patterns and processes,

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Olmsted’s design, and the underlying character of the ecosystems, will also stand the test of time. This is how design cuts in the other direction as regards ecological restoration. Rather than burying human agency behind a wall of ecological justifications, design acknowledges that restoration is also and always about people working with and within natural process. Design is about intentionality. Thus, intention—or what I call wild design— becomes the fourth keystone concept of ecological restoration, joining ecological integrity, historical fidelity, and focal practices. Acknowledging that ecological restoration is a design practice is an honest admission: it reflects reality. Hopefully, taking design seriously will compel us to treat restoration as an act imbued with enormous responsibility; ideally, design will amplify and not diminish our commitment to flourishing ecosystems. In the end, I urge that we maintain restoration as a luxuriant activity, one that reflects not only ecological diversity and richness, but cultural breadth and variety, too.

1 A Tale of Two Wildernesses: Jasper National Park, Meet Disney World

What is really learned by walking over grassy hills, through sagebrush, in river bottoms, beneath the crowns of a forest? What is learned wading rivers, hiking ridges, climbing mountains, listening to waterfalls, swimming in lakes, lying beneath the stars? There is not a simple answer to these questions. Perhaps it is misguided to think there are any essential answers, however some seem to clue us in. —David Strong, Crazy Mountains The question Olmsted posed in 1865 remains unresolved: how to admit all the visitors who wish to come without their destroying the very thing they value? The moment people come to a place, even as reverent observers, they alter what they came to experience. Preventing the destructive effects of human visitation requires management of water and soil, plants and animals, and people (and this is now routine at national parks and forests). Yet the idea of management is anathema to some. This is because they see wilderness as something separate from humanity—as untouched by human labor and culture, on the one hand, and as a place where one’s behavior is free and unconstrained, on the other. Both ideas are problematic; both result, ultimately, in the destruction of what they value. —Anne Whiston Spirn, “Constructing Nature” “Wilderness is not so much preserved as created.” —Richard White, “The New Western History and the National Parks” And who among us frequents the wilderness more often than the mall? If you want to explore the particular reinventions of nature in the 1990s, you must at some point make a trip to South Coast Plaza, or to the mall and nature store nearest you. —Jennifer Price, “Looking for Nature at the Mall”

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The Bear in the Kitchen A bear walked, well more likely barged, through the back door of the Palisade Centre Research House on a particularly hot July afternoon in 1996. Returning from a seminar in another building, two members of the field team came upon her in the vestibule munching away on a jumbo bag of senior/lite dog food. There was, to say the least, mutual surprise. It took the deft hands of several Jasper National Park wardens (the equivalent of U.S. park rangers) to tranquilize her, but not after a harrowing charge by the bear out of the house and a subsequent chase into the bush. This eight-year-old female, cinnamon-colored black bear was placed in a special travel container and relocated to the upper reaches of the Rocky River, several drainages over from where we were recounting the story along the banks of the upper Athabasca River. Several months later, in early October, she made her way back to the town of Jasper, an arduous journey for any being, and found modest takings in the well-secured waste of the community.1 She was killed by one of the animal control specialists in the park, a “two strikes, you’re out” policy. The risk to human safety outweighed the risks of allowing a habituated bear to remain in the park. We had initially taken little notice of her presence. On the eve of our initial encounter she had nosed around our site as several dozen bears had done in the previous two months. The Research House was built in the 1930s by A. C. Wilby, the second owner of what is now the Palisade Centre. Wilby was a monied gentleman from England who purchased the former farmstead from the original homesteader, Lewis Swift, and converted the 158 acres of working farm to something that resembled a country estate: enlarged, solidly constructed buildings, high fencing around the perimeter, and a greenhouse to support horticultural interests. The marks of Wilby’s gentility are evident several decades following his death, after years of changing ownership and operation. The grounds, for example, were once a cultivated respite from the tangle beyond, and today well-crafted rock walls poke through the overgrowth and strange cultivars pop up amidst the weeds and local species. Kathy Calvert and Dale Portmann, both park wardens in Jasper and the previous tenants of the Research House, spent considerable time caring for

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the gardens, which is why one can still glimpse what it must have been like a half century ago. The South Lawn, as we grandly termed the expanse of mown grass outside, sports a bountiful crop of dandelions, a delicacy for bears of both species. Bears seemed to cross our lawn not only in search of edible greens but also as an easy east-west travel route. One summer evening, Jeanine Rhemtulla, an ecologist on the field team, took a short, contemplative stroll to the abandoned horse paddock a stone’s throw from the house. There, grazing in the old corral, were three grizzlies: a sow and two second-year cubs. Jeanine stayed her distance, about fifty yards, and watched undetected and without fear for fifteen minutes.2 This was a more typical experience with bears that summer. Of the thirty or so bears we spotted in June and July, all but the one under discussion stopped for a munch, perhaps a casual sniff at the house, and continued to the next feeding grounds. In most cases a deliberate human noise— a door closing or a whistle—would send the bears away. Not so with this one cinnamon-colored bear. My first glance, late in the twilight as she emerged from the shrubs at the edge of the lawn, fooled me: was this a grizzly bear (it wasn’t)? The next morning, however, she made a number of deliberate attempts to get into the Research House, apparently in search of the smells that emanated from the breakfast table. This forthrightness was unusual, and all eight of us who were working out of the house became decidedly edgy. It took noisemakers and rubber bullets to shun this bear. Three defensive tactics later we found her munching dog food. The reaction to this encounter was mixed and opinions flowed for days. Wes Bradford, seasoned park warden in charge of animal control, noted it as the first record of the bear. Apparently, countless roadside and trailside reports keep him in good touch with most of the regular bears in the park. He speculated she had come in from areas adjacent to the park, areas where habituation to human activities is greater. Suzanne Bayley, a wetlands biologist attending the seminar that afternoon and recently a panel member on the celebrated inquiry into the state and future prospects of Banff National Park (the sister park immediately to the south of Jasper), the Banff-Bow Valley Study, observed with distaste yet another tragic experience for park wildlife: the bear was ultimately

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doomed by the simple fact of dog food lying in wait behind a closed door. The point was made brusquely that our very presence, and our actions, were a death sentence for the bear. As director of the research operations I became immediately defensive, offering up a variety of explanations and underscoring how careful we had been in running a clean operation, recounting how many bears had come through the site without incident. The experience caused my research group consternation. It was 1996, the first year of a three-year interdisciplinary research project to map and understand the relationship between human activity and ecological processes in the montane ecosystems of Jasper (see figure 1.1).3 Our work was designed to help with decisions about restoration and management of the park. We were, and are, acutely aware of human footprints on the landscape, and now in the wake of a completely unexpected and bizarre event, had come to distrust our sense of things. The wild had broken into domestic space, literally: the bear in the kitchen. Was it our fault? Had we done as much as we could have to avoid such an event? Had this sort of thing happened to people who had been living previously in the Research House? Was this a chance event? Was it a habituated bear, or one that was desperately hungry from a poor berry crop? Is the loss of a single black bear an acceptable loss, acceptable in terms of having a regular human presence in the park? What do we know of cumulative effects: how many single losses are acceptable? Could the bear’s behavior have been caused or amplified by specific habitat losses? Is there a way of restoring conditions in the park that would reduce such incidents? What can be done to improve specific human activities? Is there a way of restoring human practices and beliefs, culture in effect, to make coexistence with the bear possible? In sum, was this experience serendipity or destiny? These questions radiate out from a singular instant, one in which wild (bear) and domestic (people) collided. This simple dualism masks the bedazzling complexity of public land management. If parks, especially huge national ones of international renown such as Jasper, are to promote wilderness, the answer to the questions above is deceptively easy: get rid of people wherever encounters might occur. This hands-off approach is attractive for several reasons. First, it matches our traditional

A Tale of Two Wildernesses

Figure 1.1 Map of Jasper National Park and main points of reference.

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beliefs about wilderness: places without people. Second, we are running out of areas that might rightly be considered wild, which makes their protection at any cost more reasonable and imperative. Third, in a era of growing artificiality, where nature is being manufactured and (re)presented, we pine for the nostalgia of real wilderness. Moreover, a growing chorus of citizens, activists, scientists, and park managers are calling for the exclusion of people or at least for a drastic reduction in the number of people permitted to visit certain wilderness areas. One group of writers suggest that “the leading champions of biodiversity advocate making the preservationist legacy of national parks and other roadless areas the starting point of much-expanded “big, fierce, wilderness” reserves—not for recreational, aesthetic or spiritual enjoyment by human pilgrims, but as habitat for evolutionarily viable nonhuman species populations.”4 This preservationist impulse is coupled to rewilding projects such as the continental program of the Wildlands Project5 to restore core areas, expand or create buffer zones, and establish corridors to link one critical area to the next. Jasper National Park, if all goes according to plan, will be a strong link in a continuous chain of preservation running from Yellowstone National Park (United States) to the Yukon (Canada). Those who worked with me on the Culture, Ecology and Restoration project in Jasper understood the precarious and precious qualities of this landscape. Biodiversity and ecological integrity were central concepts for us. At the same time, we were also skeptical about the extent to which Jasper could be called “wilderness” in the sense of being a place where the imprints of people are few and far apart; witness our experience at the Palisade Centre with its mown grass, elegant buildings, and dandelions. Moreover, wilderness as an idea obscures and sometimes erases the significance of culture and the presence of people, or as Ian MacLaren, one of the project collaborators, points outs, “Parks are not refuges from our daily lives; no less than the pavement or the chemically treated lawns and plants of our urban front and back yards, they mirror who we are. Wilderness is us.”6 What we were after in the operation of national parks and critical protected areas is not wilderness in the old exclusive sense of term, but rather places that encourage measured, respectful, and conservative human relationships with natural processes. This is not the

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same as advocating a glib “parks are for people” policy. Instead, it pushes a reconsideration of human influence in so-called wildernesses, and the determination of balance between incarcerated nature7 and tourist excess. In Jasper there is much more human presence, many more historical and contemporary footprints, than meet the eye. The problem, of course, is to make operational such a way of thinking about wilderness. Could ecological restoration be a viable approach? To restore the landscape—that is, to address some of the obvious damage accomplished by oversight or careless action by returning to some predetermined time in the past—means incorporating human activities and in this way changing our minds about what counts as wilderness. But is this a sufficient aspiration? Should we do more than mimic past human activities? Restoration of wilderness, taken too literally, involves the design of a kind of historic theme park replete with replicas of long-forgotten forest groves, the proper distribution of grasslands, watercourses that follow ancient channels, and peaceable natives. This runs against the grain of our most accomplished understanding of wild places, rubbing uncomfortably against artificial wildernesses such as Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (in Orlando, Florida), which simultaneously reinforces the hands-off view of wilderness while encouraging, perhaps inadvertently, escalating consumption of wilderness. This chapter focuses on two wildernesses, one that lays claim to preeminent status as a wilderness area, Jasper National Park, and one that seems to have figured out what people want to think wilderness is, Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Lessons learned from both indicate that the idea of wilderness prevalent in North American culture is doing harm to the thing it purports to represent. Here, in the very exemplars of wilderness, one natural and the other technological, we glimpse most pointedly the challenges facing ecological restorationists. In Jasper, the wilderness-as-untouched-nature discourages active management of ecosystems that might return them to health in whatever ways health is defined. At the Lodge, wilderness is treated as a commodity, one that is sold on the basis of concepts that make it problematic for managing natural areas. The challenge is to devise meanings for wilderness, and nature more generally, ones that are sufficiently open to salutary human activities,

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that are mindful of the past, and that filter against insidious and destructive patterns and activities. Simon Schama, author of the remarkable study Landscape and Memory, suggests that much of our understanding of landscape is bound up in memory and imagination and therefore requires careful consideration of both cultural and natural history: “It is not to deny the seriousness of our ecological predicament, nor to dismiss the urgency with which it needs repair and redress, to wonder whether, in fact, a new set of myths are what the doctor should order as a cure for our ills. What about the old ones?”8 History matters to restorationists, and it should: we track patterns of ecological change, record shifting processes, and all the while, if we are astute about such matters, we appreciate how our beliefs about the landscape have changed, too. The past tempers our ambitions and on occasion reveals clues about ways of engaging with the landscape that make good sense in the present. Restoration, then, is as much about the retrieval of beliefs and practices as it is about the regaining of physical conditions. Some of these may yield important clues and prevent us from continuing to stumble in our search for ways to restore and care for places valuable to us. There are important things about the future to be learned in the ecological and cultural history of so-called wildernesses. Let’s take a closer look at the place where the bear walked into our lives on that hot summer day. The Palisade The Palisade Centre, an environmental research and education facility operated by Parks Canada, is nestled on the east side of the Athabasca Valley, in the shadow of the Palisade, a massive limestone cliff formed from a thrust fault roughly 500 million years ago.9 As recently as perhaps the 1950s, it would have been possible to view this great cliff a kilometer distant from the window in my office at the Palisade Centre, but now it is obscured by the forests that have grown up in the path of a massive 1889 fire. The centre is hemmed to the east by the twin-tracked Canadian National transcontinental rail line, and just beyond is the Yellowhead highway, an alternative east-west travel route to the TransCanada highway further south. As a concession to park wildlife, the

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highway is two-lane through the park, but twinned and four-lane immediately east of the boundary. I get up very early on crisp, fall mornings to hear the bull elk bugle their intentions. It is the only time of day when the traffic does not overwhelm their plaints. Lewis Swift, originally from Ohio, settled the land that lies beneath the Palisade Centre in 1895, immediately following the great fire of 1889.10 He found the valley to be moderate in temperature and able to support a reasonable harvest of northern vegetables and grains. In less than a decade, the farmstead became a provisioning point for various expeditions into the mountains further west. He married a Métis11 woman, Suzette Chalifoux, and together they farmed the area until 1935. Swift had several neighbors when he moved to the region who operated farmsteads along the river. The Moberly brothers who operated two of the farmsteads were Métis descended from a railway surveyor, Walter Moberly.12 The Moberly family had been active in the fur trade that took place in the valley throughout the nineteenth century in the wake of David Thompson’s successful crossing of Athabasca Pass on January 8, 1811. The nineteenth century in Jasper was shaped by the Hudson’s Bay trading posts that operated at several points along the valley. Little is known of earlier inhabitants of the Athabasca Valley, partly because there were no permanent communities of Native peoples, and partly because the lineage of the Métis peoples is closely connected with the fur trade and with the Cree and Iroquois peoples from farther east. There are scattered references to tipi rings and Indian trails,13 ceremonial sites, and hunting activities. Reports also exist of a relatively unknown group known as the Snake Indians who were supposedly wiped out by a competitive group of Stoney natives. Relatively little oral historical work has been done in the region, but what has been accomplished shows considerable use of the valley at least during the nineteenth century, the interval that directly connects descendants in the Grand Cache, Entrance, and Lac Ste. Anne areas to the east of the current park boundary. Ethnolinguistic studies in and around the park hint that as many as four separate languages may have been used by groups who traveled, hunted, resided, or traded along the upper reaches of the Athabasca River Valley: Secwepemc, Cree, Stoney, and Ktunaxa.

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Archeological and paleoecological evidence, of which much more is needed to fill in our understanding of the prehistory of this critical region, is strong for human habitation, or at least use, back to glaciation (approximately 11,000 bp).14 There are, for example, over sixty historical and prehistoric archeological sites in the small study area in which the Culture, Ecology and Restoration project was centered. The region resonates with human presence. Recent research proposes extensive and intensive traditional management of the valley,15 although the only direct evidence was obtained by Henry Lewis, a colleague and specialist in aboriginal use of fire, in the early 1970s, and later by Peter Murphy, a forestry professor at the University of Alberta, who interviewed one Edward Moberly in 1980 at his home in Entrance. Moberly reports that “in the spring that’s the first thing everybody does is burn the meadows. . . . This way the meadow doesn’t grow in—willows and things doesn’t come in—it’s always the same site and it’s always clean.”16 Later in the interview Moberly recounts almost a dozen different functions for controlled burning: disease control in wild sheep, production of firewood, opening up areas for travel, maintenance of regular hunting areas, and so on. With this direct evidence and research emanating from areas west17 and northeast18 of Jasper, it is quite likely that a variety of different management techniques were employed in the Athabasca Valley over considerable stretches of time. We might speculate that the pastoral openness of the Athabasca Valley that greeted Ross Cox in 1817 after descending from Athabasca Pass was a consequence not only of a wildfire mosaic but also, perhaps primarily, of anthropogenic fire: “The genial influence of a June sun relieved the wintry perspective of snow-clad mountains, and as it rose above their lofty summits, imparted a golden tinge to the green savannahs, the open woods, and the innumberable rivulets which contributed their waters to swell the Athabasca.”19 It is remarkable how little formal scholarship is available on the upper Athabasca. This makes the task of piecing together an understanding of traditional management very difficult. Relatively little is known about the history and prehistory of the Jasper region, and only now are scholars, local historians, and park staff beginning to assemble a composite view. One of the reasons for the lacuna is

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obviously the eviction in 1910, three years following the creation of a Dominion Forest Reserve in 1907 (later to become Jasper National Park), of the Métis peoples from the upper Athabasca Valley. As a result rich, continuous oral history has mostly been lost. Swift, a white man, and his family were permitted to stay and eventually were given free title to 158 acres of land along the Athabasca River. This was the only freehold in the park. The evictions, coupled with the apparent lack of direct connection to First Nations’ communities that existed prior to the Métis settlements in the nineteenth century, contribute to a cultural amnesia. What motivated the expulsions? In the case of Jasper, the motivations were more complicated, involving turn-of-the-century perspectives on wilderness and on the role of people, especially Native peoples, in wild lands. The Métis dwellers were evicted to make way for a “proper” wilderness but also to lay open the possibility of commercial and recreational opportunities. We will no doubt add this to the list of lamentable and shameful activities perpetrated by the Canadian government on Aboriginal peoples, and learn again that racism and uncompromising images of landscape are often bound together. At the least we should embrace the humility that comes from understanding that our ideas about landscape change—how will our present ambitions be regarded a century from now?20 Railroad development followed the expulsion of the Métis families and defined the character of human use in the valley in the twentieth century. Visitors to Jasper nowadays are mostly unaware that by 1915 there were two entirely separate railways—the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific—that operated in the valley. Intense competition fueled the rush for a rail line over the Yellowhead Pass, one of the lowest mountain passes along the entire stretch of the Rocky Mountains in Canada. The Yellowhead was recommended as the preferred route by Sanford Fleming in the 1870s, but the complexities of railway politics in Canada resulted in 1885 in the construction of the Canadian Pacific line further south over the Crowsnest Pass. By the early 1900s the obvious commercial advantages of forging links between eastern and western Canada prompted the development of these two transcontinental railways. These were not gentle rivalries. In the end only one survived, and the rail alignment now serves as the roadbed for much of the Yellowhead highway

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through the park. Now overlooked and almost entirely forgotten is the sheer ecological influence of these massive rail-construction projects. The valley was logged for rail ties, bridges, weirs, construction camps, and firewood. Gravel was mined for the railbeds. The ecological wealth of the valley was laid out in two long strips.21 Lewis Swift’s 158 acres have had a colorful history. In 1906, then again in 1908, Swift ran railway surveyors off at gunpoint and subsequently the line was relocated slightly to the east. It seems that the original plan would have the rail line run directly on top of one of his cabins. To modern sensibilities Swift might have appeared a victim of zealous development. In fact, it appears he had grand ambitions of his own. His plan was to capitalize on the new travel route by creating a cottage development called Swiftholm, which would occupy the better part of his acreage. In design it resembled a contemporary suburban neighborhood, with cabins jammed against one another. Swift had attracted financial backing from Charles Hays, then president of the Grand Trunk railway. No doubt multiple factors, including the outbreak of World War I, influenced the ultimate demise of the development, but Hays’s death aboard the Titanic in 1912 was arresting news. Swift is perhaps best known for his fastidious and monumental irrigation system that took water from the eponymous Swift Creek, and via a series of lateral hillside channels, deposited water on the flats along the present railway tracks. The need for such extensive irrigation provides clues to one prerequisite at the time to successful agriculture in the valley. With the sale of the property to Arnold Wilby in 1935, the original function of the land as a farmstead was lost, although Wilby did continuously attempt to convince park officials of his agricultural and horticultural aims. In fact, Wilby constructed a country estate and dude ranch, and the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 1940s is with us today. The property was sold privately one final time on Wilby’s death in 1947, and from there to Gordon Bried (1951), and back to the park in 1962. Although the land is again held in public trust and unlikely to be bargained away, similar leasehold properties elsewhere in the park have recently traded for multimillion-dollar amounts. There is delicious irony that one of the areas most intensely and variously worked over the last century or so would now be the focus of

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park-wide research on long-term human influence. The Palisade Centre, this 158-acre vestige of private land ownership, bisected by the lines of modern technology, covered by the preoccupations of five generations of residents and many more whose lives have not yet been revealed through archeological studies, is a microcosm of montane ecology in Jasper. It is at once distinctive, as all places are, and in some ways typical of many areas in the park that are laminated by the activities of people. The task ahead for park managers and researchers is figuring how best to incorporate such knowledge of cultural and ecological history into long-term management. And part of the challenge is in reinventing ways of understanding wilderness. This is the central lesson of our experience in Jasper: ecosystems change, which confounds ecological restoration, but so too does our cultural understanding of those ecosystems. A Landscape of Threats Those who have visited Jasper recently, or who live nearby in the city of Edmonton or in any of the smaller communities to the east and west, will know that pressures on the park are mounting. The sheer size of the park, over 4,000 square miles, will work as a pressure-relief valve as long as the heat of visitation and development remains beneath a certain threshold. But who knows what that threshold is? Like so many spectacular protected areas in proximity to population centers, there is a continual three-way tug between those who seek to protect, those who seek balanced development, and those who quest after limitless amenities. That this tension remains undiminished over a century has as much to do with a dual mandate for Canadian parks—leaving ecosystems unimpaired for future generations and enhancing visitor enjoyment—as with the economic struggles among ideologically divergent groups. Even today, when the dual mandate is theoretically resolved in favor of ecological protection, the actual patterns of development have not substantially altered. The matter is more acute in Banff National Park, Jasper’s neighbor to the south and Canada’s first national park (established in 1885). Critical attention has been poured on Banff in the form of the Banff– Bow Valley Study,22 a two-year, multimillion-dollar task force charged

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with producing future management recommendations, which it did in the fall of 1996. Other sources of attention have included an eye-opening article in the National Geographic.23 The parks and protected areas along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States represent a gradient of human influence: the pressures felt by those who manage Yellowstone National Park in southern Montana are greater than those felt by the staff in Glacier, and in turn, Glacier has wrestled with issues that are just now moving north to Waterton National Park and Banff. One can get a sense of what Jasper is going to face in the future by peering south.24 Jasper National Park is one of a cluster of national and provincial parks in Canada that together form a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site. This is scarcely surprising. Like Yellowstone and Yosemite, Banff and Jasper, in particular, are emblematic of Canada and are familiar to people around the world. The natural features are compelling: the Columbia Icefields, Maligne Lake, Lake Louise, the Burgess shale, canyons, waterfalls, enormous geological complexity, and functionally complete ecosystems, including large carnivores. Banff, and to a lesser extent Jasper, were created not only to protect these features for posterity, but also to promote enjoyment and profitable tourism. For years the only reasonable access to Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper was by train, and it was no coincidence that the massive hotels built in these locations are still owned by a railway company.25 Early in this century, these national parks were embarkation points for adventurous travelers who wanted to explore more remote reaches of the country. Now they are oases of ecological diversity roped on all sides against encroaching industrial, agricultural, and resource-extraction operations. It is indeed an image of siege or contagion that prompts so many to defend the ecological integrity of places such as Jasper. Armed with management tools—environmental impact assessment, the ecological management paradigm, surveys (social and biological), restrictive policies, enforcement—beleaguered park staff hole up against the new onslaught of seemingly endless budgets cuts. The erection of barricades, literally and figuratively, has much to do with values that some refer to

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as natural regulation, a deliberate hands-off policy that allows natural processes alone to shape ecosystems. As David Graber points out, The unifying principle of national park management today is the perpetuation of native ecosystem elements and processes. That is, keep all the native species; seek the free play of fire, water, wind, predation, and decomposition, the processes of the ecosystem; fend off alien organisms; and then permit the ecosystem to sort itself out. As management policy, it is rarely if ever fully expressed, but it has been a goal at which managers could aim.26

However, the maintenance of natural structures and processes is extremely difficult to achieve with a continually escalating rate of visitation. More serious, though, and perhaps the strongest argument against rigid natural regulatory policies, is the difficulty that some ecosystems have in rebounding against the imposing odds of having inappropriate seed sources, lack of good refuges for sensitive animals and plants, and weedy species. Moreover, natural regulatory models ignore the extraordinary and often unrecognized amount of historical human influence in park ecosystems. A “natural” model may have included people but people doing different things than they are now doing. Above I described some of the changes that had resulted from Swift’s farming operations at what is now the Palisade Centre. Taken across the entire Athabasca Valley in Jasper, not to mention the subalpine and alpine zones, the extent and intensity of human influence are staggering. Most of it is closed to the common “view from the road.”27 Visitors to Jasper I have spoken with typically emphasize the grandeur of the scenery and the restorative powers of the unbridled wilderness. But take a walk up Old Fort Point, a small knoll that provides a panoramic overlook of the valley and the town. From the road one is surrounded by a forested landscape, but the view from on high is arresting. A town of 4,700 people, replete with a sizable railyard, and the massive Jasper Park Lodge hotel complex—including an eighteen-hole golf course—sprawl across the valley (figure 1.2). This perspective adds urgency to the concerns of the park’s staff. The Athabasca Valley is relatively narrow, and in the bottomlands lie the ecologically richest montane ecosystems. Here, battling for living space and movement, are the dwindling populations of grizzly bears and wolves. Human developments at the center of the park are serving as a barrier to shy carnivores. Not surprisingly, humans

30 Chapter 1 Figure 1.2 View of the town of Jasper, from Old Fort Point, one of the dozen low-altitude survey stations (most of the survey stations were from mountain peaks). The top photo, from 1915, is by M. P. Bridgland (see chapter 4), and the repeat image (below) is from exactly the same location in 1998 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs).

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and the rest of the animals are drawn to the moderate temperatures, ease of movement, and diversity of the valley. Walking away from the road, one quickly finds traces of many other human activities, though in some cases it takes a studied eye to pick out the effects. The most obvious are the transportation corridors, including abandoned, secondary, and service roadways. Less obvious are the pipelines for oil and gas, which leave long swaths cut out of the landscape, and the communication cables buried alongside. We have also uncovered old networks of trails, and the many signs of the two railways, one of which is extant. Similarly, most people can pick out, at least if they are looking for them, the changes to the Athabasca River and associated wetlands brought about by road and rail construction. The Yellowhead highway in several places runs along dikes that were constructed to create a more direct route but that cut off small lakes from the hydrology of the Athabasca River. Talbot Lake is an example in which no thoughtful attention was given to the water flows, flood and otherwise, that connected the lake and the river (figure 1.3). The level of the lake rose several feet and is now different from what it was before road construction. How different? We do not know because no studies were undertaken prior to construction. Erased from immediate view by decades of impressive flooding are the wood and rock berms that ran almost a mile upstream along the bank of the Snaring River to prevent floodwaters from washing out the railway bridge. This impressive labor made a significant difference in streamside vegetation and banks. More pervasive and less obvious still is the extensive fishstocking program. Over a span of several decades, exotic sport fish, rainbow trout for example, were raised in a park hatchery and released into dozens of lakes. The effects of these new organisms were dramatic and led in many cases to a radical transformation of the structure of aquatic ecosystems.28 Many are surprised to learn that hunting continued to be a factor affecting wildlife populations until the mid-twentieth century, even in the wake of the decimation of wildlife in the early 1800s for the fur trade. Predator control continued until the late 1950s, when a circular was issued to park staff indicating that practices such as the use of cyanide guns and other forms of poisoning were no longer necessary in wildlife management.29

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Figure 1.3 View of Talbot Lake from Mount Cinquefoil. The top composited photo from 1915 is by M. P. Bridgland (see chapter 4), and the repeat image (below) is from exactly the same location in 1999 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs).

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One of the most dramatic and talked-about influences is fire suppression. Just after the establishment of the park, fire-suppression policies were implemented in Jasper, as they were in most other jurisdictions in the mountain west. Fire proved a very real threat to settlements and infrastructure, and in areas where logging was a priority, wildfires meant loss of revenue. Fire suppression in Jasper primarily addressed the former concern, although it seems plain that fire was regarded as a cultural threat as well; it challenged the autonomy and control of people living in wild regions. Ironically, reducing suppression activities would have allowed less damaging fires on a regular basis, and we would not now be in the position of having a staggering load of flammable material in the park. As one warden put it to me, “It is not a matter of whether we will have a huge fire, but when.” Suppression is often said not to have been truly effective in Jasper until after World War II, which is somewhat misleading. The large fires that swept the valley in 1889 left relatively little to burn. It would be decades before large areas of the valley would again present a serious fire hazard. The results of suppression techniques are clear: there have not been any major wildfires in the montane ecosystems in eighty years. The valley bottom, which previously resembled a complex quilt of grasslands, forests, and savannas, is now almost a carpet of green trees (figure 1.4). A study conducted by Jeanine Rhemtulla to compare photographs from 1915 and repeat images taken by her eighty-two years later in 1997 shows a stunning shift from early to late successional forest types. Crown closure has become more pronounced in coniferous stands. Some forest encroachment into grasslands is apparent, and herbaceous and shrub cover has declined. Anthropogenic activities have increased significantly. Finally, the area she studied has become more homogeneous.30 Other influences represent the same pattern, in some cases involving obvious characteristics, in other cases characteristics subtle or unobservable to the untrained eye, or instill other cases characteristics that have been mostly erased by the flow of time. Logging was common in the park for construction materials in earlier periods. Elk and wolves were hunted to extirpation and reintroduced. Without the same level of predation accounted for by declines in the number of predators, elk populations have surged to what some believe to be historically high

34 Chapter 1 Figure 1.4 Paired mosaic comprising four composited images from 1915 by M. P. Bridgland (top) and J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs in 1998 (below). Changes in vegetation are especially striking.

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levels and are causing a threat to human safety and the integrity of browse vegetation such as young aspen trees. Coal was mined in the park until 1928, and aggregate continues to be extracted from within the park for road construction and maintenance. Let us not forget about the town of Jasper. Visitors from afar are surprised to find a full-featured town nestled in the middle of the park. Once dominated by railway employees and park staff, it is now home to a booming year-round tourist industry. It is caught at the moment between the comfort of a small town and the impetus of development. Proposals abound for new facilities: expanded ski areas, golf courses, and accommodations. So far, only strict park policies and the relative lack of external pressure have kept the lid on expansion. The circumstances are so delicate that any number of small changes—connection to the provincial electrical grid (thereby removing the limits imposed by local power generation), twinning of the highway, changes in park policy—could produce an avalanche of commercial activity that would rival activity in Banff and points further south. The way I have presented human influences tends to split them into discrete activities and pressures. The concern turns especially ominous when we consider the cumulative effects of a century of industrial-era development. Each separate change is typically a relatively minor blip, but over time these blips join together to form a composite and often dramatic pattern of change. Some argue, for example, that Jasper is approaching, perhaps has tumbled over, a critical threshold that would ensure the integrity of umbrella or indicator species such as the grizzly bear. No single factor has led to the precarious state of the grizzly, but a suite of separate influences. This makes resolution of the matter, in this case the fate of the grizzly in the Jasper region, much more complicated. And, so far, few approaches have proved successful, from policy or legal perspectives, in dealing with cumulative-effects assessment. This condition holds for many analogous species and ecosystems. Freak Landscapes The combined weight of human influences presses us to consider how to think about long-term management interventions, assuming that

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interventions are both necessary and inevitable. It was Cliff White, a longtime warden in Banff National Park and specialist in prescribed-fire techniques, whom I heard first use the term freak landscape to describe the condition of a region that has been extensively altered.31 Freak is an apt word in the sense that it conveys the idea of abnormality, which of course leads quickly to the idea of normal. Are we supposed to be managing Jasper in terms of normality, which presupposes a definition of normal? Can human influences in a wilderness national park be normal? There is little doubt that the montane valleys in Jasper are freak landscapes. This is because the rate of change in the past century, especially in the last couple of decades, far exceeds the long-term rate of change. Understanding this requires a comprehensive and integrative view of human influence. Not all changes are manifested as obvious “sores,” such as an unreclaimed gravel pit. Others, such as fish stocking, are known (at this point) only to a few keen park visitors who can break through the conceptual barriers created by a culture of fishing to understand that stocking of lakes is of concern, and further to realize that beneath the surface of many lakes lies a community of organisms radically different from what would have been observed prior to stocking. Less obvious are the faint traces in the montane valleys of small-scale, mostly subsistence agriculture and trapping from around the turn of the century (figure 1.5). Mostly Métis, the dwellers of the valley who engaged in these practices were astride two cultures: traditional Native practices and the Euro-American economy.32 Should this human influence be placed in the same category as, say, fish stocking? Is it so clear that turn-of-the-century agriculture belongs in the same category as subsequent, more pervasive human influences? If not, then where is the line drawn? This same categorical problem could be pushed back to the active fur-trade era (1810–1870) or earlier, to when people were using the valley almost 11,000 years ago. Regardless of the interpretation, to take culture seriously is to acknowledge at least a different meaning of wilderness, if not to raise “the fearsome possibility—that there then is no wild nature in parks: parks are constructions.”33 Documenting these subtle changes—cultural and ecological—is painstaking, expensive scientific work but remains the only sure and durable way of moving beyond the question-asking stage. Awareness is

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Figure 1.5 View of the upper Athabasca Valley from Mount Esplanade. The inset shows the site of the Ewan Moberly family farmstead, with one of the fields still plainly visible in the recent photograph. The left photo from 1915, is by M. P. Bridgland (see chapter 4), and the repeat image (below right) is from exactly the same location in 1999 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs).

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increasing about the extent and qualities of human activities in socalled wilderness areas, but it has yet to be decided what counts as normal human activity in a landscape. Judgments often prevail after information has been gathered. Negotiations, coupled with respect for clear knowledge of a place, will yield sensible ideas of normal (or perhaps challenge the very foundation that normality provides). The more we study, the more we understand that the landscape in Jasper is the result of decades of cultural belief and practice at work: shifting management philosophies, types and modes of visitation, national-level park policy, and the simultaneous desire to use and preserve nature and wilderness. Jasper park managers want to reintroduce certain processes in the landscape for many reasons, and in my experience not all these reasons have been articulated clearly. The most obvious and easily justifiable to senior managers and to the public concern the loss of ecological integrity, often expressed in terms of the precipitous decline of a particular species: the grizzly bear or harlequin duck. Some managers are motivated by an obligation to right demonstrated wrongs: it is not difficult to convince people that suppressing fire in the montane landscape was a wrongheaded policy and that corrective measures are warranted. Others who have intimate knowledge of the park are compelled by its “freakishness”; they cannot abide the thought that something is the result of caprice or is a monstrosity of our own creation. In combination, these motives point toward restoration: “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.”34 Restoration, as we will see in subsequent chapters, is a complicated and at times vexing term. To restore something, for example a painting obscured by years of grime, is to bring that object back as closely as possible to its original condition. Choices are made constantly in the art and architectural restoration world about the most appropriate goals for restoration. For example, in the case of an old building that has been altered many times since its creation, to what point in the past is one striving to return?35 The analogy with ecosystems is not precise for one important reason: ecosystems are dynamic. There is no original condition for an ecosystem in any meaningful sense; one cannot fix a specific point in time. This returns us to the problem of normality: Is normal a

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helpful concept in a dynamic landscape and does it serve as a basis for setting goals? Let’s take Jasper, for example. Motivated by the freakish quality of the landscape, a team of managers, scientists, and local residents wishes to devise a plan for the long-term restoration and management of montane ecosystems—for instance, the mixed grassland and forest complex in the Henry House area. Here, in an area of no more than 100 acres, are found an emergency airstrip, an old trade waste pit, decommissioned and active roads, historic railway sites, and the first controlled burn project in the park (from the late 1980s). If this is not sufficient material with which to work, add the transnational railway and highway that bisect the area. What would be the primary goal of restoration? Is a point in time—for example, the year before the establishment of the park, 1906— a good choice? Once this structural decision is made, exhaustive historical ecological studies would be required to document the conditions at the time (e.g., more grasslands, less forest cover), and techniques deployed to bring these conditions into being. Trade-offs would have to be made, of course: Are there mitigating measures that could lessen the effects of the highway and railway? Is it feasible to decommission the airstrip? An obvious problem with this approach is that it requires regular management to keep the ecosystems within a narrow range of variability, or else one is merely turning back the clock. Careful monitoring is required, and measures such as frequent, low-intensity fire would be necessary to maintain the conditions of an earlier period. Of course, 1906 may not be a great choice because settlement and fur trading had significant influence on vegetation and wildlife throughout the previous century. And to push back past 1800 begs the question of climate change and Aboriginal land-management practices. Would returning these anthropogenic practices to the valley be appropriate, and even if it were, would we want to do so? A process-oriented approach would call for a return of dominant processes to the landscape as they might have existed prior to the practices that have resulted in the freak landscape. Less temporal precision is required here. For instance, we could calculate the fire-return intervals across the landscape, fire being a crucial process, and ensure either that wildfires are allowed to burn or that prescribed fires are set, to accord

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roughly with this historical frequency. This is an attractive option, for it avoids some of the traps of a structural approach. But it has some critical flaws. Are we running the risk of imposing yet more influences on the landscape, a higher level of freakishness if you will, without being certain that this is going to result in a better landscape, however better is defined, however landscape is defined? And is this restoration in the strict sense of returning to some past condition or dynamic state, or is it enlightened meddling? I will be dealing with issues of terminology and definitions in chapter 2. Restorationists in Jasper—indeed, in any so-called wilderness area— face two contemporary challenges. First, how can we effectively link up the myriad site-specific considerations such that they form an integral landscape, one subject to natural (however defined) processes instead of managerial vicissitudes? This is the problem of temporal agreement: If one ecosystem or ecosite is restored according to prepark criteria, and another ecosite is restored according to process considerations, will these two projects be discordant? Thinking on a broader scale, a landscape level, is required to reconcile site-specific relationships. Presumably we do not want restoration activities to be restricted to a national park; the park may be a good catalyst in promoting coherent restoration of adjacent landscapes. The best approach is to work across scales, or at least to ensure that one’s work is positioned well in relation to various scales. The second challenge is how to incorporate human influences into restoration planning most effectively. This involves developing appropriate ways of conducting sensitive environmental histories, forming closer ties between natural and social scientists, and working with the idea that perhaps wilderness is not about the abolition of people but about good ways of working with people in a natural setting that ecologist Daniel Botkin describes as “a new perception of nature.”36 Restoring an Idea or a Place? Those entrusted with the care of wilderness parks—park wardens, maintenance crews, interpreters, researchers, senior managers, politicians— cannot make the hard decisions about restoring ecological integrity without also addressing changing public views about wilderness, nature,

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and parks. Parks serve a critical prudential function of securing and preserving habitat for species and ecological communities that would wither under less protective policies, although we know also that good-hearted attempts to manage them can produce freak landscapes that do not provide the proper conditions for fragile ecosystems and rare cultural landscapes to flourish. They embody a vision of the world in two parts, with protectionist rules for nature inside the park and exploitative rules for nature elsewhere. In a culture that accepts this dichotomy, people may exult in the wild beauty of the protected places and support parks with cash donations, but continue otherwise in a lifestyle that erodes the foundations of ecological integrity. The result, sooner or later, is a set of highly fortified islands of threatened wildness surrounded by a sea of relatively heedless industrial activity. Does restoration, properly conceived, offer the reflective and practical basis for a rethinking of wilderness parks and by extension other so-called natural areas? To restore something means to consider what that thing is and what it means. This is perhaps the primary value of restoration, a way of reflecting deeply on appropriate action. Restoring an ecosystem or an ecological process or many ecosystems within a larger landscape requires clarity about goals: What are we after? How effectively can we, if at all, act as a proxy for the places being restored? An understanding of the past is useful in helping to relieve some of the burden of such questions. Richard White writes: Because so much of our understanding of the national parks is caught up in the idea of wilderness and wild nature, this history has implications for the park. Parks, of course, do preserve wild habitat and even some wilderness in the sense of land unaltered by human activity. But if many areas of the parks were shaped by Indian use, then they were not pristine areas of wilderness. They were and remain contingent, historical landscapes. Furthermore, the changes that have occurred in the national parks since the incorporation of the parks can only be understood in relation to the suppression of various Indian practices: burning, hunting, and grazing. Wilderness is not so much preserved as created [my emphasis].37

Setting appropriate goals is predicated on a creative fusion of scientific and cultural knowledge. Knowing the history of a place is a prerequisite to understanding it, and knowing its history means taking people as well as ecosystems seriously. A goal for an ecosystem will

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always depend on value judgments no matter how much we cloak our judgment in a patina of scientific precision. Deciding the appropriate percentage cover of grasslands in the montane valleys of Jasper is rooted in historical knowledge about the distribution of grasslands, but it is also informed by the likelihood that Aboriginal burning practices created and maintained a particular, changing mosaic. Factored in such a decision will be economic concerns about maintenance costs, and judgments about how much change visitors are willing to accept. More difficult still is the challenge of comprehending and managing for a turbulent future. American environmental essayist Stephanie Mills writes: “Add to this the baleful fact that global warming threatens to move vegetation ranges faster than vegetation can move, and the paradigm to which to restore blurs.”38 Setting goals will, and should, be an adaptive process. Thus, the concept of pristine wilderness begins to pale as we learn more about human influence. Our guiding images of vast unspoiled reserves, shaped by long and complicated Euro-American cultural values, are in need of renovation. The restoration of wilderness parks may be as much about the restoration of an idea as of a place, and of course we must give careful thought to whether wilderness is the idea we want to prevail. Wilderness is a constructed notion as well as real place; in the parlance of literary theorists, it is both the signifier and the signified. Michael Soulé and Gary Lease were keen on exposing what they regarded as an invidious postmodern trend to comprehend nature and wilderness as cultural phenomena. The contributors to the volume Reinventing Nature show the matter to be much more complex than an academic theory gone wrong (assuming it has gone wrong).39 The truth, contingent of course, must lie between an essentialist view of wilderness in which everything we take to be present is real, and a constructivist view that holds that wilderness is a mere construction. Wilderness is simultaneously constructed and real, or as Wallace Stevens expressed it, “the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”40 I work in Jasper National Park because the rocks and topography and quality of light and countless ineffable things draw me here. Yet I know that my perceptions of this place are colored richly by my early life in the lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, and later in thickly popu-

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lated southern Ontario, where nature was always something to drive to and wilderness was far away, up north. My experiences shape my beliefs about Jasper, and to really see this place it is necessary for me to question my perceptions. It is, but it is also what I make it to be. At one level it is intuitively obvious that we color our perception of things with experience. I have been curious to know what a person who drives the famous Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Lake Louise in a thirty-foot motor home, festooned with the air-conditioned comforts of home, really sees. What is their take on the flocks of wild mountain sheep that lick the salt from the road and block the highway from time to time? Do motor-home travelers take time to feel the qualities of sound and smell that are elusive to indoor senses? Are they experiencing the solitude and solace that draw me into the backcountry? Down the Yellowhead highway ten miles, toward the town of Jasper, is the Jasper Park Lodge. It is redolent with the history of gracious railway travel in Canada, and recalls an era when wealthy easterners and Europeans would ride by rail to magnificent luxury hotels.41 In the 1970s, Jasper Park Lodge was upgraded for year-round use. Renovations continue. Boasting of almost 500 guestrooms, hotel managers are hoping for approval of a major expansion that would more fully occupy what is already the largest leasehold in the park. Guests can swim, play golf on a well-appointed eighteen-hole course (watch out for elk!), dine on exquisite offerings, ski in the winter, and partake of all the usual amenities of a top-notch resort. At the high end, one can stay in Point Cabin, which comes with its own chef, for roughly $1,500 a night (taxes extra). What perceptions of the landscape do those who play here form? Surrounded by anthropologists over the past few years, I have grown accustomed to issues of cultural relativism and try to avoid stereotyping, criticism, and dismissal of the experiences of people I do not know. As someone who prefers the spare comfort of a backpack on a mountain hike to the excesses of a motor home, it is difficult to steer clear of judgment. At the same time I realize how little I know about the experiences that others have in this place.42 And at 1.6 million visitors a year and growing (estimated in 1999) with another 1.2 million who pass through the park on the Yellowhead highway, such knowledge is crucial.43

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The constructedness of reality was plainly evident in the bear-in-thekitchen incident related at the beginning of this chapter; the presence of that animal meant many things depending on where one stood in relation to it. For some it was yet another example of the despoiling consequences of human activity in Jasper, and for others it meant an awkward and frightening border struggle between the wild and the domestic. A line stretched taut between essentialism and constructivism has been hovering above us for all of the modern period. Here is Wordsworth writing at the end of the eighteenth century: Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the senses, the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.44

This power to “half create” suffuses the modern era and inspires a fundamental ambiguity on which our knowledge of nature and wilderness is situated. We understand two seemingly inconsistent verities about things: that there is nature out there that lies beyond our ability to cocreate, and that our forms of perception make it resemble what we choose. Wordsworth was writing as the dominant economic structure of capitalism was in formation, and before industrialism had become the predominant mode of production and consumption the preeminent ethos. The passage out of the modern era in the latter half of the twentieth century provided us with a less secure sense of reality by illustrating at almost every turn that what we think is real is either a distortion, a figment of our imagination, or a clever projection. In the last three decades in North America, longer in Western Europe, scholars in literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and science studies have pointed to the process of creating or constructing our world according to habits of thought. In more radical guises, constructivism involves the idea that reality is socially negotiated

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and contingent. The divide is vast between essentialism—the view that reality is given and immediately grasped—and constructivism, and this fissure has shot through much of academia. Moving too far along that taut line toward constructivism means that reality, that fungible, tangible experience of a place such as Jasper, diffuses in a mist of virtuality. The strength of the contemporary economy is built increasingly of virtual leisure and work, and this view of life is beginning to pervade the Athabasca Valley and every other place to which we attach real significance. In Jasper, the park is buffeted to an extent greater than most desire by the winds of change. Perhaps the most difficult one to understand, and ultimately the most important if we take seriously a connection between deep belief and action, is the way that people’s values about wilderness are changing. The late Alexander Wilson, a formative thinker in the Society for Ecological Restoration, suggested that the North American concept of nature is conditioned by the automobile and changes in mobility and vantage points, the aesthetic conditions of suburban living, the rise of formal nature and outdoor education, television and media programming, and theme parks.45 These are difficult matters to study and chronicle, not least because they are largely immune to quantitative analyses. A good place to begin any study of institutions that change our attitudes toward nature is the Disney Corporation. There is little doubt that Disney through its films and television programming of anthropomorphized animals has done as much as any other source to alter our perceptions of nature and wilderness, and mostly in the name of entertainment. Disney dominates the culture industry at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is one reason why Jennifer Cypher and I took on the task of studying the Wilderness Lodge at Disney World. A group of designers at Disney sat down to decide what broad cultural values people (primarily from the United States) would associate with wilderness and produced an exceptionally compact and grand view of wilderness in the form of a themed hotel—a design that builds on carefully constructed, repetitive ideas. Could it be that more people will learn about wilderness from Disney than from so-called wilderness areas

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themselves? The restoration of damaged ecosystems in a national park such as Jasper, an icon of wilderness in Canada—which in turn stands for untrammeled nature (mistakenly, I would argue)—depends to a certain extent on the public values used in setting goals and allocating resources to realize those goals. Moreover, the very tendency to set goals or prescribe what natural places can or should do is an indication of an increasingly programmed view of wilderness. Disney’s Wilderness Lodge constitutes another kind of wilderness, and a very salable one. Wilderness as Theme The Wilderness Lodge is a four-star hotel set in the growing entertainment complex of Disney World in Orlando, Florida. An ingredient in the stunning success of Disney World is hotel development, in which hotels are imbued with the character of specific time, place, or event. There are thirteen large commercially successful hotels, each with a distinctive theme (e.g., the Grand Floridian, reminiscent of times past in the host state). The Wilderness Lodge is designed to convey the experience of staying in a grand Western U.S. national park hotel, a remarkable feat considering it has over 700 rooms and is located in steamy central Florida. Apparently the idea for the project was strongly supported by Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, someone who relates to the outdoors through boyhood experiences in the Adirondacks.46 The Lodge seeks to capitalize on deeply held American beliefs about wilderness, simpler lifestyles, the frontier, and Native Americans. Wilderness is transmogrified into a theme. Disney’s constructed realities have reached their North American acme at Disney World, in which the Disney Corporation has produced three separate theme parks, a shopping village, and several other attraction areas on a 28,000-acre property wholly owned and managed by Disney. Disney’s latest nature theme project, opened in 1998, is styled as an animal preserve, Animal Kingdom, where guests can go on safari and observe actual “wild” animals in their “natural” habitat. The motto of the Lodge is “Don’t just stay, explore!”, a phrase eerily similar to so many advertising slogans devised by states and provinces over the last few years to advertise the natural splendors of their regions.

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The Lodge fits into Disney World in a very special way, far removed from the more obviously landscaped areas, straddling a fine line between wanting to look natural in its surroundings and wanting to toot the Disney horn about how much “imagineering” it took to create a forest in a Florida swamp. Without the care and planning of a Disney product, the Wilderness Lodge might fly in the face of the overall message about nature presented throughout Disney World, in which a particular view of progress is naturalized. Yet Disney absorbs the Lodge into this doctrine of progress by emphasizing certain elements of the story of the Lodge. The human struggle against the wilderness is the tale told here, and the bringing of the frontier under human control, by both physical and ideological means, places the Lodge and its history firmly within the ideological bounds of Disney. Timberline Drive leads the visitor away from the buzz and excitement of Disney World to a more tranquil setting. Gradually, design elements begin to do their work in convincing the visitor that she or he has entered a new realm. One passes through a dramatic gate (very similar to the kind of gate that arches over the road leading to the Jasper Park Lodge). The trees become taller and more conifer. Road signs have changed from the typical metal-on-metal to ones that are supported by rough-hewn poles. There are a few redwood trees in the median strip close to the main entrance of the Lodge, struggling in a foreign environment. The Lodge appears to be constructed of logs and is covered with a manyleveled green roof. A valet dressed in a faux–park ranger uniform greets visitors on their arrival. The lobby lies beyond massive, permanently open wooden doors and sliding glass doors that separate the hot, humid Florida day from the airconditioned space within. Here is what Jennifer Cypher reported on entering: It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the light, which filters into the room as if through mountains and forest. The lobby is enormous. Over seven stories high, wooden balconies at each level encircle it. Huge stripped logs support the room at its perimeter, and bundles of logs topped by animal carvings reach for the timbered roof. At the far end of the lobby is a fireplace, its chimney nine stories of stratified rock formations. Two totem poles face each other from across the lobby, each reaching almost to the ceiling, decorated with carved and painted images familiar to those who have seen the carvings of the Native people from

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North America’s Northwest Coast. The stone floor is rough granite around the room’s perimeter, giving way in the center to highly polished stone inlaid with designs suggesting Navajo and Hopi blanket patterns. Iron and stretched skin tipi-shaped light fixtures hang from the ceiling; the ironwork depicts Native people on horseback pursuing buffalo.47

The attention to detail is exquisite. Food served in the Whispering Canyon Café features a cowboys-and-Indians decor and frontier-style cooking. The gift shops specialize in Western objects and environmental games, toys, and souvenirs. Inside, guest rooms repeat the themes. The bedspreads resemble patchwork quilts, the furniture is mission style, and the paintings are specially prepared copies of turn-of-the-century works that depict nature without the gore. The fireplace represents the stratigraphy of the Grand Canyon, which is second only to the drama of Silver Springs Creek. The creek gushes forth from its apparently real source in the lobby of the hotel and heads for the courtyard outside, where it drops over rocks and tumbles wildly toward the lake on which the Lodge is located. Just before it reaches the lake, the creek culminates in Fire Rock Geyser, a 180-foot, every-hour-on-the-hour, hydraulic extravaganza. Taller and more reliable than Old Faithful, the poignant symbol of Yellowstone National Park, Fire Rock is operated by a hidden apparatus that mimics its better-known if somewhat estranged relative, despite the humid environment of Florida. Materials for the Lodge are not what they appear. It is a tribute to Disney’s “imagineers” that stream rocks are made of carefully painted concrete, and the logs are not real logs but simulated wood made of concrete. Some of this is done to create building efficiencies and meet safety regulations, but elsewhere there are Disney flourishes that become part of the entertainment mystique. Guests are encouraged to spot the subtlest details. In the grand fireplace, which offers itself as an educational experience in the geology of the American West that guests can view from balconies at each floor, there is a Mickey Mouse silhouette carved into one of the geological layers. Such is the transmogrification of wilderness. Interpretive materials paint a purple past. The Silver Creek Star is a newsletter distributed to guests that explains how the Wilderness Lodge was established to preserve the beauty of its surroundings, obviously

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playing off the significance of wilderness parks. A complicated tale is told of fictional Colonel Ezekiel Moreland, who set off on the trail left by Lewis and Clark with a crew of naturalists, former soldiers, and explorers. Moreland is a rugged individualist who challenges the toughest tests the West has to offer: “I take to the wilderness alone. . . . The good earth will provide me with everything I need to survive. . . . I have my gun, I have my courage, and I have my determination.”48 Moreland discovers Silver Creek Springs and ultimately brings his daughter Genevieve west to help create the Wilderness Lodge, an edifice that will encourage the preservation of the natural beauty of wilderness. This unabashed story adorns the narrative about wilderness created by the Lodge itself. It reinforces the ideas of nature without people, wild and dangerous unknowns, noble Indians, gritty settlers, and the soul of the American people who sought to preserve beauty against rapacious developments. Each of these individual elements is insufficient to carry the narrative, but when combined, they recreate an imaginative wilderness. If wilderness is the apex of experience, the Lodge represents a distinctive and extraordinarily well-crafted retelling of such experience. In making a spectacle of this experience, indulgence is raised to new heights. And indulgence sells extremely well if the numbers of guests are a reliable indication.49 However, we really do not have much idea what guests think of the Lodge beyond their immediate embrace of the facility. The Disney Corporation was generous with their staff time and access to facilities, but they frowned on independent surveys or studies of guests. Cypher was able to observe and to a limited extent interact with staff and guests at the Lodge, but there remain important questions to answer: What meaning(s) of wilderness do the guests take in? Are they ecotourists? What is the relationship between the preconceived views of the guests and the themes expressed at the Lodge? Colonizing the Imagination The Disney version of wilderness rests on a complete fabrication not only of experience but also of place. At one level this should cause us no concern. Fabrications in the form of circuses, carnivals, and world’s fairs have been around for a long time. They are intended to be entertaining,

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Fun for the Whole Family. To read the Wilderness Lodge as mere entertainment is, of course, to miss some fascinating and disturbing features. A development such as the Lodge builds on ingrained public ideas about wilderness, which is to be expected, but such a project in the hands of an agency as powerful as the Disney Corporation has the potential to reshape meaning. Such meaning is bound up with larger cultural patterns of commodification and consumption, as well as with the search for a simpler past, control over nature, and historical amnesia about the role of peoples in settling the West. In many cases it was not a bountiful, productive, and friendly conquest of new land, but comprised violent struggles to assert one way of life and view of the world on other peoples and landscapes.50 That this pathology of conquest goes largely unmentioned in the Lodge is a tribute to Disney’s ability to bend perception, especially at a time when there is growing awareness of the complexity, ambiguity, and contingency of historical records. The appeal of such a simple story of benign settlement in a breathtaking wilderness setting may be that it anchors the world to a story that is at once simpler, kinder, guiltless, and congenial to the idea of wilderness.51 After all, what story do people want to hear when on vacation, as most are when they visit either Disney attractions or national parks?52 Also striking is the fact that in visiting the Lodge one is not really having an experience of a simulated wilderness but of a simulated representation of wilderness. During her visit to the site, Cypher found it difficult to engage with anything natural—that is, uncontrolled, unweeded, unplanned. There is a nature preserve, Discovery Island (sponsored by Friskies, the cat food company) on Bay Lake, but once outside the hotel there are few places to walk, no place to go without an escort or plan or car. Hence, the Wilderness Lodge offers little in the way of experience at the level of direct contact with animals and plants, even to the extent that one has in visiting a zoological or botanical garden. Disney, like the tourist and entertainment industries in general, is in the business of selling programmed experience: consummation through consumption of reality, or more accurately, virtual reality. In doing this, Disney is intimately involved in the production of landscapes and the selling of stories about nature. Disney World uses space to create and

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reinforce ideologies especially supportive of capitalism and consumption. Capitalism is emphasized, of course, because it represents the acme of the American economy and is probably the only route to creating such concentrated entertainment. Consumption is what makes the Wilderness Lodge and similar attractions possible. I think of this every time I visit one of the new style of interpretive centers popping up in parks everywhere: state-of-the art buildings, expensive video productions, entertaining children’s displays, interactive information kiosks, fetching graphics, alluring memento shops and snack bars. Education is the guise, but I feel that most often consumption is driving these facilities. The idea begins, as it did in the multimillion-dollar Icefields Interpretive Center at the world-renowned Columbia Icefields in Jasper National Park, with multiple and conflicting demands: education, traffic flow, basic visitor services, cost recovery and profit. Elaborate educational displays are designed to explain the phenomena outside the window, but the display is so compelling that the visitor center becomes an end in itself. Designers artfully craft messages that are tuned to contemporary interests, which are in turn conditioned by popular culture. As people become inured to destination consumption—as with Niketown stores, where selling shoes is only an aspect of the cultural experience of being there—visitor centers fall in step. Thus, the Icefields Center is itself a destination, and the consumption of ideas and goods is a comforting experience in an otherwise hostile world of ice and mountains. Why visit the glacier when the glacier is reproduced safely and comfortably inside a building or through the virtual engineering of video? These thematic centers of consumption are of one piece with the Wilderness Lodge, though admittedly smaller and perhaps therefore more benign. Cypher and I refer to the pattern that connects all of the diverse attempts to manufacture experience as colonization of the imagination.53 Disney’s imagineers and designers working at other institutions are not merely regulating impressions of experience, they are reconfiguring people’s imaginative capacities. The Wilderness Lodge is changing what people understand wilderness or nature to be, and this in turns shapes their views of the real thing. This has less to do with a conspiracy and more to do with the extraordinarily successful empire created by Disney

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and fed by consumer impulses, reinforced by exposure to other aspects of the entertainment marketplace: Disney films, videos, stores, and countless references in popular culture. It is too easy to stop here and ignore the ideological intentions of Disney, and also the effect that this enterprise and others are having on the ways we comprehend reality; after all, Disney is not alone in commodifying nature.54 The colonization of the imagination is part of a larger pattern of colonialism and imperialism that characterizes the development of North American life and that is spreading all over the world through the processes of economic and cultural globalization.55 Dramatic as it may seem, in colonizing the imagination what the Lodge and similar projects are accomplishing is a friendly takeover of the reality that underlies themed experience. By turning wilderness into a conceptual product, one that is adaptable and pliable, Disney is also creating a new reality. The wilderness outside the empire becomes subject to the interpretations of the empire, and our capacities for imagination and action are dessicated. Celebration? The reach of Disney comes precisely because the corporation has figured out how to imbue entertainment with deeply held beliefs, and then to take these beliefs and shape them to meet corporate interests. There is an ideology to Disney beyond big business, and this is sometimes forgotten in the rush to embrace the so-called magic of entertainment. There is an evangelical Disney. Walt Disney, Disney’s founder and now chief archetype, imagined a future dominated by small-town America: white picket fences, single-family homes, safe streets, and wholesome entertainment. He believed in this vision fervently and used it to design entertainment that would appeal to an America (now the world) lost in struggles for identity. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in Celebration City, a $2.5 billion dollar development just outside Disney World in Florida. It is an experiment that Russ Rymer terms “redemptive urban design.”56 Ironically perhaps, Celebration City is the proof of a promise Walt Disney made to Florida just before his death in 1966—that EPCOT, the popular theme park depicting a high-tech future, would also be a real community, one that would embrace 20,000 people. If Celebration

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is the wave of the future for communities, as Michael Eisner believes, then it is almost purely nostalgic: “Disney pervades. The Celebration town seal, emblazoned on everything from coffee cups to manhole covers, is a cameo of a little girl with a ponytail riding a bicycle past a picket fence under a spreading oak tree as her little dog chases along behind. It is an icon of innocence and freedom, and it bears a Disney copyright.”57 The designers of Celebration City have taken their job seriously: establishing a small town requires more than the manipulation of “hardware.” The creation of “software”—community spirit, organizations, social cohesion—is a delicate and challenging matter for any designer and not one that many have been able to execute, if today’s sprawling, disorienting cities are any indication. Disney designers searched for the soul of small-town America by studying communities that did demonstrate such integrity, much as the designers of the Wilderness Lodge visited national parks and national park lodges for inspiration. Typically, in Disney imagineering a “backstory” is written, one that creates a mythic past. This was a primary technique used to generate the Lodge. However, in Celebration City, such a gambit was rejected, with developers relying on an implied past rather than on one that is fabricated. I have not been able to get over the eerie feeling of Celebration. I entered a skeptic and left, well, an unwilling believer. The layout of the town is superb. The mercantile district welcomes the pedestrian with smells of fresh-baked organic bread and mesquite grill. The theater conjures up the 1950s, a purportedly simpler time. The artificial lake anchors the community. Bicycle and walking trails permeate the development. Posing as a prospective house buyer, I found myself secretly admiring the clever flourishes, the artfully designed houses. So much thought went into the design that it struck me that perhaps it does take massive capital and heroic intention to design a good community, even if the housing prices are out of reach for many Americans and few can find work locally (Celebration is, after all, a bedroom community for Orlando). Perhaps the strangest experience occurred on ordering a morning coffee at a quaint café overlooking the lake. Wanting to soak in the ambience of Celebration, I asked for my coffee in a real cup. The server replied, “Sorry, sir, we don’t have real cups. You’re the first person to ask for one.”

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Celebration City may appear to those of us who eschew such total planning as a crass attempt to spread Disney ideology. Yet it has proved popular with prospective buyers, who entered a lottery just to have an opportunity to buy a house. Apart from a high-minded rejection of the project, what real criticism can we offer, criticism that might point to the center of what is troubling about developments such as Celebration and the Wilderness Lodge? The question of authenticity comes to mind immediately—a point that Rymer emphasizes: Of course, “bona fide,” like “authenticity” and “rigor,” is a complicated concept in Celebration. What do such terms mean in a town whose history is retroactive, whose tradition is that of the entertainment company that founded it, whose lake is dammed and whose creek is pumped, whose creators say “lifestyle” for “life” and insert the phrase “a sense of” before every vital principle? Celebration is billed as being in the great American tradition of town building, but it is a town whose mission isn’t the pursuit of commercial advantage, or religious or political freedom, or any idea more compelling than a sense of comfortable community. Its ambition is, in the end, no greater than to be like a town.”58

But what does it mean to be “like” a town instead of being a town? A similar question can be asked of the Wilderness Lodge. At one level its ambition is to be nothing other than a very accommodating hotel, one that attracts by constructing a salutary mythology of wilderness. After all, what could be wrong with wilderness? In studying the Lodge together with real issues in a real national park, another level is apparent: the real consequences of artificiality and themed experience. The immersion of more and more people in an atmosphere such as the Lodge, coupled with the power of media images portraying complicated, often contradictory messages about wild nature, results in a compounded problem. Not only is the myth of wilderness promulgated, with all the attendant dangers of wild places, but nature is also rendered as something subject to our ultimate control. Wild things are all right as long as they are not too wild and the choices we must make to keep them wild are not too difficult to endure. As Cypher comments, it is “wilderness without the dirt or danger.”59 This is the central dilemma I think managers in places such as Jasper must come to terms with. The public on which they rely for their support through political institutions may become increasingly fickle about management alternatives, and perhaps less tolerant of the discomforts of

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real park experience. Might the combination of privatization and themed experience produce demands for money-back guarantees and insurance policies on hikes along the Skyline Trail, one of Jasper’s famous highaltitude treks? Weather may be alterable but not controllable. Ian MacLaren commented to me that the bear-in-the-kitchen experience was cinematic because we were conditioned by so many similar Disney television stories—could my retelling of the tale reflect a learned disposition to seeing nature as an artifact of commercial production? Park wardens are inclined to agree, noting that themed experience, whether through television, museums, school curriculums, or theme parks, is causing people to do bizarre things while traveling through parks such as Jasper such as walking right up to a black bear munching berries at the side of the road; it disrespects the integrity of that being, and denies knowledge of its fierceness, fragility, and wildness. The plight of Jasper is very real. Nearly a century of on-the-ground practices, rooted in traditional values of wilderness, have produced a freak landscape, one out of character with the long-term ecological and cultural history of the region and one that may ultimately thwart attempts to conserve and restore biodiversity and create appropriate cultural practices. It is one thing for the public to be open-minded about prescribed burning as a way of reintroducing fire as a process in the landscape, to take one example, but quite another to accept charred landscapes, extensive smoke, and the knowledge that much remains experimental. “It would,” as MacLaren speculates, “be like visiting Paris during a museum workers’ strike.”60 The world of a real national park is not nearly so innocent as the world of wilderness represented by Disney. One Wilderness or Two? In the decades ahead, people will be increasingly preoccupied with electronic mediation in the form of electronic games, Web design and maintenance, virtual reality simulations, e-mail, Internet browsing, and multimedia conveyances. Our knowledge is becoming indoor knowledge: fewer people move beyond television and computer screens,61 biology departments are shifting from field to lab projects, students in

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universities—my university at least—are receiving far less experience in the field or even direct hands-on education than they did ten years ago, and fewer people venture into the backcountry of Jasper National Park. These are the physical manifestations of a large cultural shift in our disposition toward places and things we regard as nature. David Orr, a leading American environmental educator, urges us along another path toward greater “ecological literacy,” knowledge of things as they are through felt experience. What he proposes is anathema to the sound bite, the snapshot nature program on television, the quick-fix textbook, the single-issue lobby group, or what people used to call indoctrination: “The fact that this kind of intimate knowledge of our landscapes is rapidly disappearing can only impoverish our mental landscapes as well. People who do not know the ground on which they stand miss one of the elements of good thinking, which is the capacity to distinguish between health and disease in natural systems and their relation to health and disease in human ones.”62 Comprehension of the intricacy, “authenticity, indigeneity, fierceness, and spontaneity; resilience and health above all,”63 of wild places, writes Stephanie Mills, requires personal, intimate, slow-paced knowledge of exactly the kind that we are largely extinguishing in our institutions and our lives. I fear that we are becoming endlessly proficient with geographic information systems, the maps, and in the process becoming progressively estranged from the places to which they refer, or even reality itself. Wilderness—nature without people, untamed wild open spaces—is clouding judgment and best intentions: But the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world. . . . Only people whose relation to the land was already alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land.64

Cronon’s work raises a disquieting question that ecologists and environmentalists are quick to point out: What do we do about areas that do, in fact, come close to matching the traditional ideal of wilderness?

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Writing as Cronon does from Wisconsin or California,65 both regions of intense cultivation and dense settlement, one is apt to have a different view of wilderness and working landscapes than someone who inhabits less peopled places. This is one of the main reasons I chose Jasper National Park as a central example. It is in many respects a paradigmatic example of contemporary wilderness. As David Strong writes, “A transcendent encounter with wilderness and wild things is possible in our time, now and then, because we have voluntarily not brought absolutely everything under control, having protected from this unsettling, rearranging process, some wild places in the form of legal wilderness areas, wildlife reserves and national parks.”66 For reasons of geography and fate, Jasper has had modest human involvement with ecosystems, except in the heavily used montane valleys. The gaze of the visitor is usually directed upward toward the awe-inspiring mountains, which immediately erases the sensation and fact that one is traveling along a national highway and alongside a major railway, buried pipelines and fiber optic cables, and dozens of archaeological and historical sites. Even if we were to create two zones, as park managers have largely done—front country and back country—in which the populated valleys are treated as use zones and the majority of the landscape (>90%) is wilderness, this distinction would miss both the ecological significance of the peopled valleys and the continuity that has always existed between the main valleys and those that are more remote from present-day travel routes. There will always be regions that are so craggy, forested, and formidable that people will turn away; these are the regions that fit the archetype of wilderness. But, few of these places have been free of people over the long haul. Traditional travel routes for indigenous peoples that led to summer camps, hunting areas, and sites of sacred significance must have created a landscape perceived very differently than the one we know today. The idea of wilderness obscures these subtle historical and ecological facts. In advancing the concept of wilderness to describe Jasper we are, as Cronon suggests, getting back to the wrong history. Comparisons to works of art are dubious, but Jasper is like a priceless painting; it represents both rarity and extraordinary integrity. Yet it is in a crucial way not very constructed; its reality is palpable to those

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who choose it over television or some other mediated experience. It may in fact have sufficient “commanding presence and telling continuity”67 that its character penetrates even the windows of an automobile or motor home. Jasper challenges our notion of wilderness precisely because it is at once both a remarkably wild place and a place that has been marked and shaped by human activities for thousands of years. The concept of wilderness needs redefinition. The redefinition process that began with the efforts of a few scholars and managers thirty years ago has begun to percolate through management activities in so-called wilderness areas and will eventually seep into public consciousness. I am not alone in recommending abandonment of the term wilderness and replacing it with more precise and less loaded phrases. Wildness is the condition of being unconstrained and unconventional, perhaps wayward. One does not easily predict wildness. To be part of it, one must engage in reciprocal relations, giving as much as one takes, listening as much as talking. It requires what Gary Snyder terms “the etiquette of freedom.”68 Wildlands are those where such relations take place. This book is about the power, potential, and limitations of ecological restoration. By choosing to describe a place that most people think is a preeminent wilderness, I have introduced indirectly an acid test and a conundrum for restorationists. The question should not be, “can we restore wilderness,” but can wildness be restored? An expanded view of restoration must account for the possibility that people can be part of wildness, that they can be participants in modest, regenerative, respectful activities over long intervals in precious areas. My hunch is that if we can solve both the practical and abstract issues of restoring a place such as Jasper, which will necessarily involve bending the traditional meanings of both restoration and wilderness, the challenge in other locales will be that much easier. Back in the park, ecological restoration is synonymous with the restoration of hope; the icy-edged mentality of inevitable development and consumption can, over time, melt away to expose a respectful, reciprocal engagement with this landscape. Then the aim will not be to protect threatened reserves per se, but to change the imagination and ambitions of people, and in so doing permit the flourishing of wild places. The call must be for education, not indoctrination, the latter being the province of themed experience.

2 Boundary Conditions

The collapse of the famous estuary produced the predictable dull-eyed bafflement among bureaucrats. Faced with a public-relations disaster and a cataclysmic threat to the tourism industry, the same people who by their ignorance had managed to starve Florida Bay now began scrambling for a way to revive it. This would be difficult without antagonizing the same farmers and developers for whom the marshlands had been so expensively replumbed. Politicians were caught in a bind. Those who’d never lost a moment’s sleep over the fate of the white heron now waxed lyrical about its delicate grace. Privately, meanwhile, they reassured campaign donors that—screw the birds—Big Agriculture would still get first crack at the precious water. For anyone seeking election to office in South Florida, restoring the Everglades became not only a pledge but a mantra. Speeches were given, grandiose promises made, blue-ribbon task forces assembled, research grants awarded, scientific symposiums convened . . . and not much changed. —Carl Hiassen, Lucky You

Florid(ian) Images The Ninth Annual Conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) was held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in November 1997, a nearly ideal time for a northerner to head south for a week of sunlight and heat. I had missed the chance a couple of years earlier to visit the Wilderness Lodge at Disney World with Jennifer Cypher, then a graduate student working with me on describing how the business of creating nature related to the business of restoring nature. For her the creation from scratch of a themed hotel playing on American values of wilderness represented the most extreme view of restoration, the deliberate creation of a historical image (see chapter 1). I arrived in Orlando a day early to stomp around Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Celebration City before

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heading south to the conference. After navigating the airport and finding motel accommodations along the neon strip running east from Disney World, I headed to the Wilderness Lodge just after sunset to eat a themed meal at the Whispering Canyon Café (I couldn’t afford to stay at the Lodge). Touring the Lodge was everything Jennifer had promised: an eerie conjunction of the real and fake, or what Jim McMahon has called designer ecosystems.1 The word simulacrum—a copy with no true origin—haunted me. Everything was designed and created; even the rocks were made of concrete and painted to look real. I gawked at the nine-story-high fireplace representing the stratigraphic layers of the Grand Canyon. The grandiosity of such designs and the ardor by which Disney’s “imagineers” bring them to life wore me down. After a couple of hours I found myself succumbing to the magic of Disney. There is a kind of giddiness that accompanies boundary-crossing events, when the imagined collides with the actual to produce a new portrait of reality. As a corrective, I spent the evening wandering around outside searching for elusive signs of indigenous Florida, something real to hold onto. The search ended at the end of the farthest boat dock facing Discovery Island, a nature preserve, with flickering lights on either side of the shadowed island, as I tried to imagine the pre-Disney landscape. Back at the rundown motel room, jet-lagged with a glass of rum in hand, I pondered whether someone could visit the Wilderness Lodge and walk away with a deeper feeling for wild places. Breakfast the next morning was in Celebration City, Disney’s planned community, at a chic pondside café. Coffee is recommended before visiting Celebration City lest the apparent authenticity of the place, the vivid conjuring of its designers, overwhelm one’s critical capacities. Unnerved by pull of the region, I grabbed the rental car and began the long drive south to Fort Lauderdale, stopping of course at Cape Canaveral, one of the sites of NASA’s space program. (More questions: Why were the waterways around the Space Center posted as “snake-infested”? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to think of the land surrounding the waterways as “space program–infested”?) Two hours from the Greater Miami area, the traffic and development intensified. The changes were imperceptible at first, but at least an hour outside of the city traffic was clogged and the roadsides festooned by satellite communities, hotels, strip malls,

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and billboards. The density and glitter were overwhelming. Wending past exotic car dealerships, motorcycle emporiums, and malls, there was nothing to indicate I was less than two miles from the ocean, or that this strip cut across a narrow coastal plain, a band of sand separating the Atlantic from the Everglades.2 Fort Lauderdale turns its back on the Everglades; everyone is moored to their view of the ocean. The swamps and other wetlands just a few miles inland constitute a dark, confusing, forbidding place. Along the coast the world is utterly manicured. Marinas dot the Intracoastal Waterway and seep into the dozens of canals that make Fort Lauderdale the “Venice of America.” The beach is tended each morning by tractor-drawn rakes. Even the ocean looks domesticated with brightly lit passenger and cargo ships moored just offshore. It was an odd location for the annual SER conference. What drew me first to the Society for Ecological Restoration were the remarkable successes of community groups and scientists, government employees and corporations, who by careful work and commitment had reversed some of the damaging ecological effects of human activity. Community, too, was being rebuilt in the process. The annual conferences rejuvenate weary restorationists. In Fort Lauderdale, I took in sessions on southern longleaf pine restoration, historical ecology, educational initiatives, restoration projects from Eastern Europe, and an evening of enchanting readings by members of the Orion Society’s Forgotten Language tour. Restoration work in south Florida, perhaps because of the scale and pace of development, is as advanced as restoration is anywhere in North America. George Gann’s nonprofit Institute for Regional Conservation has compiled a comprehensive database for native and exotic flora in south Florida. Kellie Westervelt’s Cape Florida Project, operated under the aegis of the American Littoral Society, is a model for volunteer participation. The Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid, Florida, has developed a sophisticated prescribed-fire program that integrates community values and scientific knowledge, and builds in stochastic functions with an up-front humility about what can and cannot be accomplished. It is difficult not to be inoculated against cynicism after seeing some of the ambitious plans and successful projects.

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Walking late at night along the edge of the Intracoastal Waterway, my view of the water and manatees blocked by gleaming yachts, each worth more than I will earn in my lifetime, I began to imagine what Fort Lauderdale would become if it turned itself into the Everglades and stopped trying to control an unruly ocean. Exclusive hotels connected by overhead walkways to the manicured beach would be pushed aside in favor of the life that teems amidst maritime dunes and people who are willing to track respectfully along the shores: inhabitation instead of consumption. Such dreaming comes easily at SER meetings, where nothing seems unattainable in the face of intelligence, cooperation, and hard work. I used this dreaming in my own region as well, trying to imagine Jasper National Park a century from now. The sting of disbelieving laughter at seemingly outrageous proposals is softened by an awareness of the scale of historical change: imagine your place a hundred years earlier and use this image to think of the next century. I grasp the belief that virtually anything can happen over the course of a century, and we would be wise to remember this. Alas, my dreaming did not last long. At 28,000 feet above the coastline of Florida, heading for home, I saw the stark line of development cordon the inland wetlands like a bleeding Magic Marker line along the eastern shore. Cynicism crept back in as I pondered the efforts of restorationists against the juggernaut of land speculation, Sunbelt condos, shameless wealth, and strip malls. Carl Hiassen’s novel Lucky You, the story of intrigue, land speculation, and lottery tickets in south Florida, was perched on my lap in the airplane and I realize now that his darkly lit and twisted view helps me understand the line between wildland and development. The heroes in his book occupy the inbetween zones: the bushed ex-governor who haunts the wetlands, a Seminole man who understands crocodiles (as much as anyone can understand crocodiles), a black woman veterinary assistant named Jolayne Lucks who desperately wants to save a small tract of wet forest from a money-laundering real estate scam. Restorationists occupy the border zones of contemporary life, mediating between a view of nature as untouched wilderness and one as gridded garden, their activities praised neither by zealous developers nor by protective environmentalists. On the way home to Alberta,

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crossing literal and figurative borders, I realized how much my own understanding of why and how we restore nature is conditioned by boundaries: between nature and culture, one region and another, past and future, authenticity and simulation. What makes restoration so fascinating and troubling at the same time is such border crossing through the boundary zones of conventional activities and beliefs. Restoration pushes the limits of our understanding of nature and reality, which is why debate around restoration is so lively and so many people are attracted to it as an alternative environmental practice. Living in the boundary layers has its problems, too, most notably when the perimeters are ill-defined and continuously shifting. Life at the interstices is never clear and single purposed. Restorationists are tugged in all directions and operate from a wide variety of ideological positions, so much so that it is unclear generally and specifically what counts as restoration. Is intentional human intervention necessary? Where is the line drawn between projects faithful in creating or recreating previous ecological assemblages, and those that bow to aesthetic or prudential considerations? When is restoration merely aiding and abetting development? Is fidelity to history a necessary condition of restoration, or is a mere nod toward the past tolerable? Must restoration depend on professional competence, or are the meandering experiments of amateur practitioners acceptable? How are process and product best weighed? Should cultural practices be encouraged? Moreover, how many burdens should be placed on ecological restorationists to restore not only ecosystems but cultural practices and beliefs as well? These are among the questions that come to mind when considering the character of contemporary restoration. They pop up like unwanted plants, weedy questions. The best place to begin the search for answers, acknowledging that the search itself is as important as the answers, is by looking at several restoration projects that suggest boundaries. These projects provide a basis for addressing the conceptual questions about restoration practice that occupy this and the next two chapters. The journey begins with the Kissimmee River restoration project near the headwaters of the Florida Everglades, arguably the largest and most complicated restoration project undertaken to date. Such a project offers a sense of what is possible when large budgets and scientific weight are thrown behind a

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project. The Morava River restoration projects in the Slovak Republic illustrate how difficult it can be to decide on appropriate goals for restoration in a thoroughly cultural landscape. In this case, ecological integrity of riverine meadows was being threatened by diminished human activity, not the other way around. Finally, I visit the Robert Starbird Dorney Garden, a memorial garden in southern Canada that touches the borders of contemporary restoration practice. These three cases do not represent the panoply of restoration projects, but they do illustrate some of the main tensions and issues. They are ones I am familiar with, so that they allow me to write in the first person. They illuminate the universe in which restorationists operate. A brief history of restoration, which follows, shows how this universe came into being. Meandering Ambitions: The Kissimmee River (Florida) Restoration During the 1997 SER conference in Fort Lauderdale I engineered a daylong escape to the Kissimmee River. The Kissimmee River is a located at the top (north) end of the Everglades drainage. Its fame is now secured by a huge restoration initiative, possibly the first restoration megaproject, estimated to cost upwards of several billion dollars.3 A large team of scientists and government officials will continue to work over the next decade to restore the natural conditions of approximately 45 miles of river channel and over 25,000 acres of associated wetlands. The river was channeled in the 1960s from the headwaters south of Orlando to Lake Okeechobee, creating a series of impoundments and a simplification of what was once a biophysically diverse, braided river channel. Almost 35,000 acres of wetland ecosystems were lost or significantly altered.4 The greatest lesson learned from this reengineering of the river is that the financial and ecological costs of restoration are far greater than those of prevention, a sobering fact. Farsighted, ecologically aware decision making in the early 1960s could have averted enormous expenditures on restoration less than three decades later. The analogy with contemporary health care is obvious: the costs of prevention are almost always less than the costs of intervention (i.e., restoration of health). The channeled river in its austere simplicity—a 300-foot-wide, 35foot-deep canal—is inversely related to the complicated structures and functions of the Kissimmee River in its meandering state. The U.S. Army

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Corps of Engineers, which took a lead in the original channelization and is now involved, ironically, in the restoration, provides a litany of ecological and cultural effects: Loss of naturally fluctuating water levels Loss of large areas of wetlands Deterioration of water quality in Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee Basin Changes in land use resulting in increased drainage Loss of natural river meanders Lower groundwater levels and reduced groundwater quality Potential need for increased flood protection Potential reduction in frost protection Potential increase in mosquito populations Reduced recreational navigational opportunities5

Such compromising influences are common in channelization projects. The continent is streaked with the marks of engineering projects aimed at controlling the irregular and unpredictable flows of rivers. The Kissimmee case is distinctive, however, because the river itself is unique in North America and the intervention so complete. In times past seasonal floodwaters would inundate much of the 1–2 mile-wide floodplain, remaining in pools in certain places during dry years or continuously covering the plain in wetter years. Only the peripheral areas would undergo regular seasonal drying. During peak flood conditions the river looked more like a long, narrow lake. Rapid post–World War II development in the region, coupled with a severe hurricane in 1947 and higher-than-normal water levels from 1947 to 1949, motivated public calls for a flood-reduction program. The State of Florida called on the federal government for assistance, and shortly after that the Army Corps of Engineers was commissioned to plan and design a comprehensive water-control scheme that transformed the river into a series of impoundments connected by canals. The work was finished in 1971, and it was in that same year that public concern was raised about environmental and recreational effects of the massive diversion project. Arriving at an agreeable restoration program for the Kissimmee basin took longer than the design phase for the construction of the diversion. Citizens, regulators, and scientists walked through a maze of mathematically modeled options and feasibility studies, shaped no doubt by shifting political and economic realities, to produce an agreeable compromise.

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The field trip I took was led by Lou Toth, a senior scientist with the South Florida Water Management District and leader of the 1984 Kissimmee River Demonstration Project. The 1984 experiment was undertaken to show the feasibility and implications of diverting water from the canal back into the former river meanders. The results are being used in the larger-scale restoration, which began in 1998 and will take more than a decade to complete. Heavy equipment is needed to backfill sections of canal, reconstruct former river channels eliminated by the canal, and dismantle water-control structures. The idea is intuitively obvious, but the hydraulic, hydrological, and ecological dynamics on the Kissimmee are large and complicated, and the effort involved in remaking the prediversion conditions boggles even a vivid imagination. We departed as a small flotilla just upstream from the S65B watercontrol structure and soon entered a serpentine channel that joined other serpentine channels in a complicated network of wetlands. The inexorable, sluggish southward movement of water suffuses thousands of acres of hummocky floodplain, alligators, and a riot of other aquatic, riverine, and wetland species. We met a number of recreational fishers in well-outfitted motorboats who plied these waters regularly and understood the human opportunities created in ecological diversity. Water and life had returned in abundance to hundreds of small meandering channels. I observed half a dozen species of herons, sometimes three species crowding the same tree. The richness of color, sound, and smell in the back channels made the canal that much less inviting, although I suspect my view would be different had I owned property in the floodplain. As our weary field-trip crew drove back to Fort Lauderdale in the late afternoon, I wondered whether local people had actually preferred the Army Corps aesthetic, whether the concrete rectilinearity reminded them of progress? Will the diversion be recorded in history books as a folly, a mistake? If so, how can we square this object lesson in the ecological and economic cost of restoration against rampant development in Florida? Such object lessons are tough to communicate and even tougher to assimilate by others. Impounding rivers and building dams is seldom, at least in the long run, a healthy practice.6 As the work proceeds, it is an opportunity to observe how well a restoration megaproject will succeed. Chances are good. A scientific

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advisory panel recommended a multi-stage process to thoroughly evaluate the restoration over the lifetime of construction, from 1998 to 2011 and beyond: by establishing historical reference conditions; studying unaffected analogous systems; using prediversion data and appeal to theoretical approaches; establishing current baseline conditions; assessing construction impacts; applying broad-spectrum, postconstruction assessment; and finally, employing adaptive management to ensure longterm success. For a project of this magnitude the need for clear goals is crucial not only for achieving some measure of ecological integrity, but also for ensuring efficiency in the restoration. The overriding goal is to return the channeled river back to a former condition, but the question is, what historical condition? Clifford Dahm and colleagues write: When considering the outcome of restoration efforts, it is instructive to consider not merely the pre-channelization “historical” condition of the Kissimmee River and its flood plain but conditions prior to European settlement. As much as possible, the restored system should encompass those attributes of presettlement conditions that would contribute significantly to recovery of ecosystem function and plant and animal communities.7

There are clearly technical limits on what it is possible to restore. No reasonable effort will completely erase the effects of channelization. Economics have, and will, mitigate certain options that might yield a more effective restoration, or at least one that would proceed toward specified goals more quickly. The challenge faced by the Kissimmee restorationists was arriving at ecological criteria that could be measured against historical conditions as faithfully as possible, and this meant concentrating at least as much on reestablishing processes as it did on ensuring that prior structures were in place. Is historical fidelity accounted for? Yes, of course it is, but staggering financial implications impose boundaries around historical fidelity. In the end, any steps—in this case large, expensive steps—toward improving ecological integrity, and presumably recreational opportunities, are better than what is in place now. Moreover, prescriptions for or limits on recreational use are difficult to achieve. I was surprised to learn that no zones of environmental protection are being created that would provide differential limits on access and activity. At present, the restored area is open to motorized watercraft,

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hunting, fishing, and, in some cases, cattle grazing. No plans exist at the moment for nonmotorized recreation. I was also surprised to learn that no areas are being set aside as long-term scientific preserves to study the effects of restoration. A restoration project is always a study in realpolitik; the discussion and negotiation among dozens of recreational, farming, and residential groups have produced a workable compromise. Presumably, some effort, as long as it is carefully thought out, is usually better than no effort at all. The difficulty with very large projects is maintaining momentum as key individuals move on, governments change, and budgets shrink or expand. Water that flows to us or past us has its own history. What we see or feel or smell or hear has already been somewhere and brings us clues. The Kissimmee River restoration project tells us more than we think if we inquire into its legacy. It tells us, for instance, that in the early twentyfirst century we are willing to invest half a billion dollars (or more) remedying a problem created, in some cases, by the same individuals and agencies that are involved in the restoration. We know that people rate immediate perceived values—flood control and certain types of recreation—as lower in importance than maintaining predisturbance ecological processes. Despite some significant technical challenges, restoration planners and scientists were able to backstop their designs with a number of small, proven projects. A large project needs smaller, proven projects to proceed. Most poignant, to my mind, is the realization that prevention makes eminently more sense than restoration. It is good to know we can restore complicated wetland and riverine ecosystems as well as we can, but the compressed time frame of the Kissimmee restoration—the fact that the impoundments were barely dry before people began demanding their removal—tempers any belief that restoration is salvation. Restoration works exactly in accordance with the care of our actions and the fidelity of our relationships with ecosystems. Beyond the Ecological Curtain: The Morava River Restoration, Slovak Republic In June 1997 Nik Lopoukhine, then chair of the board of the Society for Ecological Restoration, and I were invited to offer a course on North

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American perspectives on ecological restoration for a group of scientists and environmentalists in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. Funding for the course came through the Global Environment Facility Biodiversity Protection Project, which was in effect World Bank money steered through a quasi-governmental agency, in this case the Ministry of Environment for the Slovak Republic. Funding was intended to stabilize environmental management practices in countries undergoing rapid political, social, and economic change. Nik and I had heard that the two organizers, Zuzana Guziova and Peter Straka, had managed to accomplish much in the Slovak Republic since the division of the former Czechoslovakia in 1993, and following the famous “velvet revolution” in 1989, which resulted in the secession of Czechoslovakia from the former Soviet Union. Midway through the five-day course we embarked on a field trip to the westernmost regions of the Slovak Republic to view several interconnected restoration projects being undertaken by the DAPHNE Foundation, a nongovernmental organization supported by the Global Environment Facility. These projects were to serve as case studies for the remainder of the course. While there had been an expectation that Nik and I would serve as expert reviewers for these projects, what we found instead, as is often the case when foreign specialists are brought in to advise on local projects, was an extraordinary level of professionalism, technical proficiency, ingenuity, and creativity. The Morava River floodplain projects are an example of how ecological restoration can serve ecological and social goals despite enormous socioeconomic upheavals. The projects described below are less ambitious technically than the Kissimmee River restoration, but the human dimensions make them fascinating cases. The biodiversity that is being restored and protected arose precisely because of human agricultural activity. Thus, this restoration focuses, as in many parts of the world where people have lived for a long time in a close agricultural relationship with land and water, on a cultural landscape. Some of the assumptions about what is valuable in restoration from a North American perspective must be turned upside down in places such as the western Slovak Republic. The Morava River forms the border between the Slovak Republic and, in its lower reaches, Austria. In the floodplains of the river, especially in

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the many meanders, are biologically rich wet meadows that have been subject both to periodic flooding and to agricultural practices, primarily mowing for livestock feed. These cultural practices have been decisive in maintaining the ecological character of the region for the past thousand years or so. Much more recently, for almost forty years, the floodplains were locked inside the Iron Curtain, the heavily militarized zone that prevented unauthorized movement of peoples in and out of the Slovak Republic. This is the same Iron Curtain that blocked movement of people, goods, and ideas throughout the post–World War II period in Central and Eastern Europe. There were two main consequences of the military occupation of the region, one that had positive and the other negative implications for ecological integrity. Certainly a major and unexpected benefit was the isolation of the sites along the river from intensive development. There is little question that postwar, industrial forms of agriculture would have caused a net loss of species and ecosystems. Now, fortuitously, the Morava River floodplain is the largest and best preserved complex of wet meadows in Central Europe.8 The second implication, negative from an ecological point of view, was an extensive channelization project along the Iron Curtain to ensure a betterdemarcated border and less intrusive flooding. The channelization was successful, resulting in the drying up of many meadow sites along the river and an overall lowering of groundwater level. One of the sites we examined, part of the Abrod nature reserve, an extraordinarily diverse protected area located almost two kilometers from the river, was showing severe effects from the drop in water levels. The challenges for restorationists are difficult: How to elevate the water levels to a point sufficient to support wet meadows throughout the former wet-meadow complex? How can sustainable agricultural practices be nurtured to provide the cultural process that maintained the meadows? Restorationists along the Morava River are attempting to remove the effects of channelization by compelling water to flow in the abandoned meanders of the old river channel. Funding for this project is a fraction of that available to the Kissimmee River proponents, which makes intensive ecological, engineering studies and public consultation infeasible. Instead, the impetus is very much trial and error. Hand labor and limited heavy equipment diverted water from the main channel into the old

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meanders, requiring shoreline modifications, bank stabilization, and dredging. It is a beginning, at least, to what will over time be an important restoration project. Meadows are widely distributed along the lower Morava River, which in wetter areas are subject to regular inundation and higher water levels. These meadows are influenced primarily by flooding and water levels, and are maintained as meadows through twice-yearly mowing for domestic animal feed. The origin of this practice dates back hundreds of years. Without mowing, the meadows are subject to rapid successional processes that result first in shrub encroachment and ultimately in wet, forested ecosystems. The main proponents of the restoration, Jan Seffer and Viera Stanova, cofounders of DAPHNE, knew well the technical characteristics of the various sites and the challenges faced in restoration of traditional ecological and cultural processes. After all, these wet meadows were in abundance primarily through a quirk in national development and agricultural practices. The meadows were cultural artifacts, ecosystems that were given their character by long-standing cultural activities. One option would have been simply to ensure preservation of the region from intensive development and allow the meadow complexes to succeed with lower water levels and in the absence of mowing. This option, however, means lowering the overall biodiversity of the Slovak Republic. Counter to North American sensibilities, restoration in this case means the preservation and possibly enhancement of a cultural activity. The questions here are thorny: How do we decide which species should be favored? Is biodiversity the best measure of restorative success? Would cultural practices matter if the biodiversity that resulted was in fact less than what one would expect in the absence of those practices? Ecological restoration, with its North American bias toward so-called wilderness, has few conceptual enzymes to digest such a problem. The sacrosanct concept of biodiversity will be ground down under such conditions, and will become, I believe, one of the main issues with which restorationists will wrestle in the next decade. The decision to restore the region to ecological conditions that flourished prior to World War II invokes issues of technological change. Agricultural practices have changed dramatically over the past half century

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from predominantly hand mowing and draft-animal cartage to tractorpowered mechanical cutting, loading, and transport. Transformation in the agricultural sector in the next few decades may produce very different circumstances. For instance, volatile national and international agricultural markets may produce a decline in requirements for animal feed, and this in turn would result in a loss of support for meadow-based crops, especially those harvested with low-intensity methods. While it had not been studied, anecdotal observations by biologists suggested that tractor-drawn mowers produced a different ecological effect on the meadows. Ground-nesting birds, for example, are less likely to survive the pass of a mechanical mower than hand scything. Issues such as these create difficulties for restorationists who are trying to create long-term sustainable conditions for the flourishing of diminishing ecosystems. In a volatile, technologically driven national economy, is it possible to maintain an earlier form of harvesting technology, one that is ecologically beneficial? If such a practice could be made durable, either because it satisfies local economic conditions over the longer term or because it can be a public demonstration area that honors both ecological processes and cultural practices, maintenance of the practice is reasonable. However, given instabilities in the Slovak Republic and the rapid change of agricultural technology and agricultural commodity markets, it is more reasonable to contemplate techniques for mimicking rather than reproducing former mowing practices. Research would be needed to ascertain the kinds of cropping intervals—and other techniques of management, including fire and grazing—that would protect biological diversity. The Morava River restorations challenge typical North American notions of ecological restoration. Success in a cultural landscape depends on protecting ecological diversity, but at least as important is understanding and protecting cultural processes. Another layer is added to the value system of conventional ecological restoration: the historical condition may incorporate rather than exclude human participation. Both the well-funded, large-scale Kissimmee River restoration project and the smaller, incremental approach taken by the Morava River restorationists have strengths. Both are appropriate in terms of their local regulatory and socioeconomic setting. Both are achieving their goals. It seems there

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is no ideal type, which makes boundary setting more than a little challenging. Gardening or Restoration? The Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden, Ontario, Canada Immediately following the sudden death in 1987 of Robert Dorney, one of Canada’s most prominent environmental academics and my Ph.D. cosupervisor, a ragtag group of family, students, faculty, technicians, and community volunteers in Waterloo, Ontario, decided to offer tribute by creating a garden. Dorney had pioneered ecological gardening, landscaping, and restoration in Canada,9 and so we proposed to build a small ecosystem on the campus of the University of Waterloo. For over twenty years Dorney’s office in the Isaiah Bowman Building at the university had overlooked mown grass and exotic Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris) trees, a challenge for any ecologist with an interest in the protection of native species. After years of personal success with building miniature native ecosystems across Canada, he regarded the grove of pine trees as a personal failure.10 After his death, we decided to set the record straight. To the horror of many environmental groups on campus, we cut down over a dozen Scotch pine trees immediately adjacent to the Bowman building and rototilled the mown grass. Hundreds of hours of volunteer time went into the design of the garden, the collection of seeds and plants, soil preparation, construction of physical elements, raising endowment money, planting, watering, and weeding. We created a range of ecosystems: a shortgrass and tallgrass prairie, a dry woodland, and a wet woodland, all floral representatives of Waterloo County, a region that straddles the divide between the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence forest zone and the more southerly and diverse Carolinean forest zone. We designed seating places for quiet contemplation and walking paths for careful observation of the 200 or so species of plants. The Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden is a living memorial, including a commissioned meter-high ceramic sculpture and several of Dorney’s favorite native plants. The Dorney Garden is a deliberate design, a social construction, an artificial ecosystem—we do not know for sure what stood much earlier

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on that piece of ground. However, it is a project that privileges unpredictable ecological processes. Our intention was to encourage caprice and honor wild things. In a space of just over 3,000 square feet there is remarkable diversity. The garden is home to a number of rare and threatened plants. Its wild appearance is a potent antidote to the manicured park landscape that makes up much of the landscape of the University of Waterloo. The contradictions between artifice and wildness challenge us to wonder whether such a project really is a restoration. A distinction between process and product helps bridge the divide between social and natural. The product, the garden, comprises material chosen and placed by individuals: someone set each rock and plant in position. The processes of the garden, both social and ecological, have a successional and self-regulating quality. Once set in motion, the original patterning of the garden has become a buried artifact. This distinction is less obvious from the standpoint of social interaction. The garden was a volunteer project. It brought together the members of a community united by the memory of Robert Dorney. The political economy of its operation was an important factor affecting its outcome. Early decisions to promote open governance with decisionmaking powers vested in those who participated in the planning and physical labor reduced hierarchical control. Talent and confidence levels were diverse. Skilled natural gardeners and botanists were involved with the team, and so were people for whom this was a first experience with creating an ecosystem or garden. The bond that allowed professional botanists to work evenly alongside second-year philosophy students was created by the engagement of mind and body. The project cut across traditional professional affiliations and status. Each person stretched in their own way to figure out the placement of a plant or how wide to make a path. Consultation was pandemic, although there were certainly the requisite meltdowns as with any volunteer project. Perhaps most important in determining the success of the project was the presence of a moral center for the garden, the belief that this constituted a sensitive inscription of human knowledge on nature, and that it manifested the ideals of Robert Dorney, a man who inspired many people to think and rethink their understanding of ecological knowledge and practice.11

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I visited the garden recently after several years’ absence. It still serves as a focal point for people in and around the Bowman building. But I noticed that the paths were looking unkempt, the benches were bleached and blistered by a decade in the sun, and the grounds had been invaded by a strain of goldenrod, unruly sumacs, and bird-sown wild grape. I asked Greg Michalenko, a professor in the Department of Environment and Resource Studies, an avid gardener and one of the founding participants in the Dorney Garden project, about the state of the garden. He cited a long list of difficulties, including insufficient monies to hire a regular caretaker, lack of coordination of volunteer help, and an ideological clash over the extent of management appropriate in the garden. He viewed the garden as a functioning ecosystem, but one obviously way too small to support self-sustaining grassland and forested ecosystems. Intensive management is required to ensure biodiversity and representation of the intentions of the designers, especially the goal of preserving a suitable memorial to Robert Dorney. A stalemate over how best to manage the goldenrod (Solidago spp.), a plant that turned out to be especially weedy in the garden, has led to a decline in support for the project as a whole.12 I had thought the dedication to the garden so fierce at one time that nothing would threaten its long-term survival. Now, a decade later, many of the original proponents have scattered, and the institutional supports necessary to ensure a clear mandate for management and durability have come up short. The garden could reach the point where it offends the sensibilities of campus landscapers or those who walk past it each day. It may be replaced by another form of garden, or could revert to mown grass. The lessons learned here are difficult and are often repeated in any kind of long-term restoration project. The more obvious issue with the Dorney Garden is whether it is in fact a restoration. The small size of the project and the degree of contrivance would tend to suggest not. However, it does reflect historical ecosystems, the assemblages of plants are intended to be reasonably self-sustaining (at least low maintenance when possible), and it honors the spirit of restoration through the life of Robert Dorney. The Dorney Garden is a good example of a restoration near the outer boundary of ecological restoration. It challenges the meaning of restoration: Do we want a liberal definition

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or one that is exclusive? What is the importance of arriving at a clear definition? These three cases help us draw boundaries around contemporary restoration practice. I chose them to exhibit a variety of challenges in defining restoration. We know that ecological restoration is about repairing identifiable damage to ecosystems, although the terms repairing and damage are problematic. Historical conditions, both ecological and cultural, are important to understand despite the difficulty of taking all the relevant conditions into account or even recovering all of the important information. The scale of restoration varies greatly, from the Kissimmee megaproject to the volunteer Dorney Garden. Some projects are top down and driven scientifically, while others are bottom up and conducted by amateur volunteers. Cultural values and practices do matter, which is evident in all three projects. These values and practices determine what should be restored—the fixation of wilderness in North America is replaced by attention to cultural landscapes in Europe, to take one comparison. Any complete description of ecological restoration must of necessity include a host of factors, in effect a large matrix of possibilities. The techniques and challenges of restoring a coastal salt marsh are different from those involved with a coastal freshwater marsh project. There are as many restoration protocols as there are ecotypes, although there are some general rules, concepts, and approaches.13 Soils vary widely, even on relatively small sites, and a wide variety of specific techniques may be required to create successful growing conditions. The type and irascibility of weedy species will influence how much effort is required and whether herbicides or weeding or both are necessary. Some projects are focused on reintroduction of a specific species, while others attend to restoring a whole ecosystem. The old adage among ecologists is apt: “An ecosystem is not only more complex than we know, but more complex than we can know.” The Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden may not be an example of ecological restoration. Some would argue that it is a “natural garden,” an example of natural landscaping, or perhaps something closer to landscape architecture. It is, many would suggest, too contrived to be a restoration faithful to regional historical conditions. It makes too many

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concessions to people, both as a memorial to an individual and as a highly used walk-through and recreational spot on a busy university campus. The garden raises two critical issues in defining restoration. First, when is a purported ecological restoration project not an ecological restoration project? Second, what use is there in guarding the perimeter of ecological restoration? Why do boundaries need to be maintained? Another way of looking at this matter is to decide whether one accepts an inclusive or exclusive definition of restoration. The argument, briefly stated, for being inclusive—that is, to accept virtually anything, including mitigation projects, replacements, de novo ecosystem creations, formal naturalized gardens—is to ensure that the greatest amount of creativity and broad public attention are given to restoration. Against this are arguments that call for tighter boundaries and definitions, ones that make it relatively easy to discriminate among projects. This is an advantage if one wants to ensure strict professional standards and if there are concerns about ecological restoration drifting into meaninglessness or being co-opted by socially fashionable landscape trends. These arguments are very real for restorationists, and will grow more so as the practice of restoration develops and expands. Looking backward to the development of restoration highlights the meandering course of its development, the strands of practice and thinking that influence our contemporary understanding, and a better sense of boundaries. No general account of restoration would be complete without some attention to history. I take history seriously not only because it charts the drifts and tendencies of the field but also by virtue of its central place in the very constitution of restoration. The idea of restoring something is to return it to a prior condition, however specified. Any robust restoration project must consider changes over time, which embeds historical meaning deep within practical matters. History helps us understand that restoration is itself a dynamic practice that is changing as I write these words. What it will mean in fifty years is almost certainly going to be different from its sense today. Defining it, now and in the future, requires an understanding of various tendencies that have become apparent through practice. I further define restoration in chapter 3; historical issues are addressed in chapter 4. The following diversion into the history of restoration practice paves the way for both chapters.

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Normal History Many restorationists, at least those from North America, trace restoration back to the experiments conducted by Aldo Leopold and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin’s Arboretum in Madison in the 1930s. Native prairies were in short supply after several decades of zealous agricultural clearing. In dedicating the Arboretum in 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, Leopold spoke: This Arboretum may be regarded as a place where, in the course of time, we will build up an exhibit of what was, as well as an exhibit of what ought to be. It is with this dim vision of its future destiny that we have dedicated the greater part of the Arboretum to a reconstruction of original Wisconsin, rather than to a “collection” of imported trees.14

Restoration began in earnest in 1935 at the direction of Norman Fassett, a botanist at the Arboretum, and Theodore Sperry, a new recruit to the project. Sperry’s influence continued through his nearly sixty-year association with the Arboretum restorations; these achievements have been recognized through various honors bestowed on him by the Society for Ecological Restoration.15 Work at the Arboretum was given a boost by the regrettable ecological and economic commingling of the Dust Bowl of the early 1930s. Several years of back-to-back drought caused millions of acres of topsoil to blow away from arid lands, leaving many areas infertile and dehydrating the dreams of so many thousands of settlers.16 The general turndown of the North American economy of the time forced a reconsideration of farming techniques and a search for answers to the obvious failures in the region. Monies were allocated by the Roosevelt administration in 1935 to assist in reclaiming damaged lands for agriculture, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was formed both to provide labor to the cause and to alleviate unemployment. Thus, a CCC camp was established at the Arboretum to service the projects underway. Restoration projects are always hungry for labor. A combination of circumstances produced success at the Arboretum. Skilled and influential scientists were involved from the first instant in sorting out how to convert abandoned farmland back to earlier ecological conditions. Perhaps this was not the intention of the Washington donors, who were more interested in improving economic conditions

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than in regaining ecological potential. However, the University of Wisconsin Arboretum provided an opportunity for experimentation and has remained a center for research on restoration to the present day. The science of ecology, which favored a whole-systems view of land health, was coalescing and rising in popularity in scientific and landmanagement circles. As a public institution and one that had, as part of a Land Grant university, a mission to educate a wider public, the Arboretum was able to spread the word effectively to aspiring restorationists. There was, finally, a boldness and novelty in the early prairie restorations. Prairies are a subtle landscape, typically underwhelming for the casual observer. They were busted, turned over, and replanted by settlers apparently without much remorse. Despite their subtlety, shortgrass and tallgrass prairie reward the person who stops to look at the floral explosions, the buzz of insects, and the undulating patterns of movement in the wind. It took a dedicated and careful eye to see the potential for large-scale restoration in the prairies. Restoration has flowed along many channels since the 1930s in the United States. Restoration elders, whether scientists, landscape architects, range managers, reclamationists, or gifted amateurs, point us to a time when the term restoration, let alone ecological restoration, was heard infrequently and had no widespread public recognition. Bill Niering, founding editor of the scientific journal Restoration Ecology, traces his restorative work back to the 1950s. The founding moment for most contemporary restorationists is 1988, when the Society for Ecological Restoration was chartered as a nonprofit society to enhance the interests and goals of restorationists. Initially a U.S.-based organization that operated annual conferences with an enthusiastic core of volunteers and few resources, the organization has blossomed into an international body with members in more than thirty countries. The formation of SER signaled that restoration was an idea whose time had come. William Jordan III, a staff member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum and restoration proponent, began publishing Restoration and Management Notes in 1983 as a service to those interested in the field. Early issues were a cut-and-paste operation, a newsletter more than a journal. By the late 1980s, Jordan’s publication became a practitioner journal with a solid and growing subscriber base. His efforts were

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strengthened by the publication of several books aimed at both public and scientific audiences. John Cairns, Jr., and Tony Bradshaw, two large figures in the scientific development of restoration, published books in 1980 that represented, respectively, American and British perspectives. John Berger’s Restoring the Earth, originally published in 1979, drew on widespread public concern and action in the 1970s regarding environmental issues, to produce a popular description of restoration possibilities. Jordan, along with Michael Gilpin and John Aber, convened a symposium and later produced a widely received and comprehensive portrait of restoration for a scientific and practitioner audience. A variety of more specialized scientific summaries have been written more recently, as well as books that address philosophical, social, and lyrical dimensions of ecological restoration.17 The success of the ecological restoration movement has depended crucially on scientific accomplishment, the intuitive appeal of restoration, and a public sensitivity to environmental issues. The 1960s and 1970s marked a coming of age internationally for environmental issues, organizations, and legislation. What restoration offered conceptually was an intuitive and hopeful prospect of solving many of the worst problems brought to light at the time: toxic-waste contamination, species loss, habitat loss, and a decline in urban and suburban quality of life. Restoration, then, became not only a promising practice but a helpful metaphor, one that appealed especially well to a growing technological mindset. At worst, restoration was viewed as an apologia for industrial excess and a justification for further activity; after all, if we could clean up the mess or repair the problem, why not maintain business-as-usual? Much of the earlier and less self-congratulatory writing on restoration, as well as the debates that took place at early SER conferences beginning in 1989, focused on how ecological restoration could manifest social and scientific ideals. The founding, in 1993, of the journal Restoration Ecology marked an important developmental step for a young movement. This official SER publication has provided a venue for reporting on scientific experiments and results, as well as providing an increasingly broad forum for discussion about the theoretical and conceptual dimensions of restoration.

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This theoretical impulse is what defines, in part, the maturation of the practice. Joan Ehrenfeld has produced a historical typology of restoration consisting of a four-field development. Restoration, she argues, has roots in conservation biology, geography/landscape ecology, wetland management, and rehabilitation of resource-extracted lands. Within each of these four contributing fields, a clear progression is evident. For example, over the last two decades in conservation biology attention has shifted from protection of endangered species to endangered communities. When she applied this four-field typology to three years of published articles in Restoration Ecology, Ehrenfeld discovered that contemporary scientific practice reflects these historical sources and remains heterogeneous. This affects the way practitioners think about goal setting, arguably one of the more important features of a successful restoration project and certainly one of the more contentious elements in the development of restoration theory. As Ehrenfeld writes, “The specification of goals for restoration projects is frequently described as the most important component of a project, because it sets expectations, drives the detailed plans for actions, and determines the kind and extent of post-project monitoring.”18 Instead of promoting a set of universal goals for restoration, she proposes three major themes—the restoration of species, the restoration of whole ecosystems or landscapes, and the restoration of ecosystem services—each of which requires a different approach. It is not feasible to overgeneralize and promote a single approach to restoration. To make matters more complicated, Ehrenfeld describes the varied goals for restoration ecology, not necessarily ecological restoration. It is important to distinguish between these two terms, which are often conflated in the literature. I refer to restoration ecology as the ensemble of practices that contribute to the science of ecological restoration.19 Ecological restoration is the total set of ideas and practices (social, scientific, economic, political, and so on) involved in the restoration of ecosystems.20 This apparent linguistic confusion masks a more serious issue. There is a risk with growing professionalization of placing the science of restoration ecology above the practice of restoration. The rich texture, success, and public acceptance of restoration have much to do

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with volunteer participation, small-scale uncontrolled experiments, and changing aesthetic values. As much as these points might be debated, restoration is more than restoration ecology, and the success of restoration efforts over the long run will require recognition of their heterogeneity. Put simply, restoration ecology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good restoration. And since many of us, including myself, become defensive when the dominion of science is called into question, let me hasten to add that good science, including strong theoretical development, is vital for the successful development of ecological restoration. However, the field of restoration will be diminished if restoration ecology increasingly displaces ecological restoration—that is, if science becomes the exclusive center of restoration activity. The history of the field shows a plural practice, one reflecting the best of scientific perspicuity and creative tinkering. This is precisely the tension that has created so many problems in defining ecological restoration. Contingency and Ideals Historical interpretation is much more than a sequencing of events and ideas. The contingency of restoration is exposed when a comparative historical account is invoked, for example, between two national approaches to practice or between like-minded individuals with different professional inclinations. No unified perspective is sensible. The cultural ideals that shape our relations to places exert multiple meanings on restoration; restoring a former brownfield looks different to an ecologist and a landscape architect. So, too, restoration is practiced differently from region to region and country to country. This makes any coherent account of restoration very difficult, but such complexity is preferable to oversimplification, a quality that has characterized some historical writing about restoration. There are a number of reasons to assume the University of Wisconsin Arboretum was the birthplace of ecological restoration. It makes a good and obvious story. There are remarkable individuals, such as Aldo Leopold, Henry Greene, John Curtis, and Ted Sperry, to lionize. The first home of the Society for Ecological Restoration21 and the founding of the

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journal of restoration, Restoration and Management Notes, were here. And prairies did attract much restorative attention. Stephanie Mills makes good use of these elements in her account of the development of restoration.22 Working from a few brief historical essays,23 she also calls attention to earlier influences—for example, Edith Roberts’s restoration of native plants in Dutchess County, New York, in 1920, and Frederick Law Olmsted’s fascination with native flora and naturalistic garden design in the late nineteenth century. Oddly, relatively little information is available about the earliest roots of restoration, the connections with reclamation and beautification programs, gardening and parks movements, changing canons of aesthetic taste and environmental value, and the ways restoration, such as it was, varied from one place to another. Does this represent a shortage of historians of restoration?24 Personal experience suggests that valuable information waits beneath the surface. At the outset of my brief career as an environmental impact assessment specialist working for a small consultancy in southern Ontario in the late 1970s, I remember coming across a reference to a farmer near the shore of Lake Erie. Early in the twentieth century, this farmer had filled a manure spreader with cattail tubers and distributed them on fields he had reflooded. His logic was that the previous landscape, a wetland, would yield more value from hunters’ fees than from standard cropping. Does this fit the mold of restoration? Was he alone in his efforts, or were there other similar ventures around that time? What came before, and did his efforts connect with what followed, joining a rivulet that would become a main channel of history flowing past the restorations in Madison in the 1930s? In his comparative investigation of restoration in the United States and Italy, Marcus Hall argues that the short shrift given to restoration history “arises more from the lack of understanding of early restoration, than from the lack of early attempts to restore.”25 Hall succumbed initially to the same historical pressures as other restorationists: In fact, I had once imagined that restoration “originated” when some important figure like Aldo Leopold simply combined the insights of his predecessors to create this field. But now I’m certain that such notions oversimplify the development and diffusion of ideas and the contexts in which they were created. I believe, instead, that one can trace restorative techniques and restorative

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principles far back in time, and that to understand their development it is necessary to search the wider history of conservation for the events, episodes, and insights that have led to current ideas of restoration.26

Many other sources for ecological restoration will no doubt emerge as we search for them. Finding them will mean shoving aside our inclination to focus on culturally definitive events. I heard William Jordan once describe the Arboretum at Madison as the “Kitty Hawk” of restoration, referring to the location of the first sustained powered flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright in North Carolina in 1903. As deserving of celebration as such events are, glorification obscures earlier, now forgotten, experiments that led to these defining moments. The richness of historical development is compressed into a single, artificial beginning. There are at least four problems with this approach. First, though perhaps this is less true for events such as the Wright brothers’ flight in 1903, there may be preceding events that constitute equally crucial or even more significant marks in the development of a practice. Second, the normative boundaries around a practice tend to be solidified by reference to a particular event or series of events, potentially leading to a skewed description of the practice. This is especially important for us in examining what restoration means. Third, the history of a practice may have occurred over a wider geographic area than is commonly acknowledged. For example, the history of ecological restoration comprises many activities that have taken place outside North America and thus outside the view refracted through the Madison experience. Finally, and perhaps most important, is the counsel of contemporary historians to avoid “Whig” history, or history that presumes the present leads straight to the past. There is little doubt that what restoration meant at the turn of the twentieth century is not what it means at the turn of the twenty-first century. Meanings shift, and the imposition of our view of things on the past as if there is one continuous stream of understanding is naive and potentially dangerous. We can trace the etymology of terms and examine the general practice of converting damaged lands to a former ideal condition. We should not, however, presume there is a solid core of restoration knowledge and practices moving through time, slowly changing and improving. Restoration derives its meaning through the people who think of themselves as restorationists and use this term and related ones

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to describe the activities of their time. For all its forerunners, restoration as we know it is a new endeavor. The challenge of history, of course, is finding appropriate documentation to illuminate past activities and perhaps to provide a justification for present goals. Alas, though some practitioners kept good records that are well preserved, others were busier doing than writing, and so their work is largely missing from records. Social and political factors also shape how an event is later recorded and interpreted. Why, then, do we still regard the moment in the Wisconsin prairie in the 1930s as the starting point for ecological restoration? This is the kind of question that we should keep in mind as we explore the history of the field. Hall peers into the nineteenth century for indications of how people sought the conversion of damaged into ideal lands. In his words: “The historian in me questions just how old restoration may be, or rather how the endeavor of restoration has changed over the decades. The environmentalist in me wonders whether the experience of these early land managers could help us improve our own practice of restoration.”27 He proposes a typology of restoration based on his comparison of Italian and American restoration. He suggests that there are three views of restoration based on differing ways of viewing damaged and ideal land. Different views will condition what needs to be restored, and how. The elegance of his typology lies in its capacity to account for cultural differences in the way restoration is perceived and practiced. This helps provide valuable insight into diverse perspectives—for example, the current focus on cultural landscapes in Europe and wilderness in North America, or the apparent incompatibility between the restorations practiced now and in the past in different regions. Of course, I commit the sin of generalization here, knowing that in the last fifty years in Europe there has been growing concern with restoring wild places and that in North America more attention is being given to the significance of cultural practices. Such dichotomies are at best helpful in understanding complexity. Hall terms the first of his three types of restoration, prominent in nineteenth-century Italian land management, “maintaining the garden.” A highly managed cultural landscape, a garden, is the ideal, and restoration implies improvement to natural degenerative processes. It is not

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difficult to stretch the garden image back to the Garden of Eden: one is striving to recreate the original garden. In this approach, cultural practices and values operate alongside ecological processes and patterns in settings such as small-scale farms and animal husbandry. Land is damaged through neglect and restored by careful artifice. Hall’s second and third types acknowledge that culture is responsible for degradation, but they entail different solutions. In “gardening the degraded,” the second type, the ideal condition is a garden, as in the first type, but perception of the landscape changes to account for human damage. Mining reclamation is a good example. Another example is the Italian Bonifica Integrale movement initiated by Mussolini in the 1930s that strove to reclaim lands damaged through heedless human actions. Here, however, reclamation had primarily cultural and not ecological aims. The third type of restoration, prominent in North America, involves “naturalizing the degraded.” Natural processes are championed as a way of counteracting tendencies to improve the landscape to create a garden, or to degrade it to a wasteland. The ideal landscape is the untouched landscape—the Garden of Eden, if you will, which was the pristine wildness that existed before the corruptions of Adam and Eve. All three of Hall’s types depend on culturally shaped notions of degenerated, degraded, and ideal landscapes. His argument is complex because it is difficult for contemporary North Americans to imagine how land can be damaged naturally or how cultural practices can represent an improvement. The issue is also complicated by changes in restoration practices over the last two centuries or so: Italians have shifted their approach to land management from the first to the second type, while North Americans have moved from the second to the third type. As Hall explains, Where Americans and Europeans once felt that humans could only improve the land, they have come to believe that humans could both improve and degrade the land. . . . Where many Europeans still see ideal land as a domesticated garden, many Americans have come to believe that ideal land is untouched and wild.28

Changes of this nature make any simple history of restoration suspect, and act as a corrective to dogmatic views about the meaning of restora-

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tion. Moreover, this panoramic approach presents a moving view of restoration, a living history with respect to which our own practices need to be positioned. A wider history of restoration must include practices outside North America, which is why Hall’s comparative study reveals a richer history for restoration and displays a broader typology than some other approaches have done. How broad is reasonable? Can a restorationist from Wisconsin make sense of restoration in Scotland and vice versa? What of work even farther afield, where the national histories and local cultures have divergent views about the goals of restoration and the meanings of culture and nature (assuming such terms even make sense in a different cultural milieu)? Can those restoring salmonid habitat in the Pacific Northwest of the United States fully comprehend the problems of tree planting in desertified landscapes? This is the problem of incommensurability, of the lack of a common measure. Take, for example, the Morava River restoration projects described earlier in this chapter—projects that integrate ecological integrity with cultural livelihood. Is protecting a highly managed wet-meadow complex, despite its regional ecological significance, of much interest to restorationists suffused by notions of wilderness? The end point for the Kissimmee River restorationists is different from the intentions of those along the Morava River. The Kissimmee restorationists aim at rewilding the river and associated ecological communities, while those along the Morava River are seeking a fine balance between historical agricultural and ecological practices. Each group inscribes specific values about the land, land taken broadly in this setting, giving rise to restoration projects that reveal contemporary perspectives on landscapes. The beauty of comparative perspectives is that they highlight a range of alternatives. When I meet scientists from other countries—Zev Naveh from Israel, Carolina Murcia from Colombia, and Richard Hobbs from Australia—I realize how much is going on and how much there is to learn; each of these regions has its own distinct history and future of restoration. Restoration is not an American or North American phenomenon, but an international practice with many separate branches. Those of us operating from a North American base must be careful not

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to try to impose our views too firmly,29 or even to make claims that restoration is a unitary international phenomenon in case it turns out to be a poor way of mapping local practice.30 European history alone reveals diverse restoration strategies—strategies mirrored in North America. It turns out that Italians were working out ways of “imitating nature” as early as 1816 with the work of hydrologist Franscesco Mengotti. In France, as well, there was a movement by midcentury to rehabilitate eroded slopes and overgrazed lands (and the term restauration was used). George Perkins Marsh, arguably one of the most significant early forces in the North American conservation movement, was ambassador to Italy from 1861 to 1882. Comments on European land-management practices permeate his writing. The first sentence of his best-known work, Man and Nature, declares “the possibility and importance of the restoration of exhausted regions.”31 There is little doubt that North American and European ideas are fused in the work of Marsh, and it is likely also that continental techniques and approaches produced much inspiration in the United States. One way of cracking open the shell of belief to expose the cultural contingency of restoration practices is to dig into history. Even North American restorationists who today espouse reestablishing unpeopled ecosystems as the preeminent goal of restoration are shaped by a “dual tradition” consisting of land and resource managers honed by utility, on the one hand, and by landscape architects and designers shaped by aesthetics, on the other. Similarly, Italian restorationists find their own approach to restoration, based on historical, culturally saturated landscapes, eminently sensible. North American ecologists and restorationists have lived through extraordinarily rapid changes to ecosystems with the spread of development and urbanization in recent decades. As a child in early 1960s, I remember a farm across the road from my family’s house north of Toronto being converted to 1,500 homes. Toronto swallowed my old family home just a decade later. It is not surprising that under such circumstances, restorationists would call for a return to a prelapsarian or at least earlier condition. But North Americans, like Europeans, have lived so long with transformed flora and fauna that a return to previous states makes little sense. Neither group—North Americans and

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Europeans—can make sense of the other, regarding the other’s approach with suspicion and at times disapproval. Restoration, then, can proceed from different notions of damage and of the contingent ideals practitioners might strive to reach. This is a crucial insight, for the way we view damage, whether as a result of too little or too much human activity, will shape which areas we set out to address and how we address them. For many Americans, damage is about any kind of human action that interferes with strict notions of ecological integrity. For many Italians, where pastoral and agricultural landscapes are the norm, the land is compromised without such practices. For Italians, the cultural and ecological features produce value. Complicating the conventional account of restoration further, what we restore also depends on whether we believe that having people in the landscape can improve the land, or assume that ecological processes are most effective in restoration. For Hall, this creates a distinction between gardening and naturalizing: If one believes that human activities can best improve land, then one restores in a process likened to gardening; yet if one believes that natural activities can best improve land, then one restores in a process that might be called naturalizing— or perhaps rewilding. A gardener promotes culture on a natural landscape, whereas a naturalizer promotes nature on a cultural landscape.32

Americans naturalize, whereas Italians garden, which is an approximation but also the most succinct way of characterizing these two contrasting approaches to restoration: “Because restoration is the process of bringing back ideal land, one can now better appreciate why Italians might feel that Americans bring back too little culture to their nature, or why Americans might feel that Italians do not practice true restoration at all.”33 No wonder it is difficult to identify a single view of restoration! And in comparing North American and European views of restoration (assuming that U.S. practices are emblematic of North American restoration and that Italian practices reflect European restoration), we have ignored the Southern Hemisphere, where so much restoration work is being conducted. As more pages are added to the history of restoration, different constructs of damage and new ideals drawn from a wide range of cultures will find a place in our understanding of restoration.

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The influences giving each cultural tradition its special character are complex. Landscape architects and gardeners have played a pivotal role in shaping ecological restoration in North America. U.S. landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted was regarded as radical in his time, and his work remains highly acclaimed as an example of how nature can be brought within the reach of urbanites. Despite this acclaim, however, Olmsted used a remarkable contrivance in all of his projects. New York’s, Central Park, his best-known work, was literally created from bedrock; all the rivers, ponds, and wooded areas were engineered. Most would argue that this was not restoration. Olmsted’s vision of naturalized landscapes helped create a minority tradition in landscape design, however, that has produced an array of compelling projects, many of which present either naturalized or designer landscapes making use of native vegetation. Parks, in general, have provided a rich inventory of images for people inclined toward restoration. Few could walk through Vancouver’s Stanley Park without being impressed by the wild features of the place, which include some prepark forests, as much as by its manicured sections. Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature, published in 1967, influenced an entire generation of environmentally minded landscape architects and environmental designers.34 The integration of ecological concepts into landscape design programs has propagated broader concern for ecological integrity and continuity. It is no surprise that so many landscape architects are members of the Society for Ecological Restoration. Gardeners from all traditions in North America have contributed to a growing awareness of natural process and form by bringing nature into the heart of domesticated space and forcing recognition that only so much in any garden can be fully controlled. Many gardeners are amateurs, and their innocence and lack of formality often result in remarkably independent experiments and approaches. In a group of restoration volunteers, like the hard-core volunteers chronicled by William Stevens in his account of the North Branch Prairie restoration in Chicago, one usually finds serious gardeners. These are the gardeners who do their own seed propagation, study scientific names for plants, and keep detailed records of their endeavors.35 This was certainly the case for the Dorney Garden, where many of the volunteers had primary experience

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as gardeners; they were used to working with soil and plants and were accustomed to hard physical labor. The movement toward naturalized gardening has begun to have an impact on contemporary restoration efforts. Style is a crucial component of gardening, including everything from Southwest xeriscaping to Northeast rural tangle. Aesthetic judgment also looms large in all gardening efforts, no matter how pure the intentions to recreate a miniature ecosystem; one is always trimming, pruning, installing borders, moving plants, and so on. What of highly evolved gardening forms, such as Japanese gardening, in which the objective is to create a microcosm, to enfold the complex textures and senses of nature into a single space—do these bear any relation to restoration? If we extend a line between gardening and restoration, somewhere along the line, the border separating the two is going to become a matter of convention and judgment. The various points along the line are constituted of different values, practices, and histories. Thus, restorationists, reclamationists, ecologists, landscape designers, and gardeners have different ideas in mind for how nature should look and function. Each has a different way of approaching problems, of seeing what needs to be done, and of justifying answers. Yet each also has elements that are bound to the concerns of restorationists; they are turning to a prior condition for guidance and are focused to a greater or lesser extent on ecological integrity. The challenge is not, in my view, to describe which type of restoration is purer; rather, it is to be clear about the kinds of assumptions that generate the perceived needs and goals of any specific restoration project. We would be guilty of hubris if we were to suggest otherwise—to insist that we have somehow got everything right and know for certain the enduring meaning of ecological restoration. Grasping the meaning and extent of ecological restoration is at the same time easy and elusive. There is an intuitive appeal to restoration that rests on the desire to return to a better, prior condition. Beneath this shimmering surface, however, lies a knotted legacy. The science of restoration ecology has evolved over decades from a variety of perspectives, including conservation biology, applied ecology, range management, wetland rehabilitation, reclamation, and other allied pursuits.

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Ecological restoration is more than this, though, incorporating community-based initiatives, urban regeneration, natural gardening, landscape design, and social justice perspectives. Definitions of restoration should encompass all these approaches, which is why so much ink has been spilled and so many arguments have erupted over the core and limits of ecological restoration. The challenge of defining restoration is to come to grips with its border-crossing character, the way it frustrates the conventional separation of nature and culture, upsets the way we think about human involvement in precious places, and goes to the heart of the modern, or as some would have it, postmodern, condition. By inhabiting the boundaries of contemporary cultural belief, restoration invites criticism of our technological society. Several boundaries have impelled my thinking about the meaning of ecological restoration: the boundary layer between possibility and legacy at the SER conference; along the border between the Everglades and Fort Lauderdale that I saw on the flight home; between the reality of restoration along the Kissimmee River and the contrivance of the Wilderness Lodge at Disney World; and between the heartfelt efforts of restorationists at the SER conference and the enormity of restorative challenge suggested by the glittering yachts along the Intracoastal Waterway.

3 What Is Ecological Restoration?

The essential quality of restoration is . . . that it is an attempt to overcome artificially the factors that we consider will restrict ecosystem development. This gives us a powerful opportunity to test out in practice our understanding of ecosystem development and functioning. The actual restoration operations will often be dominated by engineering or financial considerations, but their underlying logic must be ecological. —A. D. Bradshaw, “Restoration: An Acid Test for Ecology” A stable terminology would undoubtedly be useful, but no one currently seems prepared to agree on one. We suggest that endless quibbling over what to call our work in the field of restoration ecology is a time-wasting diversion from the real work at hand. —R. J. Hobbs and D. A. Norton, “Towards a Conceptual Framework for Restoration Ecology”

What distinguishes a restoration project from something else, say, a reclamation project? What is a minimum definition of restoration? What are the core concepts? Should we care about how restoration is defined? Hobbs and Norton are right: there has been seemingly “endless quibbling” over what restoration means. Terminology varies widely from one region to another. Some people interchange restoration ecology and ecological restoration as though they mean the same thing; others are careful to distinguish between them. Is environmental restoration the same as ecological restoration? Restorationists in North America are generally comfortable with the goal of returning landscapes to their indigenous condition, which means restoring to a time before human degradation. In chapter 2 I argued that such a notion is less palatable for most European restorationists, who work with landscapes that have been peopled for millenniums, indeed as is the case in most parts of the world

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(including the Americas). In fact, the notion of indigenous does not make much sense in most regions of the world. Some regard ecosystem health as the proper goal of ecological restoration, while others champion ecological integrity. How different are these concepts, and do they result in different kinds of restoration? Despite agreeing with Hobbs and Norton that “endless quibbling” has taken place, I think they are wrong to downplay the seriousness of the terminological confusion. Confusion over proper description and definition reflects an inadequate understanding of concepts, which after all is the kind of clarity promoted in their widely cited article. It is as though a botanist could claim to understand taxonomy and not really have a grasp of systematic nomenclature. Others besides Hobbs and Norton have commented cynically that the messy debates over definitions are merely semantic squabbles. At one level this is true. The work of restoration is sufficiently important that it should not be worn down by endless technical debates. But I do not think many realized in the late 1980s how difficult defining restoration was going to be. Only now are some of the theoretical issues being aired. Dismissing conceptual debate ignores the power of language in shaping belief and practice. Words take their meaning from a context of use and dry up if they are separated from the people who use them. This suggests that we should learn to be careful with them. In expressing distrust of social and environmental movements because they often veer away from the things they set out to value, Wendell Berry, an American essayist, argues, “The worst danger may be that a movement will lose its language either to its own confusion about meaning and practice, or to preemption by its enemies.”1 His inspiration was finding out, to his horror, that the term organic farming, which he took to be both a social and an environmental practice, could be assimilated to an industrial monoculture and thus co-opted. This is also the case with ecological restoration: there is every possibility that restoration will be construed in ways that defy the intentions of its proponents. Just as restoration projects require monitoring to ensure that original intentions are being maintained, restorationists might also monitor restoration concepts to keep ideas faithful to intention. Ignoring the power of language also passes over crucial differences in the way restoration is perceived.

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An acceptable definition is a precondition for deciding what constitutes good restoration. Without the ability to distinguish a good project from a bad one, better projects from worse ones, or even restoration projects from those that are not, the ecological restoration movement—science, professional practice, community volunteer initiatives, and every other dimension—risks losing its strength of purpose. In this chapter I examine variant meanings for restoration with the aim of identifying central concepts that are widely applicable. My conclusion is that two ecological concepts emerge: ecological integrity and historical fidelity. When the complicated mix of restoration practice and theory is sorted out, what is left is a concern for the quality of the ecosystems resulting from restoration (integrity) and for the extent to which they reflect the history of the place (fidelity). Concern for historical conditions is one of the main attributes of restoration separating it from related practices such as reclamation and rehabilitation. I touch on historical fidelity in this chapter by mentioning historical range of variability, a concept of growing importance to restorationists and environmental managers. Along with the idea of reference conditions, it receives more detailed treatment in chapter 4. Beyond ecological considerations are cultural factors that shape the character of restoration. In chapter 6 I propose a third keystone concept, focal practice, to ensure that good restoration encompasses social participation and highlights the ecological and cultural value added in the act of restoration. Finally, in chapter 7, I propose the addition of wild design. Restoration is fundamentally about design, and the challenge ahead is to enlarge our capacity for good ecological design. Terminological clarity seems important for several reasons. First, words shape worlds, and attentiveness is necessary to comprehend how we use language to describe theory and practice. Feminist theorists have taught us this, and it is important to be vigilant about how language is used. For example, if we were entirely prescriptive about restoration resting on predisturbance conditions, essentially invoking a strong view of wilderness, many agroecological projects around the world would fall outside the bounds of restoration. Second, in highlighting the variety of definitions of restoration and the controversies surrounding their use, it is easier to show just how malleable the field is. Much is up for grabs.

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Third, I favor inclusive definitions, those that allow as many kinds of projects as possible to thrive. This is a precarious position. If anything goes, there is the danger that restoration will be co-opted by those who see only commercial value in the restoration of ecosystems. Finally, defining good restoration depends, in my view, on expanding our outlook to include social, cultural, aesthetic, economic, political, and moral values. The emphasis in this chapter, then, is on coming up with a definition that is explicit about the cultural significance of restoration, although explication of this must wait for later chapters. This journey into concepts begins with the way restoration is defined conventionally, and with how this relates to our general sense of ecological restoration. Ecological restoration is related to many similar practices that are also competing for attention in the burgeoning field of environmental management. I suggest a taxonomy of restoration in which various practices are related. Next, I turn to a revealing exercise conducted in 1994 at a Society for Ecological Restoration conference. Several cases were assessed critically to ascertain core restoration concepts. Many formal definitions of restoration have come and gone, and a review of some of these definitions gets to the heart of contemporary restoration. I concentrate on official SER definitions produced in 1996 and 2002. From these emerge ideas that seem basic to restoration: the distinction between process and product, assisted recovery, management, historical range of variability, reference conditions, and ecological integrity. Finally, in the interest of simplicity, these concepts are reduced to ecological integrity and historical fidelity. Words and Taxonomy Ecological restoration is a relatively new practice, and thus it is not surprising that dictionaries have been slow to catch up with a definition that meets our needs. However, the word restoration has a substantial history. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests six distinct meanings, the fourth of which is “the action or process of restoring something to an unimpaired or perfect condition.”2 This refers most directly to the restoration of a building, work of art, nearly extinct animal, dental structure, or anything to which a return to a former condition is appropriate.3 The search

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deepens when we switch to a variant although archaic spelling, restauration. Derived from the French restauration, which also gave rise to the English word restaurant, use reaches back to the fourteenth century with decidedly theological connotations. The second of four definitions comes closest to reflecting a contemporary perspective, despite its common use beginning in the late fourteenth century: “the restoration of something material to its proper condition.” These various definitions confirm the nagging sense that the meaning of restoration depends on changing social conventions. It is certainly a plastic word, employed widely and under varying conditions.4 Of course, restoration is a noun, and the verb restore also has a variety of meanings, allowing more scope than the noun. For instance, the sixth of nine definitions listed in the Oxford English Dictionary suggests much more than a return to original conditions: “to bring back (a person or thing) to a previous, original, or normal condition.” This definition better fits the idea that ecological restoration is not necessarily about taking ecosystems back to any kind of original condition, even if this were possible. The idea of “normal condition” is potentially compatible with such ideas as ecological integrity and ecosystem health. Let’s suppose that in a conceptual world there are species of restoration that inhabit the genus ecological restoration (figure 3.1). This genus is found in the family ecosystem management, together with myriad other genera such as conservation biology, reclamation, and mitigation. The family is held together taxonomically by the knowledge that all practices within it are environmentally salutary—that is, they are considered, at least by their practitioners, to be beneficial. Many of the disputes in this conceptual taxonomic world center on whether the practices are in fact ecologically and culturally beneficial. Of course, sensibilities about what is good change over time, resulting in a continuously shifting classification. Besides, this taxonomy is regionally variable, not universal, which means that a practice defined as belonging to the family by one group of people may fall outside it according to another. The arrangement of genera varies widely, too. Some would argue, for example, that conservation biology is an umbrella practice that incorporates a host of other practices. Taxonomists of this stripe, mostly conservation

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Ecosystem management

Conservation biology

Restoration ecology (experimental)

Ecological restoration

Rehabilitation?

Community-based projects

Family

Reclamation

Mitigation

Agroecosystem restoration?

Professional projects

Other genera...?

Other species...?

Genus

Species

Figure 3.1 Taxonomic relationships for ecological restoration.

biologists themselves, suggest it deserves to be a separate, inclusive family. Accordingly, ecological restoration would be a subset genus within this family. There are ecological restorationists, too, who argue for the centrality and superordinate position of restoration as a practice with large cultural ambitions. Such arrogation compels the arrangement of environmental practices in a single family. Thus, separate practices no matter how defined can be perceived as separate genera, and, as necessary, subgeneric designations can be created. The debates, endless as all taxonomic discussions inevitably are, will take place at the generic level. Is restoration a large taxon that incorporates all allied practices such as reclamation, revegetation, and mitigation? Or is ecological restoration best kept pure in scope, allowing these other allied practices their own genera? The basic structure of the genus ecological restoration suggests a specific practice to which one attaches a historically motivated goal. This implies that something lost is to be regained through directed activity, or, reiterating one of the broad dictionary definitions cited earlier, means “to bring back (a . . . thing [ecosystem]) to a previous, original, or normal condition.” Ecological restoration and environmental restoration are sometimes considered synonyms, and the terms are occasionally interchanged in the literature.5 There are arguments in favor of each, although I am not aware of a published debate on the subject. Eco-

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logical restoration is preferable to my mind because it emphasizes that the work is systemic and rooted in a thoroughgoing understanding of ecological processes and patterns. Besides, ecological restoration has become the term of record, as in the name of the Society for Ecological Restoration. Does restoration ecology deserve its own separate genus? Recall from chapter 2 that restoration ecology is a branch of applied ecology. Ecological restoration is the ensemble of practices that combine to create what restoration is in the broadest sense: a worldwide movement of people assisting the recovery of ecological (and also cultural) integrity. Restoration ecology is subordinate to ecological restoration. William Jordan insists that ecological restoration is a movement and a mode of living as much as it is a scientific pursuit. It is this heterogeneity that makes the SER’s conferences so stimulating; activists, scientists, government officials, philosophers, consultants, and community volunteers all turn up. Ecological restoration is not professionalized, although many professionals lay claim to it.6 So far I have proposed a genus for ecological restoration that incorporates at least the scientific practice and theory of restoration ecology. What else is to be found within it, and what should be excluded? This invokes the boundary-setting problem touched on in chapter 2. Ecological restoration occupies a middle zone in which conventional values and beliefs about environmental management are challenged. Should other “re-” words and activities—reclamation, remediation, rehabilitation, revegetation, and so on—be subsumed under ecological restoration, or are they sufficiently well established for each to warrant its own genus within a broader taxon? A tighter definition of restoration is required to make such discrimination possible, a task we will turn to later in this chapter. First let’s examine the other terms. Reclamation is closely allied with restoration. To reclaim something means to rescue it from an undesirable state. Generally reclamation aims at converting land damaged through resource extraction or poor management to productive use. Much depends on how one interprets “productive use.” Reclamation came into the environmental lexicon in the late 1800s to describe the process of making land fit for cultivation. The Bureau of Reclamation in the United States began operation in 1902 to

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create arable land primarily in regions with a limited water supply. Installing monumental and lesser dams, canals, and diversions, the Bureau turns marginal land—at least from the perspective of agriculture—into productive acreage. The term acquired an expanded meaning in the mid-twentieth century to refer, in some cases, to what could be called restoration: the conversion of damaged land into a semblance of its former condition. Gaping holes left behind by open-pit-mining operations were prime candidates for reclamation. Goals ranged widely, from engineering accomplishments such as bank stabilization, to the creation of timber and agricultural lands, to the provision of recreational opportunities. In some cases, attempts focused on wildlife and vegetation enhancement. Witness the slope reclamation project at the Cardmal River Coal’s (CRC) mine outside Jasper National Park. This project has been wildly successful in creating forage for Rocky Mountain sheep, although the ecological merits of such a scheme are debatable from other perspectives. Closely linked with reclamation is the idea of remediation, or the process of remedying ecological insults. This is important work that shades into restoration. However, typically the lack of focus on historical conditions and recovery of ecological integrity makes the differences between restoration and remediation easy to spot. Rehabilitation is almost synonymous with restoration. To rehabilitate means to build again or bring back to a previous condition, or as E. B. Allen, J. S. Brown, and M. F. Allen propose, it involves creating “an alternative ecosystem following a disturbance, different from the original and having utilitarian rather than conservation values.”7 In ordinary usage, rehabilitation is a more flexible term. It can mean restoration according to strict ecological goals, or the establishment of an acceptable ecological state where prudential and aesthetic conditions prevail. There is perhaps less historical rectitude with rehabilitation than with restoration. Revegetation is a common term with many connotations. Basically it signifies the establishment of vegetative cover in an area denuded or rendered incapable of regenerating naturally. This process involves planting and seeding, and there is no particular attachment to the use of native species. Natural revegetation refers to the practice of allowing

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ecological processes to establish a vegetative cover without human intervention. This may or may not involve the growth of native species; usually, with disturbed ground, weedy introduced species are the main pioneers. There are many overlapping, restoration-related practices in this large family, some of which are only beginning to find familiar use. Reinhabitation is the term preferred by Stephanie Mills, author of In Service of the Wild, because it urges people to find meaningful, respectful lives in ecosystems and not always ones that recreate the exact historical conditions of a place. Dwelling, literally and figuratively, she argues, is crucial to the long-term integrity of ecosystems. The idea of recovery is used in the SER definition to describe the process of bringing something back. Regeneration is a promising term: the process it describes is more active, implying a return to an earlier condition at the same time as generating something new. Back to taxonomy: Should the practices just described, and others like them, be subsumed under ecological restoration? The key criterion appears to be ecological integrity. If a practice promises to increase the ecological integrity of an area that has been compromised, and this notion of integrity is informed by historical considerations, it belongs within the genus. If it does not meet these requirements, as is common with reclamation projects that focus on gaining productive capacity without any real concern for either ecological integrity or historical fidelity, it needs a separate genus, perhaps within the same family. Hence, a practice like rehabilitation probably belongs to ecological restoration, but practices such as reclamation, remediation, and revegetation do not. Hybridization is always at work, as with revegetation projects that use natural plantings and end up resembling restoration projects, and so on. Flexibility in this taxonomic system is necessary, especially because ecological restoration is still trying to develop a clear sense of itself. The Duck Test A taxonomic approach suggests that ecological restoration should be viewed as a genus within a large family of environmental practices. Within this genus are found a host of related practices bound together

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by commitments to historical fidelity and ecological integrity. What kind of definition can be crafted from this background? Let’s go back in time to 1994, when the Society for Ecological Restoration was taking shape, when politics and policies were in flux, and when the search for an official definition of restoration had foundered again. The debate swirling around definitions illustrates just how difficult it can be to arrive at a consensus on the description of a practice. It was the sixth annual SER conference in East Lansing, Michigan. The weather in central Michigan in August can be oppressive, a kind of insufferable heat and humidity. A stalwart group of thirty or so participants was sitting inside at a symposium with the audience-shrinking title “Definitions, Definitions, Definitions!” Such an event would typically be avoided like the plague in favor of conference sessions that involved at least slides or, better yet, field trips. But this was 1994, only six years after the formation of SER. Behind the scenes the board of directors was facing financial challenges, leadership disputes, and the problem that no less than three official definitions of restoration had been adopted in just six years. This unlikely session proved a catalyst for definitional and political change, in part because former and future SER leaders decided unexpectedly to converge.8 The session was intended to raise philosophical issues about how restoration is defined. Instead, we found ourselves in the midst of a simmering political debate. There was pressure on us to find some resolution to the definition issue. Dean Apostol, long-time member of SER, suggested we depart from the agenda and use the “duck test” to help achieve consensus. We took a much-needed break, during which Apostol formulated a series of five brief case studies. These were called “ducks” after the traditional adage that if something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it must be a duck. Hence, if we could agree on whether a particular case was a restoration project, and why, this would help in identifying core elements. The strategy held promise. Or so we thought. Apostol led with the most robust duck: the Curtis Prairie. As we have seen, U.S. restorationists look on the prairie restorations of the 1930s at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum as the starting point of contemporary restoration; they regard the Curtis Prairie, named after the ven-

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erable Wisconsin-based botanist John Curtis, as the gold standard. It was here that many of the early experiments, including seed collecting, and treatment, cultivation, and prescribed fire, were conducted by Ted Sperry, John Curtis, and others.9 At our symposium, debate erupted immediately over this purportedly robust restoration. Are we evaluating a product or a process, and how long did it take before the Curtis Prairie was recognized as an effective restoration? Some expressed the view that the goal of restoration is to remove human intervention so that natural processes could take hold. The Curtis Prairie is an example of a project that requires regular management to maintain desired characteristics: to avoid scrubby succession and weedy invasion, to ensure species diversity and richness. Surprised and somewhat exasperated, Apostol brought forth his second duck. This one involved the introduction of prescribed fire to a formerly wild, forested landscape in order to push it back within a natural range of variation. In the early twentieth century, the introduction of fire suppression resulted over a period of decades in dramatic changes in the landscape—a common phenomenon in many regions of North America, including Jasper National Park (see chapter 1). With a change in practices through deliberate and carefully managed fire, would this approach count as restoration? An immediate question arose: Is it designated a restoration project by virtue of the practices involved, or is restoration implicit in the results obtained? Must we wait until a pattern of burning is established before calling the project a restoration? Does the larger, landscape scale make a difference, or is this kind of restoration functionally similar to prescribed fire on a small prairie remnant? How do we respectfully incorporate Aboriginal fire-management practices back into the landscape after decades of suppression? Mike Oxford, later a board member for the Society, drew sharp criticism for his use of the word enhanced, which it turned out meant something different in England than in the United States. Enhancement has bad connotations for many North American restorationists because it implies, as Andy Clewell put it, “ecosystems on steroids.” What Oxford had in mind was a way of emphasizing that we might be after more than merely restoring the status quo. The conversation was exposed as being decidedly North American. Can a definition of restoration be universal?

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The third duck involved the same wild forest patterns, but this time the forests were converted to farmland. The farm was retired following a few dozen years of use. It fit well with some remnant tallgrass prairies in the region, an ecosystem under considerable threat. The retired farmland will support such a prairie restoration even though records indicate it had been under forest cover prior to cultivation. Is this a duck? Sharp debate began immediately, mostly around the contention that in order to restore something it must have been there, right there, at some time in the past. Two defensive strategies were offered. First, if we go back far enough in time, when climatic conditions and regional ecological processes and structures were quite different, justification could be found for a wide range of possible alternatives. Second, what goals are appropriate to such a restoration? Nik Lopoukhine argued that a reasonable decision could be made on the basis of enhancing biodiversity; tallgrass prairies are threatened ecosystems and must be given every opportunity to flourish. Laura Jackson thought a compromise possible: “More realistically they would turn it into a savannah—choose an intermediate [alternative]—one that represents what the boundaries look like in that area, so it’s ‘duckish.’ It is an issue of scale: at the site level it’s probably creation, but within a landscape it could be restoration if it’s consistent with some sort of historic or prehistoric array of vegetation.” This particular duck raised some fundamental issues about what restoration is achieving or is supposed to achieve. The group was divided over the matter of human agency. Is a really good restoration one that we complete and then just drop out of, eradicating our presence as much as possible? Or is the highest calling for restorationists direct and continuing involvement, becoming part of the system or a member of the biotic community? Jennifer Cypher proposed that each restoration has within it three interconnected dimensions: intent, process, and product. Clarity about intentions—goals, in other words—must be achieved prior to the start of any restoration, which involves a wide array of potential ecological and cultural considerations. A reasonable process is necessary both to ensure appropriate involvement in restoration and to ensure that a project remain within normative boundaries

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of restoration (i.e., reasonable boundaries are placed around how much management is involved in securing the restoration over a longer term). Finally, the most commonly perceived and, in many ways, the traditional core of restoration is product: what actually results from restorative effort. Cypher’s point was simply that all three dimensions must be considered. The fourth duck involved some sort of vegetation mosaic altered through grazing, cutting, and agriculture. It is brought back closer to an earlier configuration but this time within a new economic system in which attention is given to small-scale harvesting of acorns, grain, mushrooms, flowers and trees, honey, and so on. Restoration in this case means reinventing a set of ecological relationships as well as a new economy. Apostol figured this would be an especially contentious duck, but almost everyone around the table agreed that with careful design, such a project could in fact be considered a model of innovative restoration. Restoration would become a way of deepening cultural relationships with the land instead of expanding institutional maintenance programs. The fifth and final duck was based on what was actually going on in Washington and Oregon, an important case for Apostol: “We start off with the same wild forest mosaic, altered through patch clear-cutting, through road building, etc. Quite a bit of original forest remains, roughly 15 to 30 percent. We’re having problems in the landscape, so we’re choosing to invest in restoration: ten to twenty thousand acres. We choose to put logs back in the stream to improve the salmon habitat, choose to take out 50 percent of the roads to reduce erosion, choose to thin plantations to improve structural diversity. . . . Is this a duck?” Opinion varied widely. Some of those still hanging on in the lateafternoon conversation suggested it would be intelligent action, but not restoration. Another approach was to say that restoration extends over a continuum and that a project like the one described would have high “duck content.” Perhaps rehabilitation would be a more appropriate term for such work. This term implies that clearly defined damaging practices are being altered to achieve specific ecological goals. As a process it may well be restorative, but the end product is not a

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restoration in the sense that the amount of effort described is insufficient to generate anything close to a restored system. Throughout that steamy afternoon in Michigan, the issue of vegetative succession arose time and time again, and at the very end Jim Harris, from England, asked how the group would react to a deliberate intervention in a grassland that had been managed pastorally for almost 1,000 years but is now threatened with successional processes. What course of action would North American restorationists counsel? Leaving it to contemporary processes would mean the end of the grassland. Intervention, either through reestablishment of previous human practices or through the development of management regimes that would mimic the former succession-arresting activities, would be required in perpetuity to ensure the vitality of such a remnant area. The answer may be found in a cultural explanation: in England, where human activity has been more pronounced for a longer time10 and such activities are regarded as crucial to national identity, restorationists would likely opt for an interventionist strategy. There is greater likelihood in North America that restorationists would opt for a hands-off approach, although such comparisons are difficult to make with any precision. It seems that the qualities of a landscape and the cultural dispositions of restorationists influence what happens on the ground. However restoration is defined, if anything like international agreement is important, it must incorporate such variation in approach. There is a remarkable amount of conceptual drift in the way restoration is understood: everything from land banking to revegetation to exotic-species control can be crammed into what appears an oversized genus. At the same time, there is an eerie silence on the internal contradictions implied by such wide use.11 Restoration means different things to different people, a circumstance that makes it difficult to describe not only what restoration is, but also more importantly, what it should be. At a very general level restoration is easy to recognize, which is why the most general metaphor-based definitions work at least passably well, but when the limits are pushed and specification is necessary, our clearest thoughts are fogged by complication. The discussions in Michigan were intended to clear the fog. When they did not, we were surprised and humbled.

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A Legacy of Definitions Dennis Martinez, founder and director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network, and I were asked in November 1995 by the board of directors of SER to cochair the Science and Policy Working Group. It would be an overstatement to say that the board members were in the middle of the “definitions wars,” but those stalwarts had gone through official Society definitions at the rate of almost one every two years. Fatigue was evident. Another definition, one that was supposed to be foolproof, had just proved unworkable. For almost a year, Martinez and I polled the board and membership of the Society on a variety of options for an acceptable definition. We debated drafts at the Rutgers conference in 1996, and finally, in October 1996, the board voted approval of the new, official definition (more on this later). The original definition, adopted in 1990, was reasonably long lived and also the most controversial: “Ecological restoration is the process of intentionally altering a site to establish a defined, indigenous, historic ecosystem. The goal of this process is to emulate the structure, function, diversity and dynamics of the specified ecosystem.”12 This definition, and similar ones proposed in its wake, indicates lack of agreement on the most basic issues of what restoration is, and what restorationists are attempting to accomplish. For example, some argue that the standards of an earlier era should not be taken too literally, that a fixation on accuracy in this regard brushes over the issue of why one slice of time is preferable to another. Others suggest that the standards of earlier periods are simply impractical in regions where ecological evidence of past conditions is mostly erased. The use of the word indigenous tends to mask the extensive and long-running engagements that First Nations peoples have had with most of the ecosystems Euro-Americans tend to regard as having once been pristine. European restorationists puzzle over what indigenous means in their context: who or what counts as indigenous in a landscape transformed by peoples who trace their practices back more than a millennium? Other SER definitions followed. All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, reflected a balance of scientific principles and social awareness. Of course, the Society for Ecological Restoration holds no monopoly on

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definitions of restoration. One of the most widely cited definitions issued from a report of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC): Restoration is defined as the return of an ecosystem to a close approximation of its condition prior to disturbance. In restoration, ecological damage to the resource is repaired. Both the structure and the functions of the ecosystem are recreated. Merely recreating the form without the functions, or the functions in an artificial configuration bearing little resemblance to a natural resource, does not constitute restoration. The goal is to emulate a natural, functioning, selfregulating system that is integrated with the ecological landscape in which it occurs. Often, natural resource restoration requires one of the following processes: reconstruction of antecedent physical hydrologic and morphologic conditions; chemical cleanup or adjustment of the environment; and biological manipulation, including revegetation and the reintroduction of absent or currently nonviable native species.13

This definition is noteworthy for its detail and attention to the balance of functional repair and structural accuracy. However, it provides no indication of a wider cultural context for restoration practice. Bradshaw and Chadwick’s earlier definition is similar: “Restoration is used as a blanket term to describe all those activities which seek to upgrade damaged land or to re-create land that has been destroyed and to bring it back into beneficial use, in a form in which the biological potential is restored.”14 Definitions that fit this general theme of technical proficiency abound in the literature. Some restoration scientists, notably John Cairns, a long-time champion of restoration and chair of the NRC committee that produced the 1992 definition, and Daniel Janzen, an ecologist renowned for his restoration work in the dry land tropical forests of Costa Rica, blend scientific and social consideration. Cairns proposes “ecosocietal restoration, which is the process of reexamining human society’s relationship with natural systems so that repair and destruction can be balanced and, perhaps, restoration practices ultimately exceed destructive practices.”15 Janzen’s proposal for ecological and biocultural restoration in tropical ecosystems perpetuates a separation between the human and the natural, but it acknowledges a more significant symbiosis than mere economic sustainability of agroecosystems.16 Martinez pushes the integration of the human and the natural one step further in his description of

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the Sinkyone Intertribal Park project in Northern California. The region had been inhabited for millenniums by Native peoples who developed along with the ecosystems. The challenge in restoring this region is ensuring ecological health and sustainable economic activities (e.g., lowimpact logging), and renewing cultural practices. If successful, the project will result in a reinhabitation of the landscape, including cultural and economic practices that run counter to the intuitions of many restorationists. The Sinkyone project offers a model for restoration on a larger scale, one that internalizes cultural, political, economic, aesthetic, historical, and ethical practices once thought of as external to and at odds with the main work of ecological restoration.17 There are those who, having read this account of definitions, must still wonder whether the debate over an appropriate definition of restoration has important consequences for what counts as restoration practice. One clear function of definitions is demarcating what is included and what is excluded. A definition too narrow risks marginalizing restoration as too expensive and exacting within broader ecological management practices. Too broad, and the practice of restoration becomes confused with a host of potentially irrelevant initiatives. Thus, the challenge is to find an acceptable definition that manifests both ecological realities and an awareness of culturally contingent meanings. This is what Martinez and I gleaned from our conversations with restorationists when we developed an official SER definition in 1996. We wanted to ensure sufficient scope to acknowledge an expanded context, yet still provide standards that would make it possible to distinguish something that is restoration from something that is not. In the end, we could not fit the definition into a single sentence. Here is what we came up with: Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery and management of ecological integrity. Ecological integrity includes a critical range of variability in biodiversity, ecological processes and structures, regional and historical context, and sustainable cultural practices.18

This definition, while clunky, has proved reasonably durable because it embraces a wide variety of practices while specifying core elements. It was sufficiently broad to incorporate a suite of restoration initiatives

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from around the world, from the restoration of cultural landscapes to agroecological restoration, while remaining faithful to the call to history that remains central to any restorative activity. It faltered in the end on the idea of ecological integrity, which seemed an unnecessary abstraction. In 2002, Keith Winterhalder, a retired professor of ecology at Laurentian University in Canada and a major force in the monumental restoration of the nickel mine–scarred landscape around Sudbury, Ontario, led a group of international restorationists through a review of SER definitions and policies.19 We reworked the definition again, producing a fine and reflective description of restoration: “Ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.”20 A rich accompanying text fills in some of the gaps, and indicates the importance of diverse practices. This new definition is just right, in my view: it is sufficiently open to allow many varieties of restoration to flourish, yet gives a serious nod to historical conditions and assisted recovery. Let’s take a look at some of the core concepts bound up with these definitions (1996 and 2002). Process and Product We can view restoration either as product or as process. A focus on product implies an interest in what results from the act of restoration, a recovered salt marsh for example. In one sense this is exactly what should be valued. A restoration project is effective if it achieves specific objectives and results in a functioning, intact ecosystem.21 This is only part of the picture, however. If we take a simple view of ecological time, an ecosystem stretches along a continuum from a defined, relevant past to the present, and then extends beyond our immediate reach into the future. At any given instant, that ecosystem exists as a unique ensemble of structures and patterns. Viewing it as a continuous function comprising each and every instant, the act of restoration is an intervention that may be of remarkably brief duration (e.g., fencing a site to remove a particular disturbance), or an activity in perpetuity, depending on the amount of management required. Whatever the exact conditions, restoration is always a process of transition, a continuous coming

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into being of an ecosystem. To think of restoration as a product alone is to miss the significance of all the conditions and activities along the way. Another way of approaching this is to understand that restoration is never finished in a strict sense. We can decide to call a restoration project complete when certain objectives have been met, a particular time line is achieved, or natural processes seem to be functioning well without further human intervention. But these are arbitrary decisions. A process-oriented view of restoration is natural for ecologists, who are used to thinking of ecosystems as dynamic entities. The matter is muddied when it comes time to evaluate restoration projects. What are we grading: the process, the product, or both? A reliance on performance standards tends to focus attention on restoration-asproduct. Is the hydrological regime reinstated? Is the full complement of plant communities thriving? Are weedy invasive species under control? There are several problems in thinking too much about product and not enough about process. First, there is a tendency to overlook the significance of the process itself. For instance, did the project empower local community members? What was learned scientifically from the project? Were new practitioners trained? Such considerations have tended to hover at the margins of traditional evaluation techniques. Second, a focus on product obscures the potential long-term management of the project. Some projects will require restorative interventions forever, a consequence of coevolving with people. Hence, some restorations are never complete. Third, our patience is sorely tried in a consumer society where final products of any kind matter more than the background conditions of production necessary to bring them about. If it were otherwise, we would be much more concerned about sources of production, unfair labor practices, and environmental devastation of the “majority world” countries. The product, or commodity, whether in the form of a Twinkies or a salt marsh, is what makes most sense to us in the early twenty-first century. The commodification of ecosystems is likely to take place, and become codified or institutionalized, at least in advanced industrial societies with the advent of mitigation practices, ecological theme parks, and corporate restorations (more on this in chapter 5). This mindset will lead to a focus on efficiency of production of restored ecosystems,

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because the conditions necessary to bring them about will not be particularly important to us. Assisted Recovery Restorationists are merely agents in the process of recovery. It would be arrogant to imagine that we are capable of dictating the outcome of ecological processes; at best, we participate in these processes. We remove dams, install stream structures, clean up excess nutrient inflows, remove weedy species, introduce extirpated organisms, and so on. Recovery refers to the biogeochemical processes that allow an ecosystem to return to conditions that prevailed prior to disturbance. Recovery is something that can happen without direct human agency. A grassland that is used as a horse pasture will recover once the horses are removed. Of course, much depends on the level of herbivory and the extent of establishment of exotic species. Without the return of other ecological processes—for example, the frequent low-intensity fires that are a characteristic process in many grassland ecosystems—successional processes will slowly convert the grassland to scrubland and forest. All of this can occur without human intervention. Restoration, then, is fundamentally about assisted recovery, and this works in two primary ways. First, restorationists work to accelerate natural processes, creating conditions in an instant that might take years, decades, or centuries to occur without intervention. Second, recovery processes are directed toward specific ends determined by the restorationist. These ends, or goals, are based on a host of factors, principally ecological but also economic, social, cultural, political, and moral. An important theoretical question is where the lower line is drawn between restoration and recovery: What is the minimal amount of intervention required? Suppose a forest were removed to make way for a housing development, except that the development never proceeded and the land was given over to unassisted succession. After thirty years, a shrub successional cover had replaced the early pioneer herbaceous layer. After 100 years the land had begun to resemble what had been present before the clearing activities. Presumably, left long enough (200 years or more, depending on the location and type of ecosystem), the land would

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recover to resemble the approximate functions and structures of a former era. Under certain conditions, such recovery would bring the ecosystem back to its purported original condition, although in many other cases, successional paths would not necessarily lead back quickly or at all to what might have been there as a result of thousands of years of slow succession and minimal disturbance.22 Cases such as this are everywhere: abandoned lots and farms, changing land uses, decommissioning of facilities. One of the most dramatic and well-documented changes in landtenure and land-use patterns occurred in the Northeastern United States, producing what Bill McKibben, a popular American environmental writer, terms an “explosion of green”: Less than two centuries later [following intensive logging and agriculture], despite great increases in the state’s population, 90 percent of New Hampshire is covered by forest. Vermont was 35 percent woods in 1850 and is 80 percent today, and even Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have seen woodlands rebound to the point where they cover nearly three fifths of southern New England. This process, which began as farmers abandoned the cold and rocky pastures of the East for the fertile fields of the Midwest, has not yet run its course. . . . By the 1960s and 1970s, the pattern of forest, fields, and pastures was similar to that prior to 1800, its appearance much like it must have been prior to the American Revolution.23

This autogenic reforestation—that is, restoration that takes place without direct human intervention—was unintentional, and represents not much more than secondary succession in reasonably resilient forested ecosystems. No one sat down to design targets for forest cover or enacted legislation. It happened as a result of the specific ecological conditions (rich soils, temperate climate), economic transitions, the mobility of agriculturists, and the spread of rural nonfarm estates. It is also very much dependent on the ecological conditions of Eastern North American forests, which have allowed for such a recovery. The view looks different, for example, in the Midwest, where exotic plants able to thrive on degraded soils have carpeted abandoned prairies. Not all is well in the Eastern, forested Arcadia, and much of McKibben’s article describes the current assault on the recovered forests. Industrial logging has picked up at a breathtaking pace, resulting in large-scale fragmentation of the Eastern states. Despite deliberate reforestation efforts, not much thought is being given to the overall pattern

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of land use or ecological considerations on a landscape scale. McKibben describes the work of citizens and members of the Wildlands project who are mapping both ecological features and the forces of fragmentation to show opportunities for restoration. Their goal is to return the land to conditions resembling wilderness, defined here as the conditions that existed prior to intensive industrial use of the land. There is one problem that McKibben does not pursue: habitat and species diversity. The fact that unassisted reforestation has taken place over the past century does not guarantee the return of the same or similar species and habitat types. We should certainly celebrate the unassisted recovery of the Eastern forests, but we should not necessarily assume that this constitutes an act of restoration. More should be attributed to the work of restorationists that McKibben describes as “the new defenders,” people who are consciously trying to return the land to earlier, healthier conditions. Recovery is a better term than restoration to describe what has happened in the Eastern forests of North America. Recovery assumes that autonomous processes produce an integral ecosystem. Recovery does not assume that the recovered land is necessarily restored in the sense of historical fidelity. In some limited cases, the term unassisted restoration is appropriate when the autonomous recovery processes have produced something indistinguishable from what had been present prior to the disturbance. At the point where recovery approaches restoration, sharp distinctions are nearly impossible. This is why the safest convention, terminologically, is to assume that restoration must involve human intention or agency. In cases where ecological processes have worked unassisted, recovery is an appropriate blanket term. Several years ago in a lecture in which I presented some concerns about the growing technological character of ecological restoration, a group of students from Germany took me to task over the very idea of restoration. They argued that restoration is simply another arrogation of nature, and that our accelerated technological culture is dissatisfied with waiting the length of time—in many cases more than a single lifetime—for autogenic restoration. I agree in some respects: we are impatient and sometimes undertake restoration projects as much because they satisfy our own interests as they do ecological interests (see chapter 5). However,

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the presupposition of the German students that natural recovery processes will return an ecosystem to predisturbance norms is questionable. It may hold true in limited circumstances, but ecosystems choked by exotic species, contaminated by persistent toxins, or blocked successionally have difficulty returning to earlier norms on their own. Intervention is necessary if the goal is to reach back to ecosystems that have become rare because of human actions. For example, the spirelike white pines (Pinus strobus) were logged extensively on the Bruce Peninsula (Ontario, Canada) in the nineteenth century, first to supply ship masts to the British Navy and later by merchant seafarers and farmers eager for cleared land, and they have never recovered. The ecological conditions for regeneration are no longer present, and other species have taken over. Where white pines once defined the peninsula, few are found today. Only restoration efforts—careful replanting and forest management— will bring them back. I am wary of medical analogies for restoration, but one way of looking at this is as parallel to the relationship between health-care provider and patient. In a case of severe illness, where life is critically threatened, medical intervention allows the body’s recovery processes a chance to work. Without the intervention the person would die. In less severe cases, the natural recovery processes are able to work more effectively and autonomously with minimal intervention. In some cases, for instance with a mild virus, the body’s own recovery processes are sufficient to regain health without external intervention, although patterns are changed to accommodate the recovery processes (i.e., increased sleep, change in diet). Restorationists, like health-care providers, must respect the capacity of recovery processes and work sensitively with them to restore integrity. To believe that ecological recovery processes on their own will always work is like believing that human health can be guaranteed without intervention. This is naive. In assisting recovery, restorationists cannot avoid leaving their mark on an ecosystem. Successful restoration depends on setting clear goals that can be tracked and evaluated. These goals are typically ecological, but underlying motivations and explicit interests almost guarantee that a restoration project will reflect some of the values of the restorationist. There are two ways of looking at this, one that maintains that the job

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of restoration should be to suppress the imprint of the restorationist as much as possible, and the other being that the role of the restorationist should be acknowledged and even celebrated. Much depends on basic views about the relationship between people and ecosystems. If one regards human agency as separate from and incompatible with ecological integrity, restoration must be about minimizing personal involvement in the restorative process. I prefer to see restoration as a way of bringing people into a more engaged relationship with nature, the kind that is possible when hands dig in dirt, transplant trees, pull weeds, and water newly seeded slopes. Management The idea that restored ecosystems require follow-up management—in some cases ongoing management to meet specific objectives—is difficult for many to accept. Management was a controversial component of the 1996 SER definition that was removed in 2002. Removing the word does not remove the problem: many restoration projects require ongoing intervention for long-term success. According to conventional beliefs, restoration is about assisted recovery only, meaning that the task of the restorationist is to intervene as little as possible and for as short a duration as feasible. Once the immediate work of creating the conditions necessary for recovery are completed, the restorationist steps aside and allows ecological processes to assume the lead. Unfortunately, in many cases, this model fails in reality. Restoration is frequently about the protection of relict sites, rare flora and fauna, and ecosystems at risk. In such cases, it is often necessary to arrest successional processes in order to maintain desired objectives (e.g., protection of a rare species). Consider the work of Sperry and others at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum beginning in the 1930s. The bold experiments with grassland restoration depended crucially on regular prescribed fires to prevent succession to shrubland. The relative rarity of grasslands made restoration of these ecosystems a priority and ongoing management of the ecosystems essential for long-term protection. Such decisions are analogous to learning that eating animals depends on killing them. Perhaps this

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analogy is too stark, but there are certainly cases where restoration requires excruciating moral choices. Take the decision by managers in Banff National Park to restore bull trout to Moraine Lake. Few lakes are better known in Canada. For years, an image of the lake graced the back of Canada’s $10 bill. Fed by glaciers and close to a highway, it has both breathtaking views and accessibility to recommend it. What few know is the extent to which aquatic ecosystems in Banff have been altered by the introduction of exotic fish species, notably brook trout and splake (a hybridized trout) for enhanced angling. Moraine Lake’s complement of vertebrate and invertebrate species is utterly different now than it was a few decades ago, and the bull trout, native to the lake, lost out to more competitive, fisher-friendly species. Restoring bull trout to the lake means more than simply reintroducing these fish. They would be unable to compete against more aggressive, exotic trout. The restoration plan proposed by park officials involved sustained net fishing to remove as many of the exotic trout as possible, and then poisoning the remaining individuals to make way for the bull-trout reintroduction. One can imagine the uproar: Animal rights group decry the plan as cruel. Local environmentalists divide over the issue, confused as to whether their values should support killing in the interest of restoration. Anglers wonder why one challenging game fish needs to be replaced by a less interesting one, even if it is native. Craig Ritchie, editor of Real Fishing magazine, commented, “You’re removing trout and putting in trout. You end up with the same thing—trout in a lake.”24 This is not true. Yes, one species of trout replaces another, but the entire aquatic ecosystem in Moraine Lake changes in response to the characteristics of predator species. Restoration can, and often does, involve painful management decisions. Some will claim that such tragic choices in the restoration of ecosystems and follow-up management are wrong in the same way that killing animals for food is wrong. This is certainly one of the prime reasons why we ought to be concerned about the propriety of restoration. Whether one refuses to eat animals, there is little question that animal rights movements have sensitized people to the need for showing respect to animals and minimizing harm to them. Similarly, those who have qualms about

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decisive, harmful actions, whether killing off exotic fish in a lake, eliminating a population of ungulates whose sheer numbers contribute to overgrazing, or conducting intensive prescribed fires, urge caution in the restoration community. No matter how much we might want to absent ourselves from continued involvement in the life of an ecosystem, there are occasions where doing so would reflect the greatest disregard for ecological integrity. We learn from our actions only if we are attentive to their consequences, and in the case of restoration, long-term monitoring of a site is vital. Once the immediate task of restoration is complete—that is, once the explicit goals have been met according to a predetermined schedule—a long-term suite of monitoring protocols ought to be introduced to ascertain the extent to which the original goals are maintained. I prefer to think of management in restoration as a negotiated process between restorationists and ecological processes. If one presumes management to imply control, this will result in restorations that fail because of overdetermination and artificiality. At the other end of the spectrum, those who hold that ecological processes are endlessly adaptable and do not require management are simply avoiding a hard lesson: some human intrusions are irrecoverable without further human artifice, so that human agency is sometimes a good thing. Between these two extremes is a participatory—some might call it coevolutionary—process wherein restorationists are working in conjunction with ecological processes with skill, intelligence, and appropriate modesty. In choosing to include the idea of management in the 1996 SER definition, we took the risk of offending the sensibilities of those who believe that restoration is simply about giving nature a little nudge. Restoration is, for better or worse, more complicated, and acknowledging ongoing human responsibility is vital in building an ethical notion of restoration. Historical Range of Variability Paradoxically, restoration is an awkward term for what we do under the banner of ecological restoration. One of the dictionary definitions examined earlier referred to bringing something back “to a previous, original, or normal condition.” Such a meaning works well for paintings, old

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buildings, or the Sistine Chapel, because the ultimate goal is present under layers of grime or soil. The object may be damaged, the exact conditions of its creation unknown, but seldom is the goal in question. The matter is more complicated for ecological restorationists. The subjects of ecological restoration are ecosystems, and these are in constant motion. Depending on how abstract one wishes to get, an ecosystem is changing in accordance with scripted predictability in terms of processes such as vegetation succession and also in response to stochastic processes such as wind, flooding, fire, human activity, species invasions, and a host of complicated interactions that so far have defied understanding. These processes, at least in their manifold interactions, are likely to remain mysteries. Developing systems have no true point of origin or specific moment of creation. Thus, restoring an ecosystem involves an arbitrary choice of historical conditions, to the extent that history is of interest in the restoration process. Trickier still is the fact that stochastic processes make the precise trajectory of an ecosystem unpredictable. Even if we could erase the past disturbances that give rise to a restoration project, there is no assurance that we would know how the undisturbed ecosystem would play out over time. The difficulty in determining appropriate reference conditions, whether a fixed historical point in time or a suite of specific ecological conditions, is one of the central challenges in ecological restoration. Two concepts have become useful in our efforts to deal with these issues. Historical range of variability refers to a reasonable long-term boundary on change; we can determine this and use it to situate specific restoration objectives. Closely related is the idea of reference conditions, which are historical inferences drawn from records or remnant ecosystems. These concepts are the focus of chapter 4. Sustainable Cultural Practices Arguably the most radical aspect of the 1996 SER definition was the embedding of the phrase “sustainable cultural practices” in the definition of ecological integrity. Implicit in the Western technological and scientific worldview, now dominant and spreading quickly, is a rift between

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nature and culture. Whether this emerged from Judeo-Christian religious teachings as some have argued, or from an innate capacity for communicative consciousness as Murray Bookchin has argued, the facts point to a sharp separation between humanity, which incorporates all the intelligence, activities, and products of people, and nature, which is often defined negatively as everything else.25 This divide runs through almost everything we do and represent. Our institutions reflect it in the ways we wall ourselves off from natural processes, or compartmentalize nature through indoor plants, nature programming on television, and other simulations and references. The separation between nature and culture is so much a part of how we see the world that the greatest challenge is an imaginative one, to conjure the world without such a duality—or alternatively, to fundamentally change the relationship between people and nature. The boundary between nature and culture, wild and domestic, has been increasingly challenged. Adherents of deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism, not to mention anthropologists who assail such rigid dualisms, have opened the way for a broader social questioning of what nature means. The conceptual positions have become complicated and difficult to resolve: Is it best to acknowledge, as anthropocentrists do, that all value making extends from us by definition and our obligation therefore is to act as enlightened stewards? Or do we adopt an ecocentric position, wherein value extends across all existence? Ecological restoration is difficult to fit into any conventional category. A special communion forms when people literally dig into the earth to reverse a tide of degradation, atone for past actions, seek a new way of relating to things other than human, or enjoy the pleasure of good company and good work. Such intervention flies in the face of deep ecology, for instance, because it could be seen as arrogant. Traditional preservationists are unnerved by the possibility that restoration does sometimes justify development. Industrialists blink at the high cost of restoration and fear increasing demands for reparation. There are ecocentric and anthropocentric restorationists, but no one position at this point is more compelling. One can be an enlightened anthropocentrist, meaning that restoration is about making the most of distinctly human capacities. Restoration can also be biocentric in the sense of erasing the

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boundaries between culture and nature by adopting, as much as possible, value systems that privilege nonhumans. Ecological restoration has perhaps stirred more debate among environmental philosophers than any other single issue. People of all political persuasions support restoration. They do so because of widespread agreement on the salutary products of these efforts. The process of restoration, however, tends to change minds about the role of people in ecosystems. It is not sufficient to think of restoration as simply a scientific or technical practice. Restoration has inherent democratic potential that requires nourishment from local participatory practice (chapter 6).26 For good restoration to flourish— good in the sense of ecological and cultural integrity—any definition must be expanded to incorporate sustainable cultural practices. Everyone who has been involved in a restoration project can tell a story of cultural integration, whether it be the group of university and high school students building and placing revetments along a stream in Pullman, Washington, on a Saturday morning, or the recovery of lost knowledge of the land that comes from restoring the Mattole River watershed in Northern California.27 The stories that began as rivulets now flow as a wide river. Dennis Martinez asks; “What do we want to restore? We want to restore life. We want to restore the living and sacred relationship between the people and the earth. We want to restore our spirits as we restore the land. We want to restore our culture, our songs, our myths and stories, and the Indian names for creeks and springs. We want to restore ourselves.”28 There are concerns, to be sure, about adding the concept of sustainable cultural practice to the core of ecological restoration. How do we distinguish between cultural practices that honor participation, modesty, and humility and those that aim to emblazon human pride, greed, and arrogance on nature? How do we ensure that a fixation on human values does not swamp the wisdom of ecologists? There are no easy answers. The surest way is through examining the lessons that flow from practice. This is what Freeman House, in his book Totem Salmon, tries to do with respect to the restoration of the Mattole River watershed, and it is what the more personal account by Stephanie Mills of her life on the northern peninsula of Michigan, In Service of the Wild, offers. We

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can glean a few general lessons, although these cannot be converted to formulas. Participation is crucial in restoration, if only to ensure the long-term survival of a project. Humility is necessary to ward off the tendency to believe that restoration is merely a technical challenge and follows prescribed rules. Reflection ensures that we think before we act, and also that what we know and live by stands up to constant inquiry. I borrow Tony Bradshaw’s idea that restoration is an “acid test” for ecology, although my use of this idea is more general. To enhance our knowledge of ecology is to understand the mutual dependency of ecological and cultural integrity, and this is the acid test of ecological restoration. Ecological Integrity The concept of ecological integrity anchored SER’s 1996 definition of restoration and has become a central concept in many contemporary conservation policies. It was jettisoned, however, in the 2002 definition because it constituted an abstraction that in itself required definition. This is a valid complaint, but I remain drawn to the intuitive and metaphorical appeal of ecological integrity. At the very root of integrity is the notion of wholeness, which in the context of conservation and restoration suggests that the goal ought to be the creation of whole, intact systems. James Kay, a systems theorist at the University of Waterloo, proposes that integrity is an all-encompassing term for the various features—resiliency, elasticity, stress response, and so on—that allow an ecosystem to adjust to environmental change: “Integrity should be seen as an umbrella concept that integrates these many different characteristics of an ecosystem, which, when taken together, describe an ecosystem’s ability to maintain its organization.”29 Ecological integrity is closely related to biological integrity, defined by the U.S. ecologists Paul Angermeier and James Karr as “native species populations in their historic variety and numbers naturally interacting in naturally structured biotic communities.”30 There have been two main approaches to defining restoration, both amplifying the idea of ecological integrity. The first emphasizes interpretive descriptions of what restoration should be. The writings of

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William Jordan III, Stephanie Mills, and Freeman House provide typical lyrical accounts of this nature. The second approach consists of analytic descriptions, mostly in the form of models that describe practice and build theory. The French restoration ecologist James Aronson and his colleagues have proposed measurable indices of ecological and environmental factors (including human activities) in the form of vital ecosystem attributes and vital landscape attributes.31 These attributes can be used to assess the degree of degradation of ecosystems, providing a way of measuring the degree to which restoration projects reach their objectives on an ecosystem and landscape scale. The development of a clear list of relevant indicators is a crucial way of advancing restoration science, and when combined with interpretive accounts, this system promises to be a useful tool.32 Nonetheless, these are relatively early attempts at providing transferable, general ecological principles for restoration. R. J. Hobbs and D. A. Norton lament: “What is clear is that restoration ecology has largely progressed on an ad hoc, site- and situation-specific basis, with little development of general theory or principles that would allow the transfer of methodologies from one situation to another.”33 It will take time to develop such a framework, and no framework is likely to be universally valid for all types of ecosystems, locales, and circumstances. What we might best hope for are a series of ecotype- or region-specific frameworks that provide effective advice for on-the-ground restorationists. What of the notion of ecological health, which is clearly a close contender with ecological integrity for the most pleasing target for whole ecosystems? In the 1990s the idea of ecosystem health caught on as a way of defining appropriate goals for ecological management. In some respects, ecosystem health is a more intuitive metaphor, for it focuses attention on notions of human health. On a purely metaphorical level, health carries much weight. It connotes a condition for ecosystems (and humans) that we understand to be positive. However, as a deterministic concept it fails. Definitions of human health are notoriously difficult to articulate; they often end up producing a cluster of evaluative terms that provide guidance but little quantitative specificity. Likewise, there is so much variation in ecosystems that criteria for ascertaining health are either too broad to be practically useful, or too specific to capture a full

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range of meaning. Not only do ecosystems change, but so also do our notions of what counts as healthy. Where, for example, will our views be positioned decades from now about weedy and exotic species? Will we be so overwhelmed by invasions on native flora and fauna that we will declare all-out war on such species, increasing the stringency of this one measure of ecosystem health? Or will we concede defeat to weeds and other flora and fauna, adopting a sophisticated control strategy that largely accepts them? The point is that our criteria for ecosystem health will change over time, and any rigid attempt to define them is doomed to failure. Angermeier and Karr make the distinction between integrity and health this way: “Integrity implies an unimpaired condition or the quality or state of being complete or undivided; it implies correspondence with some original condition. . . . Health, on the other hand, implies a flourishing condition, well-being, vitality, or prosperity.”34 An ecosystem may be healthy without necessarily having what Angermeier and Karr would think of as “original” integrity—that is, the features of the predisturbance state. One could weigh in on either side of the debate as regards ecological restoration, but integrity incorporates the idea of recovering previous conditions. If we are to arbitrate between two compelling metaphorical descriptions of ecological restoration, I choose integrity over health. The Evolution of Words and Worlds This tour through definitions of ecological restoration highlights the difficulty of defining this and similar terms. Ecological restoration is a process as much as a product, aimed at assisting the recovery of whole ecosystems. Restorationists work in concert with ecological processes. Definitions change to reflect changing circumstances and beliefs: evolution, after all, acts on words as well as worlds. But my intuition is that no matter how the definition changes, two principles will remain central to restoration: ecological integrity and historical fidelity. If ecological restorationists want to identify the core concepts of their field, surely these two ideas, above all, must be cited. (In chapters 6 and 7, however, I explore two additional core concepts: focal practice and design).

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Once the core concepts of a practice have been identified, it becomes possible to establish concrete standards and goals. What is the perfect restoration project, the gold standard, the one against which all others are measured? This is a misleading question. It suggests a productoriented view of restoration, which is only one part of describing a project. Martinez shouted out a comment from the floor at the philosophy session at SER’s 2000 conference in Liverpool: “Has anyone ever seen a completed restoration project? Would someone please show me?” He is good at asking devilishly obvious questions. Certainly specific goals can be achieved and monitoring requirements met, but in the life of that ecosystem, in the lives of all the organisms who make their home in that place, humans included, the restoration is seamless. A simple test, which I term the fidelity test, helps make this point.35 Imagine an intact but isolated, temperate mixed-forest ecosystem contiguous to one that has been disturbed significantly through logging, other intrusive human activities, invasions of weedy species, and so on. Suffice it to say that most regard the first forest as integral and the second as needing restoration. A talented interdisciplinary team of scientists, naturalists, and volunteers spends many hours studying the intact woodland as a reference site. They develop a set of specific objectives for restoration for the other woodland site, involving weed removal, restricted herbicide use, physical alteration of certain site and structural features, planting, and selective harvesting. The plan is implemented completely and a rigorous follow-up maintenance and management program is put in place to ensure adherence to objectives. Time passes, say 200 years. A crack team of future restoration scientists, armed with the best analytic equipment, experience, and knowledge, is dispatched to the two sites. Despite their extensive preparations, they are not given any information about the history of the two ecosystems. An exhaustive investigation is conducted into forest structure, soil conditions, nutrient cycling, species richness, spatial characteristics, and other characteristics that shape an ecosystem. The team holds a meeting and then delivers a verdict. If more than a simple majority of members picks either the wrong woodland as the restored one or cannot decide which is which, the restoration is considered a perfect success.

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Or is it? This test stretches the limits of plausibility—age structure alone might be a dead giveaway. A practical problem plagues the test, too. Should the comparison be based on the reference ecosystem at the time of disturbance or in the future when the test is completed? These ecosystems are in a continual process of change. If the disturbance time is chosen, how is it possible to gather sufficient data to properly inform the scientists of the future? Moreover, is there any reason restoration ought to be tested purely by fidelity to a reference ecosystem? Shouldn’t the goals established by the restorationists, which will include specific ecological objectives but perhaps also cultural ones, be the primary basis for measurement? Ultimately, the perfectibility of restoration depends either on duplication, which is uninspiring and unattainable, or on a culturally contingent view of nature. What counts as good restoration is shaped by a combination of two aspects of ecological integrity and historical fidelity: a measurable component based on a priori criteria; and an evaluative component that conditions what is worth considering in the first place. Both of these measures, however, are ultimately linked to changing value systems. It is inevitable that what we regard as important to measure will shift over time. Consider ecological integrity and historical fidelity as resting on two connected, sliding scales. At one end are projects, fictitious and unattainable, that have remarkable integrity (according to predetermined measures) and exact fidelity to historical conditions. At the other extreme are projects wherein integrity is stretched to the limit of plausibility, and historical fidelity is merely a faint trace (figure 3.2). Somewhere along the two lines—no doubt a shifting location to reflect the evolutionary processes described above—is the divide that separates restoration projects from those that do not meet minimal criteria. All projects to the right of the dividing line are restoration projects, some of which meet the twin criteria of ecological integrity and historical fidelity more closely than others. Notice how I say more closely, not better. So many factors can influence what determines a good restoration project, and these vary from region to region and project to project. A successful restoration project in a complicated agroecosystem, such as the riverine meadows in the Slovak Republic (see chapter 2), will depend on different measures of success than the Kissimmee River restoration in

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Ecological integrity

Historical fidelity Minimum (no integrity and fidelity)

Maximum (greatest integrity and fidelity) Minimal condition for restoration

Figure 3.2 A restoration project is defined by its location along two scales, ecological integrity and historical fidelity. The dashed line shows the minimal conditon required for identification of a legitimate restoration project; beyond this line a project would be described as something else—for example, as a reclamation project.

Florida. Both are good projects and would stack up well under slightly different criteria. Integrity is a familiar term, but fidelity is a novel word in an ecological context. To be faithful to something means to be loyal and trustworthy, and also to be true and accurate. The second meaning applies well to the challenge of ecological restoration. Historical fidelity means loyalty to predisturbance conditions, which may or may not involve exact reproduction—remember that there are social, economic, cultural, political, aesthetic, and moral goals from the present to factor in as well. What I like about the idea of fidelity is that it encourages us to be true to whatever goals we have set for ourselves and for ecosystems, which may involve backing off from the standard of perfect historical fidelity. The absence or unreliability of historical data, lack of availability of appropriate personnel and seed/plant stock, and shortfalls of cash, in addition to other factors, limit what is attainable for any particular site. Once aware of such limitations, we do the best we can by trying to be true to our judgments. Our judgments are never fully given over to ecological realities; they are set within a complicated matrix of changing

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values. We act as proxies for ecosystems, doing what we think is best given a wide array of possible approaches. There is no way of escaping such human contrivance. The term fidelity was key to an earlier attempt to describe good restoration. In my 1997 Conservation Biology article, I argue that fidelity comprises three subsidiary principles: structural/compositional replication, functional success, and durability.36 Structural/compositional replication most closely manifests the goal of fidelity. A restored ecosystem must strongly resemble the structure and composition of an appropriate reference ecosystem. Functional success is inextricably tied to compositional and structural replication; neither is possible over time without the other. The ecosystem must align ecologically with the system it is designed to reproduce. Biogeochemical processes must operate normally according to the expectations of the specific ecosystem (e.g., flushing rates, ion exchanges, decomposition). Functional success usually depends on management. Durability is a key criterion for evaluating and determining the success of a restoration. For a restoration to be successful— that is, to achieve the overall goal of fidelity—it must hold up over a significant period of time, significant being defined relative to the type of ecosystem. Resilience is considered an important criterion of a successful restoration project. Many would subsume this quality under durability, but I would suggest that an ecosystem can be resilient and still not be durable. For example, external site pressures such as wholesale invasion by weedy species may overpower even the most resilient ecosystem without management. The need to strike a balance between longevity and expediency when setting performance criteria often creates difficulties for regulatory institutions beyond what they are typically equipped to handle. My earlier model of ecological fidelity still works, but it is not as powerful or clear as a combined model of ecological integrity and historical fidelity. We still face the challenge of effectively incorporating cultural values and practices in a model of ecological restoration. It remains to be seen whether this can be done well with only the two core principles of ecological integrity and historical fidelity. These issues are taken up again in chapter 6.

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Perhaps it is a little late to ask this rather obvious if vexing question: Is restoration the term and concept we want? I have found it awkward when explaining ecological restoration to those new to the practice to occasionally have to concede that restoration is a misleading and ultimately confusing term. Most people gravitate to definitions that fit art or architectural restoration—that is, a return to a prior or original state. We know that such a static notion does not fit the intentions of ecological restorationists. Moreover, unless one is willing to adopt a very strict definition—a tack that the Society for Ecological Restoration has avoided—the conventional notions of restoration do not fit ongoing practice well. Given the choice, I would not promote the term restoration in describing the broad array of projects underway. There are better terms: reparation, which looks backward, or regeneration, which looks forward. This opens two options. One is to accept restoration as an umbrella term for a wide variety of practices, not an infinitely wide set but broader than that encompassed by the austere, historically precise notion of restoration. The other approach is to carve out a narrow niche for restoration and develop a more inclusive term for the wider array. Theoretically, I favor the latter alternative, but the former is more realistic, given the already-ubiquitous use of restoration. As a pragmatist at heart, I will work at both levels, advancing this presently untenable theoretical position with the hope that it may flourish in the future, and simultaneously promoting the cause of ecological restoration as presently defined. Again, we ought to be concerned about the finer points of definition and terminology because they will ultimately affect how restoration is practiced. Back in the 1980s when the field was beginning to coalesce, William Jordan and others recognized the problem of terminology. He and John Aber favored the more flexible (although no less confusing) term synthetic ecology to convey the constructive purpose of restoration as a new experimental paradigm for ecology. Vestiges of this approach appear in the subtitle of one of the earliest publications on the concept of restoration, Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Research.37 Jordan, Gilpin, and Aber were resisting the conventional notion of restoration, that unswerving dedication to the past as if

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ecosystems were obscure paintings and all that was necessary was to remove years of accumulated grime. A balance is required between a historicism that acknowledges the guiding role history plays in recovering ecosystems, and a pragmatism that allows a measure of autonomy for practitioners to work in the present. The best way forward—that is, the latter path—is to ensure that ecological restoration is defined in a way that simultaneously honors ecological integrity and historical fidelity, excludes practices that undermine these core ideals, and enlarges the prospect of people living respectfully in and around restored places.

4 Historicity and Reference in Ecological Restoration

Of course, nature, unlike a tapestry, also continues to evolve through time: even without human-imposed changes, nature does not remain static. —Peter White and Joan Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation” Find refuge in change. —Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

I focus on history in this chapter because it seems the more precarious of the two apparent underpinnings of restoration, the other being ecological integrity. We know that ecosystems are in constant motion; so too does restoration as a practice change over time. This dynamism creates problems for restorationists: Does restoration depend on historical authenticity, and should it? The demands created by history cause some practitioners and observers to draw away from restoration, believing that historical fidelity is unreasonable or too expensive to emulate. Some people may begin to wonder whether the past really needs to exert pressure on the present and future. It we allow a role for history, how will our understanding of authenticity change over time? To what point in history does one anchor one’s plans? Is such precision necessary? The vexing problem of fixing historical conditions, or not, for restoration is well known and lies at the heart of restoration theory and practice. It is less common to acknowledge that our beliefs about restoration change, too. My point is a simple one: restoration can shift in the future in many ways. It can become more attuned to cultural practices, operate on multiple scales simultaneously, move away gradually from the straightjacket implied by rigid historical structures, or be undertaken by private rather than public interests. But it must not abandon history entirely. If it does, we will be giving in too much to the capricious nature of contemporary judgment.

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In a conversation with two ardent and accomplished graduate students studying restoration ecology, I asked whether history mattered to them. They were unequivocal in asserting that the past is an impediment to executing effective projects. For them, creating a functional stream where only a polluted one existed previously was of paramount importance, not the niceties of historical fidelity. Their response rested on their belief in the importance of restoring ecological integrity, though they admitted that in a world of more complete information, history would count in their plans and actions. I thought perhaps that they would see their work as contradicting restoration, but no such dilemma appeared; for them their work was ecological restoration. This may be an isolated example, but I suspect it is not. Most restorationists assume history matters. However, the central place of history in ecological restoration needs to be understood, criticized, and defended, not assumed. This chapter, therefore, is about history, or more properly historicity—that which pertains to historical fidelity.1 There are three reasons for taking historicity seriously: nostalgia and the knowledge this brings of a better past; the capacity to create continuous stories that inform our understanding of a place, or what I call narrative continuity; and depth of time (each of these three concepts will be clarified later). On a more practical level, I also explore the idea of reference ecosystems—historical or contemporary ecosystems that can guide the work of restorationists—a troublesome if crucial concept in restoration in which history is a central figure. The idea of a reference ecosystem is not new, but it has yet to be thoroughly articulated by restoration ecologists.2 I extend the meaning of reference ecosystems to incorporate human as well as ecological presence, or rather to see human presence as an aspect of ecological presence (this view is elaborated in chapter 6). Let’s return to Jasper National Park for a glimpse of how historical information helps (or confounds) restoration. Photographing the Past Jeanine Rhemtulla uncovered a collection of photographs in July 1996 that would change the course of her life and also the way we understand the history of Jasper National Park. Eighty-one years earlier, in the late

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spring of 1915, Morrison Parsons Bridgland, a Dominion Land Surveyor in the employ of the Canadian federal government, and his crew of six men arrived in the upper Athabasca Valley after an arduous rail journey from Ottawa, the nation’s capital 2,000 miles to the east. Bridgland was an accomplished mountain climber and earlier an acolyte of A. O. Wheeler, a senior surveyor and cofounder of the Alpine Club of Canada. The task in front of Bridgland was to climb as many promontories, mostly mountain peaks, as possible, and take careful photographs and measurements that could later be used to chart the first topographic maps of Jasper. Canadians were international leaders at the time in the use of photographic techniques for surveying and map production. Conventional survey techniques using transits and short lines of sight were tedious and slow in the rugged terrain of the Rocky Mountains. Edouard DeVille was appointed Surveyor General of the Dominion Land Survey in 1885, and with his appointment came innovative surveying techniques that included the use of phototopographic surveying. By combining photographs, precise angular and locational observations, and arduous geometry to plot the lines of topographic relief, much more land could be surveyed in less time, leading to the widespread use of photographic techniques in the first decade of the twentieth century. The efficiency was so great that costs were reduced in some cases by an order of magnitude. The result was a wholesale change in techniques for surveying mountainous and hilly regions in western Canada, and such a transformation makes a nearly perfect historical study of technologically induced obsolescence.3 Bridgland honed his techniques, and later wrote a handbook of photographic surveying.4 During the summer and autumn of 1915, supervising two crews, a total of ninety-two survey stations were established (several of which were at different points on the same mountain and a few at ground level). From each point they took at least four, and as many as sixteen, photographs and conventional compass and theodolite (an optical survey instrument for measuring horizontal and vertical angles) measurements. A number of the ascents were challenging, especially with mountaineering techniques of the time, and many were first ascents. These were done without the aid of the roads, manicured trails, route or trail descriptions, helicopters, and lightweight outdoor and

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camping gear that we take for granted today. The crews carried bulky wooden box cameras, glass-plate negatives, photographic chemicals, and a portable darkroom. Bridgland worked while the weather was good, which was not very often in the summer of 1915, and his days began at or before dawn and lasted sometimes until late evening. By the time snow and frigid weather forced him back to Calgary in late October, his expedition had recorded 735 black-and-white photographs on glass-plate negatives (figure 4.1). Tragedy struck on July 29, 1915, when the other photographer, A. E. Hyatt, drowned in Beauvert Lake, necessitating a sad duty for Bridgland that involved interviews with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, travel to British Columbia to ensure proper committal and burial of the deceased, recruiting a new photographer, and then the process of training the new man and completing the survey.5 This was an exceptional season even for Bridgland, who over his

Figure 4.1 Example of cartographic techniques applied to one of the photographs (the Ramparts in the Tonquin Valley, Jasper National Park). From M. P. Bridgland’s Photographic Surveying.

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lifetime is credited with many first ascents of mountains in the Jasper and Banff regions of the Canadian Rockies and at least a dozen other surveys.6 The maps were produced after thousands of hours of painstaking work back at the office, and published in 1917 (figure 4.2). The Dominion Land Survey was established in 1875 to oversee the mapping of the vast and fragile union that was Canada. Political and social cohesion was difficult to achieve over such a large land area in a time before simultaneous communications. A cross-continental railway was blasted over Rogers Pass in 1885 and through what are now Banff and Yoho National Parks, immediately to the south of Jasper, but this

Figure 4.2 Portion of one of six topographic map sheets of north-central Jasper National Park produced from Bridgland’s 1915 photographic survey. The Athabasca River figures prominently, and the site of what is now the Palisades Centre is located at the bottom-left corner of the map.

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was just a thick thread in the weaving together of a nation. The Survey was motivated by nationalism on the one hand, and by a growing commitment to scientific description of the territorial lands and waters on the other.7 Mapping helped assert control over a region by removing some of its mystery and clearing the way for development, and Bridgland’s maps were keys in opening economic opportunities and easing further exploration of Jasper and beyond. In 1915, the Jasper Forest Reserve—the forerunner to Jasper National Park—was eight years old. Two competing railway companies, the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific, had barely finished pushing their way up the Athabasca Valley and over Yellowhead Pass into British Columbia. A small rail town, Fitzhugh (later Jasper), became the administrative and rail center for the region. Based on the success of the grand railway hotels along the southern rail route, early visitors and promoters of Jasper conjured a patrician tourism trade, which was realized to a limited extent with the construction of Jasper Park Lodge. The Lodge continues this grand, although by contemporary standards in a national park, somewhat incongruous tradition. Wealthy tourists, mountaineers, adventurers, and migrants made their way through Jasper, but Jasper resisted the popularity that beset its neighbor to the south, Banff. To this day, although development pressures are intense by any standards, Jasper remains in the shadow of Banff (see chapter 1). By a twist of history, two sets of photographs, bound together in small folios, made it to Jasper National Park. Jeanine Rhemtulla, an ecologist, had just begun her graduate studies in 1996. With time and opportunity on her side, she decided to spend the summer in Jasper looking for a promising research project. That was the first summer of the Culture, Ecology and Restoration project, an interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at providing options for long-range restoration of the montane ecosystems of the upper Athabasca Valley.8 The Palisades Research Centre was filled with spirited discussion about restoration theory, park options, and environmental values. I challenged team members to come up with a way of answering the question, “What are our goals for restoration?” The question brought the inevitable historical regression: Should the ecosystems be returned to the conditions just before the establishment of the park? Before the fur-trade period (1811–1855)? Or

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further back, when climate conditions were similar to those we are now experiencing? Rhemtulla believed that one way of answering these questions was to have some solid data about previous ecological conditions, a matter made difficult by a scarcity of reliable historical data. Her research interests tended toward an understanding of vegetation dynamics as a whole, and not any one specific process (e.g., fire). Historical aerial photographs were helpful, although the earliest set dated back only to 1949. Even a cursory observation revealed considerable change over the forty-two-year interval. Forests appeared more dense, human activity had increased, and the river had changed course in places. It would be a straightforward, if painstaking, task to interpret vegetation types from the two sets of air photos, digitize them for use with a computer mapping system, and compare their spatial characteristics. The problem was that the time difference was only forty-two years, a single heartbeat in long-term vegetation change. When this became clear, Rhemtulla was browsing through files at the park office and park warden Rod Wallace pointed her to the Bridgland photographs. She made photocopies of a few, and emerged in the daylight to a view of the mountains that barely resembled the images in her hands (figure 4.3). Where patchy forests were evident in 1915, dense, close-canopied lodgepole pine forests had replaced these. The degree of change was remarkable. Her hunch was that if Bridgland could compute the geometry necessary to produce accurate maps from these photographs, it must be possible to shoot repeat photographs of the same locations, and generate maps of vegetation now and as compared to the way it was eighty-one years ago. This would yield two heartbeats of ecological duration, or almost eighty years. It turned out not to be nearly so simple, but in that moment was born the Bridgland Repeat Photography project. The art and science of repeat photography—comparing contemporary photographs with historical images taken at exactly the same location— has developed over the last three decades as a modestly popular method for examining change in human activities, vegetation, rock formations, glaciers, water courses, and a host of other landscape features. The classic study of landscape change was Hastings and Turner’s The Changing Mile, which focused on grazing and climactic change in Arizona. Around the world dozens of scientific studies since have used repeat

138 Chapter 4 Figure 4.3 View from Powerhouse Cliff, just north of the town of Jasper, looking across the Athabasca River to Hawk Mountain. This was one of the first Bridgland photographic stations that Jeanine Rhemtulla encountered. The left photo, from 1915, is by M. P. Bridgland and the repeat image (right) is from exactly the same location in 1998 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs).

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photographic techniques, including exemplary studies of vegetation change in the central Great Basin, vegetation and land-use patterns in Colorado, and ecological changes in the front ranges of the Rockies in Colorado. Two studies are analogs for our work in Jasper. Mary Meagher and Douglas Houston have assembled in some case triplets (turn of the twentieth century, early 1970s, and 1990s) of photographs from Yellowstone that show substantial change to this American icon. Many of the issues they note in Yellowstone are familiar to those working in Jasper. Robert Webb and colleagues investigated many reaches of the Colorado River by comparing their views, literally, with the Stanton expedition photographs of 1890 (Stanton recorded with photographs the potential railroad routing). Webb reports on a wide variety of ecological changes (e.g., herbivory, longevity of desert plants, fluvial structures). His study is interdisciplinary, and he employs quantitative analytic techniques in some cases.9 This latter point marks a sharp distinction between earlier and more recent studies. Photographs really do speak volumes, and when a pair of repeat images is presented side by side, especially when the changes are as dramatic as they are with our work in Jasper, the mind’s eye is marked indelibly. For qualitative impact, not much exceeds paired photographs. However, the challenge is to push beyond impressions such as “the forests appear much denser in the more recent photograph,” to an accurate assessment of exactly what has changed and by how much. The Bridgland collection is different from most other repeat photographic collections, because the comprehensive and systematic nature of survey photography allows quantitative analysis. With image-sampling procedures, as Rhemtulla has demonstrated with her research on vegetation change, it is possible to make a comparison of the relative extent of different vegetation types, and thus to show with some precision how the vegetation and other ecological and cultural features have changed.10 The Bridgland Repeat Photography project has grown well beyond Rhemtulla’s initial efforts.11 In the summer of 1998, walking in many cases the same trails that Bridgland and his crew had trekked in 1915, we began the complete rephotography of his original survey, all 735 photographs. We completed the work on September 11, 1999, by climbing Pyramid Mountain, a peak that in appearance is true to its name and dominates the skyline west of the town of Jasper. We did most of our

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work on foot, like Bridgland, although we did occasionally avail ourselves of helicopter support. Trail access was generally better than in Bridgland’s day, and many of the routes are known. Our equipment was lighter, although we lugged around a cranky, heavy 4 ¥ 5 Linhof largeformat camera and an unwieldy tripod. Luckily we were spared the romance of glass-plate negatives. Despite these advantages, we still packed a healthy payload and braced ourselves against volatile, sometimes severe mountain weather and all the quirks and dangers of wilderness travel. Bridgland, surprisingly, had a couple of advantages. He arrived in Jasper twenty-five years after one of the largest fire events on record: back-to-back dry years in 1889 and 1890 that burned more than half the forests of the upper Athabasca Valley and had similar effects throughout Alberta and elsewhere in the mountain west. Walking through brulé, or burned forest, was in many cases easier than the bushwhacking that greeted us in the 1990s after over a hundred years of very little fire (a combination of fire suppression and depressed fire ignition). Also, Bridgland had the aid of a well-trained survey party, significant logistical support, and horses. It is doubtful that he cooked many of his own meals! We chanted these qualifications as reassurances to ourselves along particularly difficult scrambles or during awful weather. Nevertheless, we were incredulous sometimes, awed at others, by what the Bridgland survey accomplished in a single season. We felt sometimes like doughy teenagers urged along by a fit and trim elderly uncle. What we have achieved, and will continue to develop, is a detailed view of the north-central portion of Jasper National Park as it appeared in 1915. This was just as the two railways up the Athabasca Valley and through the Yellowhead Pass were completed, four years following the expulsion of the Métis families to make room for a new idea of the land, and eight years following the establishment of the park. It was also twenty-five years following the most extensive fires on record, roughly a century following the first ascents of the Athabasca Valley by the fur traders, and ten millenniums following the retreat of the last glaciation and the earliest-known wanderings of people in the valley, a span of time punctuated by complicated, mostly unknown, changes in people, plants, animals, and climate. The Bridgland photography, not to mention our repeats nearly a century later, is a small nick on this arrow of time. By

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filling the roughly eighty-year gap with aerial photos and models of ecological change, we can document the processes of landscape change. The photographs are a powerful testament to change, for in one quick glance they reveal dramatic visual changes—rockslides, forest regeneration, roads and trails. As one would expect with any interpretive technique, there are significant limits on what can be gleaned from the photographs. Underlying processes such as nutrient cycling and soil chemistry, and fine-grained vegetation shifts, are not detectable with photographs. There are places we visited, in the alpine regions mostly, where the change is so subtle that only careful observation reveals the increments. This is a landscape in motion, as all landscapes are, and the movement amplifies the intricacy. This vigorous quality should not be surprising. We know that ecosystems change, that people’s activities combined with ecological processes create continuously changing patterns. The paradigm in ecology has shifted in the last twenty years from one in which equilibrium defined the end point of ecological change to one in which ecosystems are disequilibrium systems with complicated multiple trajectories and multiple steady states.12 If we presume that everything is in flux, which would be a radical way of interpreting some of the new theorizing in ecology, then history may matter very little to restorationists, and in fact restoration may not be literally necessary or warranted. A major concept of restoration, historical fidelity, would fall away in favor of exclusive concern with ecological integrity (see chapter 3). Thus, restoration might involve the removal of immediate and indirect human stressors, making possible multiple ecological trajectories (including those that may not be apparent in the historical record), attentiveness to contemporary regional ecological conditions, and a focus on naturalistic instead of natural patterns and processes. These questions about history percolated as Rhemtulla and I retraced Bridgland’s steps. It was humbling to realize that so much work is required to understand the past qualities of a place. After all, was 1915 actually a special year? Not really. It did mark a point roughly midway through the use of phototopographic surveying, a feverish era in the relatively new Dominion of Canada. The images from 1915 do provide a portrait of a landscape closer perhaps to one extreme of vegetation

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patterning, one that was patchy and open. It would be wrong to suggest that either the 1915 or repeat photographs show the valley as it is or should be. There is reason to believe that both sets of snapshots occur within a longer-term range of variability, although it does seem that the close-canopied conditions that prevail today are unusual in the recent (<500 year) historical record. The wealth of information available through the photographs paradoxically provides us with relatively limited guidance. Nevertheless, as Wally Covington has suggested, historical imagery may be “the last, best information we have.”13 The more we peer into the past, the more historical complexity we become aware of. This is especially true when we apply new models to understanding the land. For instance, if we see Jasper in a cultural light where people have lived and shaped the qualities of the land, a new kind of vitality is realized. The extensive hunting by fur traders changed the population cycles of certain mammal species for decades or more, and these and other ripples from the nineteenth century are still felt today. Moving away from the notion of park-as-wilderness to one of park-ashistory establishes the importance of continuity of understanding, of recognizing that what happened in the past matters to us today. More than this, not only do the deeds and actions of the past matter, but the ways people’s past thoughts affected their actions also matter, as do the ways our contemporary beliefs interpret these shifting views. It borders on an infinite regress to realize that our perceptions gain us entry to understanding only the perceptions of others and the marks they left on the land. It is folly to believe that we can gain an objective view of the past. As Marc Hall suggests, “We also realize that identifying former landscapes may be just as difficult as identifying historical truth. . . . Restoration may be less a process of recreating past landscapes than of discovering our biases about ideal landscape.”14 History is so confounding for restorationists because it is at once vital and elusive. Restorationists call out for historical evidence, yet must face the imperfection of these data and the contingent knowledge that goes along with our understanding. Finally, fine-grained historical data such as the Bridgland photographs and repeat images do not tell us what to do. In fact, they make the choices considerably more complicated.

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Nostalgia Why are we drawn to history in the first place? What is it about historical conditions that compels so much attention? Why not abandon the past in favor of contemporary designs? The most obvious answer would be that the past is, or was, somehow better. But it is not better in any simple way, at least for most people. Past landscapes, like old buildings, derive aspects of their value from nostalgia, continuity, and depth. Tenuous as the comparison might be, we advocate so hard to restore old buildings—the Old State House in downtown Boston, for example15— because such structures signal a different and in some respects better life. They represent a simple, less hurried time when fidelity to a more organic way of life was visible. But nostalgia ignores much of the difficulty of times past, and countervailing historical accounts are necessary for balance. In any case, the point is that the past shows an alternative, sometimes better, model. Old ecosystems, ones that avoided the ravages of development and connected with myriad other ecosystems to form a large and shifting mosaic, a space sufficiently great to support all manner of endemic flora and fauna, are rare today. Implicit in the act of restoration is the belief that such places are better than what now exists and worth bringing back. For many, restoration reflects nostalgia in the truest sense of the word: a bittersweet longing for something lost. In the early days of the Bridgland Repeat Photography project I set up a display for a public open house at the University of Alberta. A pair of before-and-after photographs were mounted on thick matting board and attached to the display panel with Velcro fasteners. Needing coffee, I left the display in the hands of a mischievous mechanical engineering colleague. When I returned a few minutes later, a small crowd of visitors was huddled around the poster and my gesticulating colleague, who was explaining the fine points of landscape change. He had, however, reversed the photographs, such that the repeat photograph showing a thick forest was being promoted as primeval wildland and the patchy valley as the despoiled landscape. It took no effort to convince people that the treed landscape was more in keeping with their ideal of a national park and much more effort for me to undo the teachings of my

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colleague. This makes intuitive sense, given the authority the wilderness model still has in conditioning our understanding of places like Jasper. The idea of wilderness comes together with a cultural amnesia that overlooks its significance in colonial conquest. It was, after all, the same high value placed on wilderness that allowed federal government officials to expropriate the land of Métis settlers in the Athabasca Valley in 1907. It will take years to create a different, more nuanced conception of history showing the extent to which people have entwined their lives with such landscapes. The poster-display experience taught me that cultural images, accurate or otherwise, shape what people are readily able to embrace. It takes painstaking education to work against this grain. Added to this problem are the more material decisions faced by park restorationists: What historical evidence serves as the best anchor? In chapter 1 I argued that there is no easy answer to this question, that restoring to the time just before the establishment of the park in 1907 is just as defensible as restoring to the era before the fur trade in 1800, and beyond this the variations in climate force a reconsideration of appropriate goals. There is no a priori correct answer. Such decisions have an arbitrary quality; decisions are always judgments. There is no escaping this subjective dimension of ecological restoration: our knowledge of history and what we prefer from history is always contingent on contemporary beliefs. The contingency of historical belief is a serious matter that deserves close attention. However, it does not distract from the more basic matter that ecosystems in the past tended to be less grievously affected by human activities than they are today. General observations like this need extensive qualification. In Jasper, for example, the time before 1800 was a time without the widespread hunting and trapping of animals that came with the fur trade, and before the farming activities of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Early in the twentieth century came the connections to industrial life: railways, automobiles, and simultaneous communication. The advent of industrial change varied from region to region, but most of us of a certain age can look back in one way or another to an era of greater integrity and simplicity. When I moved to Edmonton a decade ago and bought a house in what was then near the

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south side of the city, some neighbors who had moved into the new development in the 1960s remembered staring at farm fields. Some of the old-timers remember when the farmers drained wetlands to add pasture and logged forests for cropland. I was surprised to learn recently that my house that was near the southern edge of the city is now considered to be nearer the city’s core. Even as a newcomer to this place, I regard the past as a simpler time with less fragmentation and a greater flow of ecological processes. In ecological terms, the landscape was more integral fifty or a hundred years ago. In emotional terms I long for this elegance. Nostalgia is sometimes written off as fatuous dreaming, as something that blocks progress. Those of us who came of age in the 1960s or 1970s learned to be suspicious of progress. We understood that faster and bigger were not always good, and in fact simplicity and small-scale elegance were almost always preferable. There is an upswing in this kind of thinking, as ideas like downshifting emerge that encourage us to step off the treadmill of maximal production. This kind of response to nostalgia is akin to the concerns of ecological restoration. Downshifting moves us back to a kind of life that was simpler and most likely happier, at least if social statistics are any indication.16 Ecological restoration moves us back to ecosystems that were more integral, which feeds into what E. O. Wilson and others call biophilia.17 We have affection for natural places and things, for the noncontrived flow of existence. Thus, nostalgia can have an emotional appeal, but also an ecological basis. In so many cases, the past offers a wide array of alternative models of ecological integrity (some would argue better models). This ought to be a sufficient answer to the question of why we would prefer an earlier ecosystem to one manufactured on the basis of current preferences. Narrative Continuity We understand the world generally, and ecosystems specifically, through experience, and experience comes to us in part from the past. Something is known to be the case because it has demonstrated these qualities previously. What we value about ecosystems, even those that have coevolved

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with intensive human presence, comes to us from our experience of their continuity. Respecting this connection to the past is what prevents us from creating nature solely according to our present interests. Historical knowledge provides the inspiration. As Marc Hall writes, Environmental restorationists see a better past alongside a worse present, but with a hopeful future. By acknowledging that time makes or breaks landscape, the restorationist uses history both to identify the need for restoration and to judge its success. Not only is history crucial to understanding restoration, history is crucial to restorationists.18

Implicit in history is the concept of time. There are many models for describing time: as a flow, as an arrow shooting from one point to another, as a spiral or cycle. Time is culturally variable, with rich, complicated ways of making sense of the movement of events. What is widespread, and even more so since the adoption of standard measures of time, is the connection of past with future, the idea that what was somehow flows into what is and then into what will be. When people speak of ancestors, ancient wisdom, and tradition, the line is marked from past to present. But this continuity is not inevitable. John O’Neill, an environmental philosopher, explains that “present, past and future are not linked by some single set of values which the present passes from past to future, but by argument both within generations and between them.”19 Thus, in part, our interpretation of the past is contingent on our present values and dispositions. Not only are we accumulating new knowledge all the time, but our understanding of this knowledge is changing, too. Our account of a place, a site to be restored, is shifting based on new experience of the past. How is this story best continued into the future? What guidance does the past provide? The future is only imagined in the present, which means that what happens in the future is shaped by our reflective observations on the past in concert with our actions in the present. Furthermore, the shape of the future affects the kind of appraisal we will give of the present. This is why O’Neill suggests “the way matters turn out matters.” At any present moment, past and future recede in different directions. In the act of restoration, which takes place intensively over a few weeks, months, or years, the past becomes the basis for setting forth our best judgment about the present, and in this respect will influence how in the future we

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will adjudicate our actions (figure 4.4). The past hardens our resolve to do the very best we can in respecting the movement of the past into the future. This brings us to the idea of continuity, which I regard as crucial for understanding the significance of historicity for restoration. Continuity implies that we have unbroken knowledge or experience of something from the past. It takes an account of that experience for it to be significant, not only for us but for others. We give things significance by telling stories about them, no matter what forms these take: oral tradition, scientific papers, or creative testaments. Narrative continuity, then, is the capacity to retell the story and to use such an account to enhance the continuity. The challenge is to ensure that the story is sufficiently compelling to warrant attention and action by future generations. Moreover, such obligations by future generations happen in the presence of a community, and the integrity of this community over time determines to a considerable extent the strength of the story. This is an abstract way of writing that something becomes significant to people in the future through compelling stories. Stories nurture places and give weight to restoration. Either the work is motivated by a crescendo of community support to bring back

Past Future

Continuously moving present

Time Figure 4.4 The past and future are shown as two related continuums, with knowledge of both receding from a continuously moving present.

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a trampled place, or the act of restoration brings significance to a previously unappreciated place. A reach of Swan Creek, good former salmonid habitat in Victoria (the capital of British Columbia and a city of more than 300,000), had become not much more than a glorified ditch. A crew of restorationists, led in fact by the two graduate students mentioned earlier who pushed history aside, worked with a local developer who needed to find a solution to storm-water runoff and and gave the creek a more meandering, perhaps older, channel. They created potential fish-spawning grounds as well as a small, natural park for the new houses. It is a compromise to be sure, and it may not even fit an orthodox definition of restoration, but this project illustrates how something can develop the qualities of place through restoration. The dozens of volunteers who worked the site, planting nursery-raised native stock, pulling weeds, working with heavy equipment operators, and contending with the myriad constraints imposed by local development regulations, have a new understanding of the place. It will never be the same again. Stories are being told, and hopefully these stories will raise the awareness of people about the place to a level where the new homeowners who move in beside the renewed creek will nurture the place and the stories, and in a few decades Swan Creek will be filled with meaning as well as salmon. Place Places become so because of experience processed through stories. A space is made meaningful to us through our experience of it or the experience of others as relayed to us. A place is a mélange of spatial attributes—space—combined with emotional, and some argue spiritual, qualities. A place becomes significant through narrative continuity, mainly through accounts of its significance and presence in the life of a community. Some places are decisive in the lives of a community because they preserve the deeds and memories of those who came before. Parks, sacred sites, cemeteries, public buildings, churches, and birthplaces are all good examples of places. I think of place and landscape as terms that mix, following University of Aberdeen anthropologist Tim Ingold’s terminology, naturalistic and

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culturalistic representation. According to naturalistic explanation, a place is a set of physically described unique points in space, and a landscape is simply an assembly of places. No definition of landscape and place is purely natural because they exist only as constructs defined to a certain extent by social convention. I may describe my house as a place that includes the legal description of property, and this in turns rests on a precise physical, survey description. What gives my house significance is not simply the survey or the built qualities of it, rather the meaning that I bring to it through my actions and the accumulation of experience and memory, or what some would call the transformation of house to home. This is culturalistic expression, but alone it is insufficient to give a full account of the places that take on meaning through scientific observation, analysis, and understanding. Both forms of expression are needed to reveal all the dimensions of a place, or what Ingold describes as a “dwelling perspective.” He suggests that we shift away from a dichotomous relationship between naturalistic and culturalistic description to one that merges the two. The best expression is found in dwelling, the interpenetration of observation and emotion, analysis and interpretation, being in and being of. Place and landscape are revealed through stories that emphasize continuity: “Telling a story is not like weaving a tapestry to cover up the world, it is rather a way of guiding the attention of listeners or readers into it.”20 Perceiving a place depends on memory; remembrance of the past is what gives rise to the significance of place, and such recollection must at least be somewhat personal. This accounts for why someone might acknowledge that my home is a place in the sense of having significance for me, and yet not experience that particular gravity. Places are fluid in size and meaning depending on one’s circumstances. The same holds for landscape. I refer to the upper Athabasca River Valley as a landscape, but I have never stopped to give precise physical bounds to this term. It is more than I can encompass in a single gesture; it is certainly more than a place. The boundaries change sometimes depending on whether my attention is on the ecological relationships, the run of the river itself, or the desire to understand the valley from the point of view of someone who might have lived there. Barry Lopez made a similar distinction when he referred to the difference between inner and outer landscape, and this still haunts me almost two

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decades later.21 There is something in my experience growing up—my inner landscape—that conditions my view of what I am seeing around me now. I went on a pilgrimage of sorts not long ago to the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island. In the bottomlands of the valley are some of the largest trees on the planet; they are part of a wildly productive coastal, temperate rainforest in British Columbia. In the 1980s, Carmanah was the site of international protests over proposed logging of old-growth forest, and strident efforts by activists from Canada, the United States, and elsewhere resulted in the creation of the Carmanah Wilderness Park, which has been increased in size with the addition of the lower reaches of the Walbran Valley. At the center of the resistance to industrial logging in Carmanah was Randy Stoltmann, a man widely respected for his commitment to protection of wildlands in British Columbia. When he died in an avalanche at a young age in 1994 doing what he loved most, backcountry skiing, friends lobbied to commemorate his efforts by renaming Cathedral Grove, a collection of a dozen or so mind-bogglingly large trees at Carmanah (Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis), the Randy Stoltmann Memorial Grove. There is an interpretive sign there now, explaining what the British Columbia Park Service has so far been unwilling to do in its official publications: Carmanah became a protected place, a park, because of the uncompromising efforts of people like Randy Stoltmann. By making the grove a memorial, people have constructed a story about that place; in fact, the story is making a place and it builds on a larger and longer natural history that needs to be told. With each visit, each moment of pondering at the foot of the giant Carmanah trees, the story grows thicker and the place develops greater significance. It is woven together now of historical strands about the lives of the big trees and the organisms that grow in and around them and the people who have worked for and against the place, including the now larger-than-life exploits of Randy Stoltmann. His memory is obviously graced by the dedication of the grove. I think the grove, too, is graced by this coexistence. It has taken on the character of a place, which will accord it special protection, and if need be in the future, the basis for meaningful restoration. The problem with this view of place is that apparently it assigns value only to locations that are places, those that have human significance.

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There are two ways of following up on this complaint. First, we can recognize that while some locations may not be places for us, they are likely significant for others. In our rush to embrace a people-less view of wilderness and places of natural grandeur, we forget that people have in the past found these locations significant. Even remote regions of Jasper National Park, areas where few visit, are part of a storied landscape. Old trails maintained by First Nations and regular movements of animals bear special witness. Accounts of early mountain climbers, trappers, adventurers, and wardens imbue an area such as the Tonquin Valley, one of the most remote and remarkable landscapes in the park, with placeness.22 Places form because of human engagement and care. We surmounted five mountains ringing the Tonquin Valley (Clitheroe, Thunderbolt, Surprise, Tonquin Hill, and Maccarib) for the Bridgland Repeat Photography project. We based our twelve-day trip at the warden patrol cabin, where we read the journals recounting previous activities in the valleys. We met both outfitters who ran horse trips to the valley and paused with them for stories of their operations and how they came into being. We compared historical photographs with what we saw, observing subtle changes in the vegetation (unlike the dramatic changes at lower elevations) and terrific recession of snowpack and glaciers. As we circumnavigated the base of Surprise Peak after an especially harrowing day of climbing and photography during which pieces of the mountain seemed to give way under us (a common local saying: “If you like the handholds in the Canadian Rockies, you can take them with you!”), busting through thick undergrowth trying to find an animal trail to follow—anything to follow—there was a piece of weathered, orange flagging tape. This unmarked location was marked, and seeing that sign changed my representation of the experience. This was not primeval, untracked wildness, although given the difficulty of our circumstances it ought to have been. Who left the flagging tape? Were they lost? Was it an earlier scientific expedition? This ground was previously walked. I wondered what stories those people of the flagging tape might tell. Perhaps my story and theirs would begin to give weight to that location, that possible place, and perhaps a name would come forth, not the kind of name that necessarily goes on a map for all time, but one that gives the landscape vernacular, local meaning.23

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Once we understand that place matters, in other words that we have found within our own lives the qualities that make a place, it is easier to regard these qualities in other places. This is the second way around the concern that we end up valuing only places to which we or others attach personal significance. Thus, if we are attentive we see ecological processes in daily experience and can transfer this to other experiences. It makes us more sympathetic to what others are experiencing where they live.24 Most locations are places, but there are some remote parts of the planet that are so far removed from traditional habitation, so forbidding or so significant, that they have not been known. This is not to suggest that these geographies are insignificant, only that we need to understand their worth by extension from our understanding of place. Scale matters, too. I can claim the upper Athabasca Valley as a landscape of places because I have walked so much of it and seen it from so many perspectives. There are still small pockets, probably an uncountable number, that I have not walked or glimpsed. It does not take a very large landscape to occupy an entire lifetime. This is, in the end, where restoration connects to place: restoration is capable of making meaning and bringing new stories to a place. The Dorney Garden (chapter 2) at the University of Waterloo became a place, too. On a largely unnoticed and previously unloved plot of ground along one side of an unremarkable building grew a garden that focused the energy of students, professors, and members of the community. By restoring what we could of historical qualities and ecological integrity, the garden was transformed into a place, a piece of ground that combined the sweat of human care with the energy of natural process. The strength of the place is built and reinforced by narrative continuity, the capacity to tell stories about it—heroic stories of its creation and the life of Bob Dorney, and simple stories of good conversation on one of the benches surrounded by birdsong in dappled July morning light. My writing about such experiences adds another strand to the entwined narrative. I have no idea whether universities will exist in 500 years, and whether this tiny memorial garden will thrive, but if it does, perhaps it will become an emblem of what can be done through generosity and respect, a sacred grove of the kind that thrive in the pockets of old campuses such as Cambridge, Harvard, and Louvain.

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English philosophers John O’Neill and Alan Holland write that “the value of specific locations is often a consequence of the way that the life of a community is embodied within it.”25 No doubt this is true. Places that are compelling are those that engage people directly through participation or through the power of contemporary media, although if the support is through proxy alone such as a magazine travel story, mail solicitation, Web site, or television documentary, it is unlikely to be durable. Places are created in modest ways, too. For years I walked through a cedar dune lowland forest on the lee shore of Lake Huron near my parents’ home. It was a few hundred acres of formerly marginal farmland now awaiting housing development. Each visit home I would take a long walk through the animal trails and old farm paths, follow the cross-country ski trails marked out by a local volunteer group, or push through the tangle of cedars to what lay beyond (mostly more cedar). On one spring afternoon I paused in a wet part of the trail and looked down to see a species of sundew, a carnivorous and relatively uncommon plant. For the next ten years I would stop in the same place and admire the sundew thriving incongruously in the middle of an old trail. I can remember with perfect clarity the first moment of insight, and recalling that brings back a flood of memories. For me, and perhaps for a few others who ramble through the abandoned farms and cedar lowland, it is a place. Perhaps it just makes it to the status of place because of my telling the story. It is pretty much ephemeral, yet so many places that do hold significance do so because they are woven of the fabric of our lives. Places and landscapes are made from the combination of observation and emotion, and the capacity of a place to imprint depends on the care of our senses and the openness of our feeling. It saddened me immensely to find that market values had finally crept up high enough to encourage the owner of the land to begin development. The sundew glade is safe for a few years, but the landscape as a whole is being lost. Sadder still is the fact that there is not likely enough support to warrant protection or respectful development. My transience is partly responsible, and the stories are not yet ripe. The narrative continuity of a place is formed of both ecological and cultural histories; the two cannot be easily or appropriately separated, although often they are. I have referred mostly to culturalistic accounts

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of place, which include personal testimonies of our own experience as well as histories of human activities, but naturalistic explanations matter also in making meaning about a place. When restorationists arrive in the Tonquin Valley, as someday they will to address the trampling of delicate alpine wetlands from too much horse traffic, and the decommissioning of the old outfitters’ camps, they must understand how these places came into being. Perhaps it is even unfair to treat naturalistic and culturalistic explanations as separate lines, and perhaps one day when our attitudes about the separation of culture and nature, object and subject, have progressed to a more unitary viewpoint there will be a single, strong strand. The history of a place must be told with ecological verities in full view alongside the human stories. Telling only human stories will result in diminishment in the same way that many complain that scientific observation and analysis by itself represents an impoverished outlook on life. Places have value because of the unique combination of processes that go into their formation. As O’Neill and Holland observe, “We value an ancient woodland in virtue of the history of human and natural processes that together went into making it: it embodies the work of human generations and the chance colonization of species and has value because of the processes that made it what it is. No reproduction could have the same value, because its history is wrong.”26 Continuity is crucial. For value to form and endure there must be a continuous understanding of the place, or the possibility of recovery of such continuity, as is the case when the history of a place is researched and communicated. Even if we were capable of building an ancient woodland from scratch in short order, which is not possible of course, it would have less value because it lacks continuity. We value old growth because of its continuity. Time Depth Continuity points to time depth, which is the final condition that makes historicity crucial for restoration. Depth is the reach of history, the amount of time, and also the engagements that form between people and place over that interval. The older an ecosystem is, judging by the length of time without major human simplification of processes and patterns,

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typically the rarer it is. Depth depends on rarity: they are really two sides of the same coin. However, it is possible for something to be rare without being historical. Rarity is the condition of scarcity, where something develops additional value because it is unusual. We place great significance on species that are rare either through ecological constraints or as a result of human activities, the latter being more frequently the case. The value increases because we know that something is irreplaceable. This holds for ecosystems, too. Around the world, protected status is given to rare landscapes by creating parks and preserves. In the last decade or more, the pace of development of oil and gas, forestry, and agriculture in the Province of Alberta, Canada, was so great that the government enacted a program to protect what it called “special places.” These were notable fragments of the landscape that were growing rare as a result of encroaching development, notable because of the combination of ecological and cultural features. Advocates of wild places and open space fought the government, at times bitterly, because of differences of opinion about the significance of rarity. At bottom, both sides agreed that rare places have considerable value.27 The condition of time depth holds most obviously for places such as old-growth forests. Old growth is valuable because of its long continuity. Thus, depth is a way of scaling continuity. Depth helps us understand when something is especially unusual. The comparison seems to hold across cultural artifacts and ecosystems. For instance, we accord high value to buildings that have withstood tests of time, even if these buildings are relatively modest. This is true in a city such as Edmonton, which traces most of its urban history back to the late nineteenth century, thereby making almost everything new by comparative standards. What passes as valuable historically are buildings that might not attract similar respect in cities with a greater depth of history. Continuity is something we value, but it takes great energy, sometimes serendipity, to ensure this continuity over long spans of time. Rarity depends often on depth of history, but it can stand alone, too. Something can be rare in the sense of being utterly unique, meaning that its value flows independent of history. All ecosystems are different, of course, but some more than others. Rarity in the sense of uniqueness functions along with depth.

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Historicity in a place depends, therefore, on the combination of nostalgia, continuity, and depth. This is why Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, as described in chapter 1, is less valuable than a wild place. It may be unique but it is easily reproducible, its continuity depends on manufacturing narratives, and it is too new to have much of its own history. So many artifacts of consumer culture—fast food restaurants and franchise outlets—have little enduring value. The authenticity of consumptive enterprises such as the Wilderness Lodge is not genuine, and so we might also expect that the motivations behind their establishment are not genuine either. They are detached from the history of the place they occupy and become dissociated, fragmented entities, little more than spectacles.28 Restoration projects risk the same fate if they fall prey to an industrialized model of reproduction, complete with volume price reductions, new economic relationships (franchised restoration projects?), and style and trend-setting features. Might there be large restoration firms in the future that would produce signature restoration projects bearing the distinctive traces of a corporate style and logo? This may seem farfetched, but it is prudent not to underestimate the power of the new image-driven marketplace. Place is not easily faked.29 The real will always be apparent if we remain attentive to genuine narratives of place. In the examples given in this chapter and elsewhere in the book, restoration practice is valued because of its capacity to show us what historicity means to us (nostalgia), the stories that bind us to place (continuity), and the temporal depth of our affiliations. The idea that restoration creates value is an argument advanced by some environmental philosophers as a way of showing the distinctive contribution that restoration makes in the larger arena of environmental management.30 There are cases where restoration creates value almost from scratch, in places where the memories are too faded to give much significance to the site or where the narratives that exist are dysfunctional. What of urbanized areas where a restoration project returns an ecosystem to a place where it had been absent for decades, perhaps centuries? There are two answers. First, intensive development and despoliation are merely a chapter in the larger narrative, and the way we value these intermediate steps depends on local conditions and prevailing social values. There are instances where the former industrial activities are incorporated in the

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restoration. Briony Penn, a restorationist in British Columbia, describes how the challenge of representing the past in designing the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in the North of England helped her understand the interpenetration of cultural and ecological landscapes. Restoration invokes memory, and the narratives that give shape to memories are often what bind people most tenaciously to a project. This is a lesson that should be offered to every beginning restorationist.31 Hence, restoration strengthens continuity with former, mostly forgotten conditions. Second, restoration builds value through the elaboration of narrative. Restorationists create stories through their actions, which accumulate and prepare the way for a richer interpretation of the place. The place grows in value precisely because of the restoration. I have called attention to the importance of historicity for restoration practices, and have argued that historicity is conveyed to us through three connected concepts: nostalgia, continuity, and depth. If we allow the meaning of restoration to determine the shape of its practice, restoration must depend on historical fidelity. After all, to restore means to bring back something lost through the ravages of time. But caution is necessary. It is too easy to let words determine worlds—that is, to let the definition of something shape practice. It is better, I think, to let the words respond to practices. It was arresting to hear the restoration students described at the beginning of this chapter talk about restoration as though history is unimportant. My first reaction was to rebel by stipulating that restoration is preeminently about history. But this is simply to fall into the trap of assuming something about restoration rather than working through it. Restoration practice is shifting and will shift, in response to evolving professional demands, the ethos of ecological management, and changing paradigms in ecology. In reviewing why historicity might be important, I have grown resolute in the belief that it is indispensable for theory and practice, no matter how social winds sculpt what we currently think ecological restoration is. I give history more credit than many would, especially knowing how much complication is added to a restoration project when the past it taken seriously. We need to worry that introducing historical evidence will merely frustrate restoration into oblivion. After all, if history shows us a procession of disturbance conditions, then why restore? Why not

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ignore history and restore to whatever set of clearly expressed values one chooses? Perhaps scientists and humanists use history differently, too. The former see history as a linear sequence of describable events, while the latter interpret meaning from stories told. Of course, both are important, but the endless complexity introduced by the humanist (or earlier what I termed, following Ingold, a culturalistic viewpoint) is anathema to any approach that identifies a problem and then searches for a defensible methodology by which to solve it. At its best, restoration will continue to serve as a synthesis of humanist and scientific impulses, although this is a formidable challenge in an era of increasing specialization and technocratic management. If we can maintain the link between science and humanity through the study of history, restoration will allow us to act distinctively on our longings for integrity of the past, ensuring the stewardship of historical as well as contemporary dimensions of the world around us. Reference Conditions So, historicity does matter, and the foregoing, I suspect, merely confirms what most restorationists already practice. The tough challenge is in knowing the approximate extent to which historicity should guide and inform restoration. What happens in cases where history is largely absent? Over the last decade or so, restorationists have refined the concept of reference conditions to help out with historical matters. Reference conditions are intuitive: evidence from the past, as detailed as possible, that provides a singular portrait of the past as a goal for the future. Peter White and Joan Walker suggest that reference “is used to define restoration goals, determine the restoration potential of sites, and evaluate the success of restoration efforts.”32 Reference information comes in many forms: baseline studies, control plots, interpolation and extrapolation of historical data, paleoecological studies, exclosure studies,33 and so on. Reference information operates by providing a counterpoint to existing site conditions, and through this comparison goals for restoration are developed. Reference information sometimes comes in the form of reference sites—that is, sites that manifest predisturbance conditions and yield important clues as to how a restoration project on a disturbed

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site might proceed. Restorationists make routine use of reference information and sites to compare change and help set direction. Of all the techniques in use in restoration today, reference is certainly at the core of theory and practice. An important approach to reference information has come from longterm ecological research and monitoring facilities. Several networks have been established in North America to ensure comprehensive monitoring despite the lackluster performance of monitoring in general.34 In the United States the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program maintains a collaboration among two dozen ecological research sites, including Hubbard Brook in New Hampshire, which has been collecting broad-spectrum ecological information since 1963, and the Harvard Forest, one of the longest-running biological research centers (since 1907). In Canada, the Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN) was established to link together various existing research sites, typically in areas remote from direct human disturbance, and to establish uniform protocols for long-term monitoring of vital indicators. Some of the earliest work at Hubbard Brook, notably the base cation depletion studies over thirty years ago, attests to the value of long-term ecological research.35 Such studies created, and later depended on, continuous information over a substantial interval. The depth of knowledge they made available would not have been possible with the shorter-term projects typical of the three- to five-year scientific grant cycles. Another superb illustration is the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northwestern Ontario. In 1968, forty-eight small boreal lakes and their catchments were removed from timber-harvesting inventories and given over to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a research site. Under the leadership of David Schindler, data on several reference lakes were collected, and this information served as the basis for scientific projects, many of them experiments to examine key management policies for freshwater lakes.36 Schindler did not know when he began his work at the ELA in 1968 that the physical and chemical monitoring of lakes would provide clues in understanding the reactions of aquatic ecosystems to a warmer climate. Exhaustive measurements provided reference conditions. Increasingly warm and dry summers in the 1970s and 1980s

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created conditions for large forest fires that burned through some of the project area. Once-permanent streams became dry, lake levels declined. Long-term studies of streams and lakes revealed a number of changes caused by climate that had not previously been recognized.37 In building the conditions for long-term, interdisciplinary ecological study, replete with long-term data that span more than thirty years in the case of the ELA and longer for other projects such as the Harvard Forest and Hubbard Brook projects in New England, we have what I believe to be the best opportunity to understand ecosystems. Not that we will ever fully comprehend ecological complexities, but these longterm studies provide depth and breadth of understanding. Depth has to do with the dynamic range of ecosystems, what transpires under differing climate regimes and human influences; breadth of measurement offers information that may prove useful in unexpected circumstances. Such longitudinal studies also open the possibility for experimental manipulation to mimic degradation and restoration. An enormous amount can be learned through experimental manipulation. Long-term studies also offer sufficient time depth for nostalgia to form about a landscape. Two experiments at ELA are good examples. By 1970 a raging debate had broken out over what was causing the life-choking algal blooms in Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the detergent industries, whose products contained phosphates, were very much against theories that implicated phosphate-rich detergents. In 1973, early in the work at ELA, Schindler and colleagues separated the two basins of hourglass-shaped Lake 226 with a waterproof nylon curtain. Nitrogen and carbon were added to both basins at ratios common in sewage. To one basin, phosphorus was added as well. The basin receiving phosphorus produced an enormous bloom of blue-green algae. The basin receiving only nitrogen and carbon remained in a reference condition. Results clearly showed that phosphorus was causing the eutrophication problem. The result was made especially graphic in the aerial photographs that Schindler snapped from a small fixed-wing plane a few weeks after the experiment was begun.38 In the early 1970s, acid rain was linked to the disappearance of fish from lakes and streams in Scandinavia and near smelters at Sudbury, Ontario. Deducing that the acid-sensitive geology and acidifying emis-

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sions from the Northeastern United States were probably causing a widespread problem in Canada, and that no attention was being paid to organisms other than fish, in 1976 Schindler began to deliberately decrease the pH of Lake 223, a small lake, to investigate the early effects of lake acidification. The results were surprising: aquatic invertebrates and minnows that were key foods for lake trout began to disappear at pH 6—that is, at a level ten times less acidic than the pH 5 level where damage to lakes was believed to begin. Results showed that early destruction of the food chain damaged lake trout populations long before acid conditions became lethal to the fish. The investigations also revealed that contrary to the then-common belief that acidified lakes could not recover, microbial action like sulfate reduction and denitrification in lakes could allow them to recover once acid additions ceased. The Lake 223 experiment and subsequent studies showed that lakes are not fully resilient, and strong acidification that results in wholesale changes in species composition cannot be turned around easily.39 Long-term, experimental whole-ecosystem studies have much to offer restoration ecology. Not only are reference conditions much better understood under such conditions, but the opportunity exists for carefully controlled studies of what works best in restoration, including trials of large-scale restoration and reclamation following industrial activity. This is an acute issue in northern Alberta in the wake of massive logging operations for pulp production that began in earnest in the early 1990s, following extensive government promotion of forestry opportunities in the 1980s. Forest allocations the size of entire states in the United States were given over to corporations for harvest and processing of aspen with new techniques. Extensive cutting began without any real understanding of the ecological character of the aspen forests, the coniferous forests (which were also being cut for pulp and sawlogs), wetlands, lakes, rivers, and streams. This story is being repeated over and over again in many jurisdictions worldwide. Government and industrial funding promoted research, and while many of the investigations were useful scientifically and practically, they lacked the depth and breadth of long-term, experimental approaches. Moreover, research costs were high for such piecemeal efforts, at least an order of magnitude larger than projects such as the ELA. An

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alternative strategy in northern Alberta would have involved a focused, experimental approach to collecting long-term information. And it is important to collect data that does not necessarily have immediate use. There is no telling what kind of knowledge will be valuable in the future: this was the lesson from the ELA. Moreover, longitudinal projects with experimental components may offer the best prospect in the future for dealing with the maze of cumulative impact assessment of new developments. Such programs, however, are always at risk.40 It is not trendy science, typically lacking the luster of projects that follow large-money, strategic paths. Funding for science has become increasingly tactical, strategic, and targeted. The problem with ecosystems is that they are not trendy, and the science necessary to understand them well needs to be comprehensive and long running. Moreover, long-term projects set a high standard for reference information, and are typically well beyond the reach of most restoration projects. One of the most important and hopeful contributions that restoration ecology can make is the establishment and promotion of long-term, experimental projects and the development of precise notions of reference. To those who work on projects with a high level of continuity, the idea of reference ecosystems is so basic it barely admits scrutiny. However, such projects are relatively rare, and for most restoration scientists and practitioners, reference information is much harder to acquire. Many have proposed that the careful ecological interventions made possible by restoration present a major scientific opportunity for studying how and why ecosystems and landscape vary in time and space.41 Reference information is a key to this scientific endeavor because it provides the evidence on which all measurement and analysis depend. The idea is simple in theory, complex in practice. Reference information is emerging as the term of choice. Other rival terms are used in casual conversation and scientific reports—baseline, benchmark, yardstick—often without much thought to their underlying meaning. A baseline is a snapshot of an ecosystem that has specific uses in making antecedent or subsequent comparison. It is not, however, synonymous with a reference condition. A baseline can be a specific instance of a reference condition, or part of the information reserves used to determine an appropriate reference. The Bridgland historical photographs

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constitute a baseline: what the vegetation and other landscape features looked like eighty years ago. These photographs are merely a component in the determination of reference conditions. Baseline implies an arbitrary reference point that runs against the need to account for ecological and evolutionary change. Similarly, the word benchmark is often used in discussions of ecological restoration. I regard it as interchangeable in meaning with baseline; it should be avoided except on occasions when the intention is to describe a discrete state. Reference information need not be static and in fact more often than not involves process descriptions that admit moving frames of reference. Development and deployment of reference information depends on understanding variation in ecosystems, and that no fixed point in time can provide all the required information. White and Walker suggest that “selecting and using reference information requires that we address a fundamental issue in ecology: understanding the nature, cause, and function of variation in ecosystems and landscape.”42 Variation occurs across time and space, and thus understanding relevant scale issues is important. Observational scale is measured in terms of grain and extent, grain being the relevant unit of analysis and extent being the range of distribution of observations. In temporal terms, grain and extent become resolution and duration. Selection of appropriate grain size and extent determines the effectiveness and practicality of a project. Usually a comfortable medium is required between sampling that is so precise that larger issues are ignored, or the grain is too large and fine issues are overlooked. Understanding ecosystems at several levels helps avoid obvious problems. For instance, one might presume the best way to obtain reference information is by measuring and comparing the oldest available nearby site. Such sites, however, may skew the results with the oldest instead of the most typical (or rarest or diverse, and so on) ecosystem. Several terms are used to describe ecological variability. A common term is natural range of variability, which refers to the variance over a determinate time, whether this is 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years. Historical range of variability accounts for human presence and the ecological effect of cultural practices, and for this reason is preferable to terms that ignore the long-term admixture of cultural and ecological processes.43

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This terminology is consistent with growing interest in historical ecology, which is, as anthropologist Carole Crumley proposes, an interdiscipline that “traces the ongoing dialectical relations between human acts and acts of nature, made manifest in the landscape.”44 Dave Egan and Evelyn Howell, ecologists and coeditors of The Historical Ecology Handbook, stipulate the need for close connection between ecological restoration and historical ecology. There is no one way of selecting an appropriate range of variability, and circumstances will vary from site to site and region to region. A recurring theme: restoration decisions involve judgment. Temporal variation ranges widely from daily cycles to successional and evolutionary time intervals. The challenge for the restorationist lies in selecting an appropriate boundary around such variation, realizing that too narrow a choice, such as interannual changes, might overlook grander processes, and too large a time interval will displace fine-grained phenomena. Also, there is a decay function with historical information: the quality of information is typically an inverse function of time. The farther back we travel in time the less reliable the information. If the forested ecosystems of the Athabasca Valley have formed in the Holocene, roughly the last 11,000 years following the most recent glacial maximum, this would provide the greatest practical span of consideration (although the quality of information would not be distributed uniformly across this interval). Within this range are all of the relevant historical conditions to guide restorative efforts in the present. Presumably if the present conditions lie outside this wide range, restoration would bring the ecosystem back within bounds. However, there is in practical terms too much possibility when the range is taken so widely. And climate variation, of course, confounds the problem, an issue I address later in this chapter. Spatial variation comprises pattern and extent: what configuration is found within patches and between similar patches, and the size of the patches themselves. Context is crucial: “Spatial context includes the nature of the matrix surrounding sites, the nature of edges and boundaries, and the size, distribution, and isolation of the sites themselves.”45 The impressive work on fire ecology and restoration at the Archbold Research Station in Florida is made more remarkable when one realizes that ecological processes are being returned not to a wide-open mosaic

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but one girded on all sides by development.46 Restoration decisions are affected by whether the site is connected to other sites that might serve as a source area or movement complex, whether it is a rare isolate, whether age-class of vegetation dominants has become uniform or sharply different from historical conditions, whether predator species are missing, whether human activities and related processes have changed significantly, and so on. White and Walker point out that “the size, isolation, and surroundings of sites can have both deterministic and stochastic [involving random behavior] influences on species presence.”47 It may, and likely does, come down to a lack of understanding of ecosystems, but spatial configuration, while important, does not determine species presence and movement. There are stochastic effects as well that shape the character of sites that are virtually impossible to predict. “Plan for the unexpected” is a good motto for the restorationist.48 Variation, therefore, is the result of macro and micro phenomena such as climate, natural and cultural disturbance, species biogeography, and spatial configuration. Understanding the extent of variation is important in selecting reference sites because the value of a reference site diminishes with its distance from the site to be restored. In any case, no reference site can ever be a perfect match; each site has its own history. Rather than thinking in terms of comparative matches a better model is one of interpolation, or filling in plausible goals based on conditions in several sites. Hence, the task of the restorationist becomes one of figuring out how a specific site fits within a larger matrix of sites, and then interpolating (and occasionally extrapolating) desirable conditions. The process of interpolation depends on understanding spatial and temporal variation in concert, and selecting an appropriate range of variability. In practical terms this means some restorations will be easier than others. For instance, sites with high rates of variability, disturbance regimes that are out of scale with present conditions, or ecosystems that manifest disequilibrium conditions and require extensive, specialized management, will be challenging to restore. The notion of interpolation inspires White and Walker to promote restoration as “approximating ecological variation.”49 Thus, the primary goal of restoration is to reflect the ecological variability over time. The sources for this come from a combination of historical and

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Same place

Different place

Same time

Contemporary status; assessment of disturbance

Determination of extent of disturbance and potential for restoration

Different time

Site-specific reference

Analogous reference information

Figure 4.5 Four sources of reference information (adapted from White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation”).

contemporary ecosystems, and figure 4.5 shows the relationships among four sources of reference information combined from historical and contemporary data and different distances from the site to be restored. Each of the four main sources has advantages and disadvantages, and ideally all four will generate information for the restorationist. Contemporary investigation of the site to be restored (i.e., same site, same time) provides the most detailed view of site conditions, effects of disturbance, changes in disturbance, and so on. Such an understanding is vital in designing a restoration program. The problem is that disturbance may have obscured crucial phenomena, and our models may not be adequate to extrapolate changes in the past and future. Historical site data (same place, different time) explain patterns of disturbance and successional processes, information that can be decisive in a successful restoration and yet are easily overlooked. Too much reliance on data from the same site may be limiting. Study of a single site may not illustrate the full range of possibilities, which is why it is important to examine other sites in their present form and through historical data. Such reference sites are valuable as long-term comparisons and help in testing the effectiveness

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of a restoration project. An obvious problem with reference sites is, again, the greater the distance in time and space from the site under consideration, the less reliable the information is likely to be. There is no avoiding this problem, which only highlights the need for interpolation and casting a wide net in designing a project. In theoretical terms all four types of information should figure in every restoration project, but the constraints of time, resources, and ecosystems make this difficult in practical terms. Simply put and like so many other matters in life, diverse and systematic information helps with good decisions. In 1997 several of us talked about restoring the area around Henry House, a former whistle-stop along the railway in the central part of the upper Athabasca Valley close to the Palisades Research Centre. The forest/grassland mosaic was bisected by a railway and highway, airport, and old roads, and had been subjected to high rates of herbivory by elk. Figure 4.6 shows significant differences in the patterning and structure of the grasslands over an eighty-year interval. Several prescribed burns had taken place to address the perceived problem of forest encroachment on the grassland. There are a variety of restoration challenges. What to do? Site-specific restoration applications—weeding, prescribed fire, girdling trees, ripping roads and trails—depend on knowledge of temporal and spatial variability. The mosaic is changing over time, and answers emanating from the larger spatial context will influence sitespecific decisions. Thus, decisions being made as regards fire management at a landscape level matter to decisions about restoration made at the site level. Sliding up and down scales is crucial in establishing a solid understanding of reference conditions. Approximation is a good way of describing how reference information works. No matter how much information is available, it will never be practically sufficient to yield a complete view of historical conditions and site characteristics. But this is only one problem among several in developing and using reference information. Defeat is imminent before the job begins if one assumes historical exactitude is possible. Historical fidelity is always tied to the goals established for restoration, and ecosystems do not admit of the same kind of easy historical definition as do, say, old paintings. Goals will be historical in character, but they may not necessarily specify return to specific historical conditions. Other influences—public policy, funding, invasive species, and so on—will play

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Figure 4.6 One of the few ground-level comparison sets based on the 1915 Bridgland survey. The upper photograph shows a more complex grassland community and woody debris. The 1998 photograph (below) shows evidence of extensive herbivory. The upper photo from 1915 is by M. P. Bridgland and the repeat image (lower) is from exactly the same location in 1998 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs).

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a role in shaping the goals. It is this uncertainty that opens restorationists to the criticism that their work will not ever be more than enlightened tinkering. Like the work of statisticians, that of restorationists will always rely on approximation. A central theoretical question, then, is whether restorationists ought to tend toward historical fidelity, or historicity, as a goal, or whether approximation itself is the desired end. The answer to this will vary from project to project, and will depend significantly on the values of the restorationist. At the end of their article on reference information, White and Walker provide a series of research questions. The questions fit into five categories: understanding ecological variation at multiple scales; developing improved models for integrating diverse sources of information; developing better ways of predicting outcomes for restoration treatments (and this incorporates the thorny question, “How precise does a restoration prescription have to be?”); how are site-specific, feasible goals best determined, especially under conditions of impoverished information?; and finally, how best to increase the prospect of self-sustaining, resilient ecosystems.50 This last area of research priority points to a potential area of disagreement on the matter of human participation. White and Walker write that restorationists concentrate on the past, but “this focus obscures a goal that is more important than simply recreating past conditions: the restoration of ecosystems that will be self-sustaining and resilient.” Resilience is clearly an important feature of thriving ecosystems, although some integral ecosystems have relatively low levels of resilience, which explains their fragility and rarity. Where should people fit properly in ecological restoration, assuming there is good evidence to incorporate cultural practices in a project? If self-sustainability is the primary goal, this suggests a lack of participation for people, or at least a secondary role given to human engagement with ecosystems. This strikes me as worrisome for several reasons. First, it tends to underrate the significance of coevolved cultural and ecological practices in the past, including those by First Nations peoples. Lest we slip easily into comfortable cultural assumptions that indigenous peoples walked lightly on the planet only to be followed by rapacious developers, the matter is almost always more complicated. Indigenous peoples practiced intensive land management in certain places over

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sufficient time that it is difficult to view the historical, and sometimes even the contemporary, landscape as other than coevolved. Next, we need to move beyond stereotyping to examine exactly how people have been involved with ecological processes, and how they themselves are ecological agents. There are instances, for example, of trappers and agriculturalists in the upper Athabasca Valley who left signatures on the landscape, but not irrevocable, industrial ones. Rather than drawing conclusions about the qualities of human activity, it is better to conduct detailed research into the shifting patterns of activity. Activity over time can be mapped for restoration sites, and these data combined with historical ecological patterns. Together, the puzzle becomes less onerous. Also, decisions about what is appropriate in the future can then be based on contemporary judgments tempered by knowledge of ecological and cultural conditions from the past. Restoration ecologists have tended to give short shrift to human activity, or when they have incorporated an understanding of it usually it is in terms of a negative disturbance.51 The question of self-sustainability is more open when cultural matters are taken seriously, a subject that is taken up in chapter 6. Are we after self-sustaining ecosystems independent of people? Or are we after thriving ecosystems that may depend to varying degrees on respectful human practices? Rather than erasing human practice, an alternative model is to think of people as dwelling in a place with modesty and respect, which is the kind of interpenetration of culture and ecology I elaborate on in chapter 6. There will always be places, I hope, where people will not go often or at all, places that are remarkably inaccessible, forbidding, or sacred. Our contemporary penchant for extreme outdoor activities compounds a practically global sensibility of conquest. One of the largest challenges for those who care about remarkable places is helping people understand when enough is enough, and when it is better to back away from something than trek forward. It is difficult to imagine a practice of abnegation more hostile to the contemporary spirit. Taking History Seriously Several years ago during a late spring surge a small dyke burst and a fan of water dispersed through an aspen forest in Jasper National Park. The

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flow from this unnamed creek that originates in an unnamed lake and joins Swift Creek just before the two melt into the Athabasca River, is seldom more than a trickle. I had taken almost no notice of it during earlier rambles north of the Palisade Research Center (chapter 1). The previous summer I had walked through the area with an aging Alaskan husky, Willow, stopping more often than normal to inhale the surroundings, musing how it was that such a pure stand of middle-aged aspen had sprouted here. Dozens of times I had driven over the culvert conveying the unnamed creek under the Palisade entry road and never before studied its passage. On that summer day, Willow and I followed its course for several hundred meters, far enough to find out that it was in fact a channeled creek, a ditch really, that had been rerouted, and far enough for Willow to stumble across a young black bear snacking on buffaloberry (Shepherdia canadensis). It was almost a year until I walked back up the creek, unfortunately without Willow, who had died raging against old age. This time I found my way blocked first by puddles of what appeared to be standing meltwater, and later by larger and more determined pools. Walking became tricky, stepping from downed tree to hummock, splashing water over the top of my boots with increasing frequency, until I found the breach in the dyke. A steady stream of water escaped through the opening, hit the relatively flat forest floor, and radiated out in all directions in a single slow-moving, tree-filled pond. This aquatic landscape seemed so natural, like the way a foot punished by a new boot finds comfort in an old one. The pieces began to fall into place. Edith Gourley, a member of the local historical society, had mentioned beaver ponds near the Palisades Center before the new entrance road was built. The new road was finished in 1979, and while evidence is difficult to come by, it seems likely this is also when the unnamed creek was channeled. It is difficult to tell exactly when or how the beavers were displaced, whether it was earlier work on the railway or road that was the cause or something more recent. Judging by the size of the aspen trees that have grown up around the former wetlands, it must have been at least a few decades. I had not been aware of what a potential force beavers must have been, largely because I was caught up in the belief that fire was by far the dominant ecological process affecting the landscape. Beaver populations grow

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quickly and in the absence of trapping and hunting, will transform a landscape with their dams and ponds. It had not occurred to me how odd it was to find so few of them (I found one large beaver complex fifteen miles or so down the valley near the mouth of the Snake Indian River). Obviously what makes railway, pipeline, and road engineers and maintenance staff happy—predictable conduits for water—is exactly what beavers eschew. The day the dyke breached, a new, or rather old, image presented itself: either a wetland complex or an aspen forest regularly inundated by floodwaters. This is what used to be here, and it has become a relatively rare ecosystem in the main Athabasca Valley. The water flowing accidentally through the forest, following old channels, finding new ones, inspired the possibility of restoration. What excited me was that such a project involved water, not fire. The restoration of wildfire to the landscape is a preeminent restoration goal for Jasper, but it is easy to become tied only to this ecological process. Sediment and nutrient transport, scouring and deposition, and all the biogeochemical properties of a wetland ecosystem are sidelined in the quest for prescribed fire. Also put aside is the question of herbivory. Elk populations have cycled wildly in the last century and are now at high levels. The aspen forest is struggling to regenerate in the absence of fire and under the sustained nibbling of elk. The reintroduction of a wetland or wet forest system might alter access and growth patterns for aspen such that the aspen community would become more diverse. What would we need to know to undertake such a restoration? Piecing together the history of the site is challenging. By putting together historical documents—superintendent reports, permits, old photographs— it would be possible to reconstruct and map the history of disturbance back at least to the formation of the park in 1907. Before the park, we know the locations of the Métis farmsteads and the major outposts of the fur trade. Careful examination of contemporary site conditions would reveal detailed site characteristics and a different picture of disturbance. Mapping the old channels might be a high priority, together with the task of discovering likely boundaries of earlier wetlands. These site studies are invaluable, but they do not provide a complete picture of what the ecosystem would once have been like. For this, it would be

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necessary to examine other wetland complexes, perhaps the one near the Snake Indian River, to record likely flora, structural features, and the seasonal hydrology. The analog would not be perfect, but some pieces would become clear. This covers three of the four types of analysis called for by White and Walker. The only one remaining is the historical analysis of a site other than the one being restored. Given the relative absence of historical materials and lack of direct analogs, I suspect that such work would be less vital in this particular restoration project. There are certainly other wetlands close by, but few that come close to matching the qualities of what once was on the site. Examining reference information is a process of articulating the historical and the contemporary and finding through this the range of possibilities for restoration. The restoration itself is an approximation based on these possibilities, and reflects the constraints and opportunities present in a contemporary social, cultural, economic, political, moral, and aesthetic context. Thus, the potential restoration of a wetland complex described above, a project that may never be accomplished because it falls beneath the line of critical concern for park managers, would remain faithful to historical information, but would most likely have to make drastic alterations in the outflow to avoid swamping existing infrastructure. There is a very real possibility that the presence of a pipeline in the area might prevent restoration entirely, although pipelines do not last forever. A strong argument for a comprehensive restoration plan at multiple levels—site, local, regional, landscape—is that possibilities open up unexpectedly. When the pipeline is decommissioned, or when the right-of-way is negotiated in the future, the possibility of restoration might sway the argument in favor of decommissioning or relocation. By then, of course, the reference information will have changed slightly with historical bits filling in the cracks of our knowledge, the climate will be a bit hotter and drier, the political mood different, and the vegetation will continue its inexorable successional march. The uncertainty of the future is one of the main challenges for restorationists that no amount of reference data will solve. There are problems and limitations with reference information—some that seem intractable

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and others that will dissolve as better resolution of theory and practice are realized. Climate change is one serious matter that seems beyond the immediate purview of reference data to resolve; in fact, the more data the trickier the problem. Local, regional, and global climate patterns shift constantly in response to a mind-numbing suite of interactions, including solar production, upper atmospheric chemistry, emissions of human-made chemicals (most notably elevated levels of carbon-containing molecules), and the subtle relations between albedo (surface reflectance of the earth) and absorption of solar energy in the form of heat. Historical records show a clear upward trend in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and with this a strongly correlated rise in surface temperature of the planet. Changes in temperature work in concert with changes in other variables such as precipitation and wind velocities. It seems that extreme weather events are becoming more common, and that we should become used to the unexpected. What is truly remarkable about the changes underway is their pace. Despite the fact that there have been notably hotter and colder periods on the planet, this epoch is distinctive in the last 10,000 years and the pace of change exceeds anything on record. Climate change may not follow linear function, meaning that crucial thresholds are reached that flip the system into new, quite dramatically different states, such as the rapid melting of circumpolar ice as albedo levels reach a critical level. Thus, we may not have the luxury of gradual cultural and ecological adaptation. More than this, the climatic conditions may exceed the long-term historical range of variability that might guide our restoration plans. What if it turns out, for instance, that the Athabasca Valley becomes hotter and drier than it is already, that spring comes much earlier and snow cover is ephemeral? Fire frequency would increase, small streams would cease flowing by midsummer, wetlands would dry up and begin to succeed into shrub and forests, grasslands would likely spread, and any streams or rivers fed by glacial meltwaters would rise above current levels until the glaciers themselves have receded back beyond the point of being a source of meltwater. These are only guesses and only partly educated ones, since they are based on observational data and not tempered by simulation modeling or comprehensive historical data. The accuracy, however, does not

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change the basic plot: change is coming that may exceed our expected variability. What to do then? Three further interconnected problems are aggravating our best intentions. The first has already been mentioned: the incompleteness of reference information. Understanding basic information about a site under consideration for restoration requires exhaustive research, and this should be matched by reference data from analogous sites. In more cases than not in my experience such data are difficult to find. Moreover, there is a clear decay function with historical data, which means that accurate and complete records from a century ago are less likely to be found than those from a decade ago. And even recent information, as is certainly the case for the aspen forest described above, may be absent or hard to locate. Even if complete information was available and we could gather all we needed at our fingertips, we would still confront uncertainty, the second problem. The future is unknowable, except through various kinds of probabilistic knowledge. We assign probabilities to future events, some of which are effectively certain and others that are ineffable or stochastic. There is a decay function much like the one for knowledge of the past. The further away the future condition, the less easy it is to find reliable knowledge about it. The range-of-variability approach to reference information comes in so handy because it provides boundaries that limit our choice of future conditions. There are perils, too, not the least being the potential for justifying almost any kind of action if the chosen range is too wide. I suspect that we will see considerable refinement in the range-of-variability approach in the next few years, and perhaps a new paradigm for taking historical information seriously. After all, range of variability invokes history, but does so in such a way that history can be bent to whatever shape suits specific interests. Human-induced global change shifts the boundaries and not in any fully predictable way. Thus, not only are we dealing with the problem of how to decide what the future should be in relation to the past, but the range of possible futures is potentially broader if climatic conditions are outside the long-term (Holocene) range of variability. In choosing to restore the aspen forest to a wetland or wet forest, the boundaries delimiting our choices are opened up. Our choices are made more difficult because there

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are more possibilities than we can easily accommodate, and the likelihood of simply throwing up our hands and admitting any future condition increases. In other words, uncertainty leads to the risk of losing history as a crucial part of restoration. Restoration could become ahistorical, which to my mind would mean it is not restoration in any robust way. The third problem, industrial rates of change, is the parent of climate change and a host of contemporary environmental problems, including rapid conversion of ecosystems to intense, often short-term, production, human population migrations, toxic spills and fallout, and so on. The litany is familiar and long. Industrial and consumer practices have created changes in biogeochemical planetary systems, and the rate of these changes is increasing. In some areas, such as the release of ozonethinning chemicals, progress has been made that will arrest the problem in the long term. However, production of so-called greenhouse gases and proliferation of persistent toxic compounds continue with no realistic limits in sight. Landscapes that have maintained perennial cultural practices and integral ecosystems over long periods of time are being converted for the short-term profit of intensive cultivation and grazing. Industrialized countries in the North, all of which are hoping to become postindustrial through information commerce, have taken steps, some that are significant, to change debilitating practices. The legacies of colonialism in the South, and economic inequality between North and South, are resulting in continuing population increases and expanded industrial production in the South. The agonizing bind is this: for the majority world—that is, the large numbers of people, mostly in the South, who live at a fraction of the standard and quality of life of North Americans—developing the industrial way of life means placing further stress on planetary systems. The human footprint is already exceeding what the planet can sustain.52 The pace of human social activity seems to be on the rise, too. In the North the use of electronic technology has brought about profound and at times inexplicable changes in our lives. The interlocking technologies of computation, communications, and entertainment—laptop computers, personal digital assistants, wireless communication devices like cellular phones and pagers, and digital sound and image technologies—

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are forcing significant rearrangements in the way we conduct our lives. The pace of this change is escalating to the point where people are talking about new kinds of electronic burnout, information overload, and the need to downshift their lives.53 On top of these human-enhanced ecological changes and changes in social activity is a constraining pattern, one formed of relentless consumption and reduction of things that matter into commodities. The nature of this pattern is the main topic of chapter 5; it is a crucial topic for understanding the future of ecological restoration. Jeanine Rhemtulla and I walked, scrambled, climbed, and flew to ninetytwo historical survey stations in Jasper National Park to see how the landscape had evolved in the flow of a century. The changes were as breathtaking as some of the peaks. Constantly changing ecosystems influenced by layer upon layer of human activity had created a landscape of difference. Our work froze two moments in time, and from this we can begin the laborious process of interpolating and extrapolating meaning: What did the landscape resemble in the nineteenth century and before? What are the clues and signals from 1915? What do the changes from 1915 to the present chart for the future? After gathering this mother lode of information about the past, I am even more aware of how little we know about the history of change in Jasper National Park and how little we can know. At the same time history matters more to me. The landscape has taken on depth, and I better understand the significance of continuity and nostalgia. The photographs are fragments of an unfolding story, one that needs to be told and retold so that our affections can grow to meet the beauty of the place. History, more properly historicity, is a powerful force that inspires attentiveness, compels discipline, and projects, sometimes reluctantly, the panorama of possibilities ahead of us.

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5 Denaturing Restoration

Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; . . . —William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey” The advanced technological way of life is usually seen as rich in styles and opportunities, pregnant with radical innovations, and open to a promising future. The problems that beset technological societies are thought to be extrinsic to technology; they stem, supposedly, from political indecision, social injustice, or environmental constraints. I consider this a serious misreading of our situation. I propose to show that there is a characteristic and constraining pattern to the entire fabric of our lives. . . . It is concrete in its manifestations, closest to our existence, and pervasive in its extent. The rise and the rule of this pattern I consider the most consequential event of the modern period. —Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life So, I think my problem and “our” problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own “semiotic technologies” for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a “real” world, one that can be partially shared and friendly to earth-wide projects of finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited happiness. (original emphases) —Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”

Lines across the Path I am taking what for some will be an unexpected detour in this chapter. One of the lessons from chapter 4 is that landscape change is about

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the intertwining of ecological and cultural processes—not just material processes, but also our changing mindsets. Hence, if we want to understand the trajectory of restoration, we must grasp the patterns that define contemporary life. Technology is surely at the heart of these patterns. This is not an especially intuitive argument. I adhere to a decidedly unusual definition of technology, that what matters is not so much the artifacts and machines themselves but the patterns they create in our lives. The U.S. philosopher Albert Borgmann is my main intellectual influence in this regard. His theory is that technology constitutes a distinctive pattern wherein we displace things and activities that matter to us in favor of commodities. What does this have to do with ecological restoration? I am worried that restoration will be converted into a commodity, as will the ecosystems on which we base our work. There is a slow, inexorable drift in society, whether through themed hotels that purport to mirror wilderness or technologically dependent leisure activities, to convert everything of value into something that can be bought or sold. The problem is that there are things that mean more to us than mere currency: the camaraderie of a Saturday-morning stream cleanup, the knowledge that a flourishing meadow involved some of your own labor, or the experience of seeing a new species of bird begin to inhabit a restored wetland. These are satisfactions that go beyond technological and economic experience. But they are being pushed aside in favor of projects and habits of thinking that emphasize efficiency and cash. We are facing some difficult questions: How do we steer restoration practice away from becoming mere business? How will we adjust to the use of transgenic organisms, knowing that the door to this practice was opened long ago with the use of hybrid cover species? Can we set limits on new technologies in restoration, or is the pattern underlying technology always going to slip around the roadblocks we construct? On the other hand, how can we ensure that restoration practice emerges as an ethical professional activity that gives meaningful work to skilled practitioners? Is there a sense in which we can become too proficient at restoration, thereby discouraging amateur ambitions? Should we aspire to work on a large scale, or is restoration at best a modest and local practice?

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In pointing out this technological drift I am hoping to make two main points. First, we are near the beginning of a major shift in the way restoration is understood. The values that have defined hands-on engagement in restoration are slowly being pushed to the side by more commodity-driven, technological approaches. Patterns are often subtle, and we are sometimes slow to realize their implications. This abstract point is at the heart of this chapter. Second, to understand the implications of such denaturing, it is important to have in mind the alternatives. I propose the concept of “focal restoration” as an antidote to technological restoration, though we will not pursue this idea in detail until chapter 6. From my office at the Palisades Research Center in Jasper National Park I look out on the Colin Range to the east, and less than a mile away if the raven were to fly it, is a huge, flat limestone slab that grabs my attention, sometimes for minutes at a time. Walking the distance toward the base of the range I come to the Athabasca River, which drains into the McKenzie River and from there flows to the Arctic Ocean. First, however, I must cross the railway tracks and railway communication lines, then an abandoned access road to the Center and a railway service road, a transmountain gas pipeline, a T1 fiber-optic cable, the Yellowhead highway (one of only three major mountain crossings in southern Canada), several trails, and a roadside picnic area. These intrusions are at the heart of the ecologically rich montane ecoregion of Jasper, the largest of the Rocky Mountain national parks and one of Canada’s most celebrated wilderness areas. It was the juxtaposition of so-called wilderness and human congestion, a clash between perception and reality, that led me several years ago to begin research on the ecological history of human influence in Jasper. I want to know, at present and in decades to follow, how we can respect this place. Our understanding of wild nature—wilderness—is changing, just as wild nature itself is changing. It is no longer constituted of people-less places, of mountain vistas and remote, inaccessible valleys. These caricatures are drawn from Euro-American cultural values that have produced a view of nature-as-wilderness, an Edenic place in the receding

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distance. Accordingly, with our growing awareness that such values are indeed rooted in part in cultural projections, the subject of ecological management keeps changing form.1 What are we after in a place like Jasper: Should we allow natural and cultural processes to proceed without regulation? Should we use management practices to mimic or amplify natural processes—for example, by means of prescribed fire? Should we set long-term goals based on negotiations about desirable landscapes, then design our practices to achieve these ends (see chapter 1)? At least one point is clear: cultural beliefs, winding through a labyrinth of institutions and shielded increasingly from direct experience, have an impact on ecological management. What are these beliefs, and what patterns do they represent? Are these beliefs increasingly conditioned by life in a technological setting? If so, what does it mean for the power and promise of ecological restoration? At first I understood the obstacles that blocked my path to the Athabasca River as literally technological. The power lines and roads were material artifacts. They were noisy, dangerous intrusions: the highway that smashed animals and people; the trains that rumbled through the valley day and night; the pressurized gas pipeline; the electrical lines that blow over in windstorms and cause fires. In the summer of 1998 all the telephone lines from the Research Center went dead, including our fragile e-mail link. News travels quickly in a small town despite the downed phone lines. Apparently, workers near the East Gate had committed the inevitable by slicing a backhoe blade through the main communication lines, including a regional fiber-optic link. Bank machines were down and countless other annoyances from lack of electronic communication and commerce persisted for eighteen hours. All this took place on a beautiful summer day, which gave the emergency an unreal quality. After all, Canadians are used to a harsh climate, and emergencies typically take place under severe weather conditions. Sitting around the dinner table, our research group reviewed two well-worn lessons. First, technological systems are complex and fragile; no matter what precautions we put in place, accidents are bound to happen.2 We tend to be impressed by the sophistication of technological systems and forget that they are fallible, too. Second, much of contemporary technology is hidden from view in the cables and conduits running beneath

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our feet. I try to be aware of where my electricity comes from, how e-mail works, and what the basic principles are behind something like fiber-optic communication. Even so, my knowledge of the technology operating a few feet away is inadequate. We are swimming in a sea of technology. On bad days it seems like the sea is rising and threatening to inundate islands of tradition: the convivial experience of a relaxed evening meal; the bedtime story; the slow time at work when it is possible to grab a cup of coffee with a colleague on the spur of the moment; the ability to fall asleep without having to regulate the incessant buzz inside one’s head; the luxury of taking a week or two to reply to a letter or e-mail message, and not because the volume of mail is overwhelming. If these seem like moments out of time, an archipelago of sanity, then you and I are living in the same place. As the water of technology rises—much like the rise in water levels induced by climate change, another technological artifact—the islands become smaller and farther apart. Some islands disappear quietly and others loudly; life moves along by adapting to the changing circumstances. Ironically, communication improves, at least in terms of the number of telephone calls and e-mail messages. More information changes hands, and the future is a promised land of instant, encyclopedic wealth. The pace of life increases, there is more stuff, and our vision of life on the islands is shaped increasingly by the industries of distraction (advertising, marketing, and entertainment). Tradition is replaced by the consumption of tradition, the way my childhood home of Thornhill, north of Toronto, has been transformed. As a child I went shopping with my parents at the Saturday morning farmer’s market, shopped at the local butcher, had my first haircut at a family-owned barbershop, and worshipped at the century-old Anglican church. Almost two decades later I returned to the old village, swallowed whole by Toronto in the 1970s, expecting to find my childhood haunts gone. Instead, I found the old village intact, but as a kind of heritage village celebrating the past. Planning and zoning regulations prevented the destruction of the old village center, but all around was the endless grid of new subdivisions. The sea of technology washes tradition away, or sometimes converts tradition into a musuem. Perhaps we will become cyborgs who learn to breathe the waters unaware that something else has become our inspiration, just

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as we are now largely unaware of the unnatural quality of the air we breathe. The technological constitution of contemporary life may at first seem a strange subject for a book on ecological restoration. My recollections can be read as nostalgic, but isn’t restoration impelled by bittersweet longing for something lost, the power of continuity, and the depth of memory? For years I have been fascinated by technology and have grown to understand it as a decisive pattern in our lives, not just as a collection of material things and practices. My awareness began on the shores of Lake Huron, in Bruce County, in the mid-1980s, trying to explain in my doctoral dissertation why community autonomy had paradoxically declined during an era of greater planning, and how we might come to regenerate the landscape ecologically and socially. This was no small feat of imagination, given that from a nearby point of land I could see the gleaming stacks of the Bruce Nuclear Power Development, which included the largest plant in the world for manufacturing heavy water, a tritium-enriched moderating fluid. Materialist explanations, my first anchor, were unsatisfying. For example, traditional “old left” criticisms borne of the tyranny of capital accumulation were less relevant in the late twentieth century than they were at the turn of the twentieth century, a time of workers’ struggles, trade unionism, and rapid industrialization. Newer analyses—Bookchin’s pathology of domination, Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, Foucault’s circulatory models of authority, identity politics, and feminist theory—offered hopeful insights. However, none seemed to have the reach to grasp the “malaise of modernity,” to borrow Charles Taylor’s phrase.3 Technology was an observable and at times lamentable artifact of social process, despite the prescient warnings of cultural critics such as Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, and Herbert Marcuse. For the most part, the schools of thought that I reviewed ignored technology as a preeminent social and political force, focusing instead on its external effects on our lives. Technology was culturally and politically inert. My work in Bruce County led me to philosophers of technology, a small and professionally isolated cadre of scholars worldwide who have toiled to show the wider significance of technology, namely, that it is not so much the machinery that should capture our attention, as in traditional

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analyses of technology, or the people exclusively, as we find in the social sciences, but the commingling of people and technology. It is the relationship that matters as much as the parties in the relationship. This observation has astonishing consequences for the way we view technology. Langdon Winner, one of the few philosophers of technology to reach a broader audience, has described contemporary society as “sleepwalking.”4 Philosophers alive to the significance of technology—Paul Durbin, Andrew Feenberg, Frederick Ferré, Caroline Whitbeck, Larry Hickman, Don Ihde, Rachelle Hollander, Carl Mitcham, Andrew Light, and David Strong, to mention a few—have labored quietly to bring key issues to the surface. But their work has been too quiet, or perhaps the qualities of technology too pervasive and concealed, to allow any significant public conversation, although occasional eruptions such as the Unabomber phenomenon or the portentous musings of Bill Joy generate a brief public scramble.5 I came across Albert Borgmann’s book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life soon after it was published in 1984. My Ph.D. cosupervisor, Larry Haworth, passed along a review copy of the book he had just received, thinking it might be helpful to me. It turned out to be exactly the fuel my thinking required despite the fact that Borgmann appeared politically conservative (he wants to be known as socially progressive if culturally conservative).6 Borgmann proposed the device paradigm, a theory that suggested technology is the constraining pattern to our lives. Pervasive patterns are difficult to see, but recognizing technology as a pattern would allow careful identification of the underlying processes. Simply put, all things exist within a bodily and social context, and it is this communion between self, thing, and environment (and perhaps also spirit) that generates profound meaning in our lives. Borgmann calls things such as celebratory meals, reading a bedtime story to a child, and jogging focal practices. Focus is removed from these practices when we allow ourselves to be distracted by consumption. The device paradigm describes the general pattern of commodification, whereby the context is stripped from a thing, leaving machinery and a commodity—or mere means and mere ends. Think of the difference between listening to recorded music and participating in a social evening of music making. The theory has many extensions, of course, and I

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applied it to the decline of community autonomy in Bruce County. I viewed the institution of planning as a metadevice that reduced the complex political life of a community to a relentless process and legal machinations. The organic life of a place was subsumed by a technology of organization and control. Part of the process of restoration and regeneration, I argued in a 1990 article, involved reforming the underlying pattern of technology.7 Later I wondered whether this pattern of technology could be applied more directly to ecological restoration. In the early 1990s, thanks in large measure to the influence of William Jordan and the late Alex Wilson, I realized that restoration practice could be corroded by the device paradigm. At the beginning of this book I invoked a popular poem by Robert Frost to describe a bifurcation in restoration practice. In effect, two paths describe the future trajectory of ecological restoration, and my point is to show how the gentler one—the “one less traveled by”—can be found and conserved. For many, restoration is about the perfection of technique. This view has led to a tendency toward professionalization of practice, a trend toward marquee restoration projects that satisfy corporate objectives, and the prospect that overzealous, technically proficient restoration could distract us from the work of protecting ecosystems. Others emphasize the importance of building communities in relation to natural processes and patterns. While these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, they have begun to form a decisive fork. Having traveled a dusty, bumpy road, we are faced with a choice: to the right is a wide road paved with efficiency and along the way are manicured rest stops and regular services; to the left is a meandering path lined with unforeseeable focal experiences and shaped by ongoing processes. Fewer walk this one; it is less efficient and predictable, but finally more engaging. The means are similar, but the ends quite different. The former, what I term technological restoration, is connected to the patterns of technological culture; the latter, focal restoration, is shaped by engaged relationships between people and ecosystems. Borgmann inspires this image of the two paths. A theme running throughout his writing is the need to make a choice between living a life filled with devices and one that achieves orientation through the

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power of focal things. In these terms, the issue is the following: Will restoration become a practice that turns out ecosystems as predictable commodities, in perfect order, according to the principles of technical expertise? Alternatively, will it remain a heterogeneous ambition, one imbued with community intelligence and scientific modesty? My interests in technology and ecological restoration started to fuse when I stared out the window toward the Athabasca River. The lines of hidden infrastructure became more than objects and began to symbolize the technological identity of place. It was around this time that Jennifer Cypher and I began our work on Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (see chapter 1). Jasper was becoming a theme park of sorts, the ultimate adventure escape, as long as a good meal and hot tub were available at the end of a day of sightseeing or sporting. Stories began to circulate about visitors who hiked the Skyline Trail for three days in the fog and then wanted their money back. Some of this is not new, but like all patterns they grow in intensity until they become prominent. I used to tease park staff about Disney taking over park management, and Cypher and I went as far in 1998 as to present such a scenario at the Society for Ecological Restoration conference. Our plans for “Rocky Mountain Wilderness,” as we called it, included turning over front-country visitor programs to Disney, who through imagineering—that is, bringing the distinctive Disney touch to vernacular experience—would make the experience more satisfying and fun. Silly as it seems, as we wrote about it I became convinced that on one level there is every reason to believe that Disney would do a better job of communicating park messages to a wider public. Our little thought experiment was jolted by the sale to Disney of rights to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police imagery, the famous Canadian “Mountie,” which to many, myself included, constituted the wholesale sell-off of cultural identity (the rights have been taken back recently). More chilling perhaps is the reception we have subsequently had to the idea of Rocky Mountain Wilderness. There were guffaws and expressions of disgust when the concept was first presented in 1998. More recently, people have tended to nod with irony, as if they expect this to be the fate of Jasper—if not death by Disney, then takeover by something else.

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Commodification The recognition of restoration as a vital practice is also an admission that something has gone wrong, that the economic system, public responsibility, cultural values, political controls, or a combination of these and other factors have laid waste to places we care about. Practicing restoration presupposes being critically aware of the world around us at some level. Restorationists inhabit all points on the political spectrum. I have met reformist restorationists who want to change a piece of legislation so as to ensure that restorative activities are mandated or improved. Some restorationists work alongside or for large companies, developing plans for incremental improvements in corporate practice. There are radical activist restorationists who believe nothing short of a thorough housecleaning of values and political practices will be sufficient. Gathering this diverse group together in the same room would generate different analyses, to be sure, but everywhere there would be disquiet over the deep problems that beset contemporary societies. It is difficult, after all, to ignore global environmental deterioration (despite some positive steps taken), political instability, systemic poverty, and so on. The solutions proposed would vary considerably, and this is where political orientation becomes prominent. A second issue that most members of the group would agree on—though it might not at first seem relevant to restoration—is the increasing pervasiveness of technology. A good starting point in understanding the pattern of technology is by observing what David Strong calls the central irony of technology: “It fails most where it succeeds most, at procuring happiness, at procuring the good things of life.”8 In the so-called developed world, this pattern is most pronounced. We pursue material goods, pulled along by the allure of advertising and the power of new devices. The devices are powerful. Much can be achieved more quickly, for instance, with computing technology. Broadband communications have opened up encyclopedic virtual worlds. One technology links to another, the way desktop computers connect with personal digital assistants, or the skills developed using one piece of sophisticated electronic equipment open the way for others. The power of devices emanates from the two central promises of technology: liberation and enrichment. Household appliances are an

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excellent example of the promise of liberation from drudgery. A dishwasher frees us from having to clean dishes manually. What is less well understood, because we tend to see the advantages before the implications, is that this supposed freedom from drudgery comes at the price of money, which entails wage labor, increased use of dishes and utensils, and the loss of the social connections of the more traditional practice. The second promise, enrichment, is the obverse of liberation; technology frees us for personal growth and other forms of enrichment. Hence, by eliminating burdensome chores, the dishwasher saves time for more desirable activities. The irony, as Strong points out, is that time is typically freed up for more work and consumption, not more leisure. The promise of technology is fueled by the availability of devices. Availability, according to Borgmann, means the delivery of devices that are safer, easier to use, instantaneous, and ubiquitous. A typical latemodel automobile reflects these characteristics. It is certainly safer than most cars of twenty years ago. It is also easier to operate, employing the latest ergonomic design and user-friendly features. Maintenance and repair are made as simple and infrequent as possible. This reliability means that no special skills or routines are needed for normal operation. Gone are the days of manual chokes, double-clutching, and long warmups. And, of course, cars have become widespread, available virtually anywhere on demand. This pattern of availability accentuates the promise of technology by delivering devices that are increasingly ubiquitous and sophisticated. The pace of such change has increased to such an extent that the impulse for more technology becomes part of who we are, a natural feature of living in society. Technology becomes the air we breathe, so much so that we scarcely notice the extent to which our lives are conditioned by it. We are not only acquiring more devices per se, but also more procedures and ways of thinking that are technological. We speak of “downloading” information and “borrowing” time. I have heard people compare their brains to computer memories, wishing for “more RAM” (random access memory)! As Ursula Franklin writes, “Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system. It entails far more

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than its individual material components. Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.”9 When we begin to think technologically, handling personal and social difficulties as if they were components of a broken mechanism, we approach the point of technological saturation. The more pervasive something is, paradoxically, the more it is concealed. We tend not to notice what is all around us. This is amplified further when we realize that our increasingly technological habits of thinking prevent a clear view of technology as a pattern.10 Technology fails to deliver on the promise of liberation and happiness primarily because it distracts us from things that matter. Borgmann argues that things of enduring significance have “commanding presence, continuity with the world and centering power.” Things that matter have focusing qualities—that is, they bring together manifold social and ecological relations. Thus, Borgmann proposes the idea of focal things. Focal things need focal practices, regular activities that encourage the development of the skills necessary for competence and excellence. For years I have enjoyed the music of spontaneous performance, true folk music. Friends gather together, and after a pleasant meal the instruments come out. Everyone has a role in the performance, although the load falls on those well practiced at jamming. Their skill shines through and pulls the rest of us along. On a particularly fine Friday evening on Cadboro Bay in Victoria, British Columbia, following a barbequed wild-salmon meal, a variety of instruments emerged. Two of the ten people were extremely talented and led the group through a series of songs and reminiscences. I am awkward about singing, and resorted to keeping rhythm as best I could. It was at best minimal participation, not enough to make me feel engaged with the music. The distinction between participation and engagement, attending versus belonging, was an epiphany that came to me that evening. Shortly after that I resolved to pick up an instrument again, an antidote to tortured piano lessons as a child. Playing means skill, and skill involves practice. Learning the guitar for me is a lifelong adventure, one in which I improve incrementally. Engagement grows as I am able to join with others in performance and in the creativity that goes with musical expression. I looked carefully for a guitar, one that played well and sounded rich, but not one beyond my aspirations. Would

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that I could afford a handcrafted instrument or could make one myself, but I rest contented that mine was built using Canadian woods, including a beautiful front panel of cedar. The guitar and I are joined together in performance, developing a bond of sorts that grows and provides continuity.11 It has taken on blemishes that can be traced to particular moments and has developed a few quirks. The guitar, then, is a focal thing for me. It gathers together a wider world of musical existence and brings me into bodily and social engagement with the world around me. Focal practice is necessary in the sense of setting aside sufficient time in my schedule to develop musically, and this in turn helps me reflect on the rest of my life. Focal practices teach us the lessons of fidelity and commitment, and most people have such practices in their lives, whether it is woodworking, athletic performance, sewing, gardening, or cooking, to choose a few examples. When life becomes overwhelming for us in a technological society, it is mostly because these focal practices are relegated to the sidelines—I look wistfully at my guitar wondering where the time for performance went. And if I make the mistake of assuming that focal things can be nurtured only occasionally, I am corrected in finding my clumsy fingers unable to make sense of the strings. There are bad moments and good ones, but through it all, the sense of worldly engagement makes focal things and practices significant. They help open focal reality, the world that is disclosed when focal practices provide orientation instead of the distractions of a technological world. What is elegant about the idea of focality is its intuitive appeal. Once described, anyone can pick out a thing or practice that brings meaning. Moreover, it depends crucially on things, which are artifacts and processes that make our experience possible. Thus, the guitar is significant to me in the same way that a hand-forged hatchet is to someone who works on rustic furniture, a food processor to someone who cooks, a fly rod to someone who fishes, and a pen to someone who writes by hand.12 Borgmann argues that our fascination with devices displaces and sometimes destroys our capacity for focal practice. Devices, as distinguished from things, are roughly the mass-produced artifacts of our age. They lack continuity and typically fail to inspire commitment. They

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are, ultimately, disposable. This foreshadows his theory of the device paradigm. There is a widespread pattern by which focal things are separated from their social and environmental context and converted to machinery and commodities. Suppose I make a recording of a musical jam session one evening, a session that resonates with good, clear memories of engagement. With digital recording technology it is possible to record the event perhaps with greater clarity than the live performance offered, and then distribute this music. I listen to the music later, and it summons my connection with the moment of recording. To this extent I am grateful for it. However, this meaning may be lost on or diminished for others who listen to the sound tracks for their acoustic quality, for their musical skill, or as background for conversation. Much of the original context is lost. The sound itself becomes the commodity, which occurs at a relatively superficial or unidimensional level. The machinery of reproduction recedes into the background. Generally, Borgmann suggests, commodities form the foreground of our experience. Increasingly we experience the world through contact with objects or services we procure. Machinery becomes the background of production. Think of the extent to which a Web browser is the glittery foreground, the commodity, and the machinery, including the intertwined networks and communications protocols, are the background. This separation of foreground and background has many implications. First, our actions become separated from our consequences. The recession of machinery in the face of a rising sea of commodities makes the production of devices less apparent. It is more difficult to know whether the clothes I buy, the food I eat, or the electricity I use are socially and ecologically responsible. This is often the case for goods marketed under the labels of social and ecological responsibility. How am I to know whether the bananas stickered with an organic label at the grocery store are in fact organically produced? According to which standards are they organic? Finally, how am I to evaluate the consequences of eating a tropical fruit that has traveled thousands of miles from production to consumption? One might argue that the greater availability of information makes it easier to research consequences. This is certainly true, but

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having the capacity for research and the knowledge gleaned from it are often two different things. The separation of foreground and background tends to promote what Langdon Winner terms reverse adaptation, “the adjustment of human ends to match the character of available means.”13 Reverse adaptation is common in advanced technological settings where the sophistication of techniques alluringly distracts the practitioner from normal goals. It is evident, for example, in the introduction of microcomputer word processors, after which writing habits changed in response to the easy movement of blocks of text. The traditional goal of clear writing is subordinated to the authority of precise word counts, spell checkers, and autoformatted lists and charts. Thus, the traditional relationship between goals that are deliberately and carefully set, and the means to achieve these goals, is inverted. The means overshadow the ends and in some case obliterate our understanding of ends. This is evident, I think, in the extraordinarily rapid dispersion of personal computers. How many, myself included, can definitely say that a computer is the appropriate means to achieve clearly reflected goals? Allied with the distinction between foreground and background is the separation of product and process, a theme that emerged in chapter 3. Do we locate value in restoration projects in the process of restoration or in the final product of restoration? Ecosystems are dynamic, complicated living systems and notoriously hard to predict and regulate effectively. The process of restoring an ecosystem is often difficult and time consuming. Our patience is sorely tried in a consumer society where final products of any kind matter more than the background conditions of production necessary to bring them about. If it were otherwise, we would be much more concerned about sources of production, unfair labor practices, and environmental devastation in majority-world countries. The theory of the device paradigm is a powerful way of looking at contemporary issues. It focuses attention on underlying social patterns that describe our immersion in technology. It extends well beyond conventional explanations that see technology as merely the sum of artifacts. Technology is a pattern, and as such can be found just about anywhere. Borgmann uses the example of insurance to demonstrate this diffusion.

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In times past, security depended on networks of societal and family relations. If the barn burned down, the community provided material and emotional support. Such support was always fragile and uncertain. The rise of insurance converted the precariousness of these social arrangements into a financial equivalence. The machinery behind the scenes— annuity calculations, optimum pricing, sales techniques—remained hidden from view. In the foreground was the commodity: security in the form of monthly payments. One can debate whether the final result was an improvement or not, but what is not in dispute is that there are clearly gains and losses to be evaluated. What was gained in security was lost in social fragmentation. It seems that the introduction of each new device brings wins and losses. The problem is that we seldom notice the losses until much later. As John Ralston Saul and others point out, the underpinnings of civil society have shifted away from collective understanding of value to private systems.14 I think of the device paradigm as a process of commodification, the conversion of things that matter into commodities. We see the world now in terms of commodities, whether in the form of marriage counselors to quell emotional troubles, experts on workplace efficiency, digital television sets that deliver realistic images, or university students as customers. Our primary experience in the world is that of consumption, just as one now feels awkward visiting a place such as Jasper without spending money on hotels, meals, souvenirs, or backcountry passes. “To consume,” writes Borgmann, “is to use up an isolated entity without preparation, resonance, or consequence.”15 What is typically lost in acts of consumption, and of course as a pattern there are always exceptions, is engagement with the depth of the thing behind the commodity. In listening to recorded music predominantly, I lose the experience of performance and connection with my guitar. This is only one instance, however, and the point of focal practices is to provide orientation around the things that do and do not matter. By making careful choices we can live in a focal reality most of the time. It is this focal reality that gives us the perspective to understand and limit the corrosive effects of commodification. Ecological restoration is a preeminent focal practice, but only if we steer practice toward valuing ecosystems in their depth and honoring the

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social relations that form in the midst of restoration. This is the theme of chapter 6. What worries me is that we will choose the main path of consumption and begin to commodify restoration. The potential exists for this to be expressed in two ways. First, ecosystems themselves can become commodities through an overzealous marketplace and steady infiltration by the cultural imagery of consumption. An extreme example is the representation of wilderness at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Such facilities push us incrementally closer to a society where the line separating reality from virtual reality becomes very thin. The Lodge is not a restoration project in any strict sense, but it constitutes at present the end of one possible trajectory for restoration. Second, it is possible for the practice of restoration to become a commodity, something quite likely if the push to professionalization is motivated more by financial gain than by care for place. A Taut Line: What Kind of Science Do Ecological Restorationists Require? The more we study it, the more we understand that the landscape in Jasper is the result of decades of cultural belief and practice at work: shifting management philosophies, types and modes of visitation, national-level parks policy, and larger cultural dispositions toward nature and wilderness. Nature is continuously processed through the filter of cultural institutions, and interpreted through the lenses of individuals and communities. When the ground on which our beliefs about nature shifts, as it is doing rapidly through the advent of what Borgmann and others have termed hyperreality, the power of nature to hold moral and spiritual beliefs weakens. Nature becomes a pliable device. This power to “half create,” following Wordsworth, suffuses the modern era and inspires a fundamental ambiguity by which our knowledge of nature and wilderness is formed. We understand two seemingly inconsistent verities about things: that there is nature out there that lies beyond our ability to cocreate, and that our forms of perception make it resemble what we choose. In recent decades, it has become apparent that wilderness specifically, and nature more generally, are culturally conditioned terms.16 There is a line between an essentialist “what you see is

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what you get” epistemology and, at the other end of the continuum, the position that all of nature is constructed on our experience. Michael Soulé, a conservation biologist, argues that in moving too far along that line, away from an essentialist idea of nature toward a constructed one, we may subject ourselves to the hazard of themed nature.17 This fear, however, is a strong reaction to an equally unsettling prospect: the objectification of reality. In an extreme form, an objective or essential view of reality admits no ambiguity, and suggests that nature is reducible to scientific understanding. I am unsettled by claims that nature is entirely a cultural construct and worry about the possibility that ecosystems will lose their significance under conditions of hyperreality. My greater fear is that we will lose hold of knowledge that lies outside of science—for instance, personal testimony based on experience, and creative knowledge derived from art, music, and poetry. This is an especially important matter for restorationists, who have until this point thrived by mixing science with practical knowledge. Moreover, every time an ecosystem is restored, a particular view of nature blooms brighter. Hence, restorationists are central agents in the definition and redefinition of what is, and what counts as, nature. Ecological restoration is a distinctive fusion of scientific impulse and local knowledge. Being able to restore well presupposes some scientific knowledge—for example, of genetics, plant taxonomy, soil microbiology, and nutrient cycling. But book knowledge goes only so far in making a project successful. One needs to know practical things, too, such as how water conditions vary across the site based on experience with watering new plantings, how to organize volunteers or maneuver through regulatory tangles, and who has the best seed. Those with practical inclinations and little scientific training tend to acquire an inferiority complex. Their knowledge and skills are viewed perhaps as a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective restoration. Someone with practical knowledge is seldom regarded as an expert. Why is this? The entrenchment of science is one of the distinctive features of the last two centuries. The formulation of a distinctive method, the development of allied sciences, the amassing of organized and strategic funding, and the establishment of a recognized professional niche are all aspects of this phenomenon, although of course what is usually known

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as the scientific revolution commenced earlier than this. It is strange for me to imagine what it was like in universities prior to the 1850s in North America, when most contemporary departmental divisions did not exist, doctoral degrees were unavailable, no federal funding bodies existed, few professional associations were operating, and even fewer journals were being produced. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the premier scientific body in the United States, was founded in 1848. Today the authority of science is undeniable. Universities are dominated by the natural and applied sciences. Governments commission blue-ribbon scientific panels to advise them on crucial policy issues. Our notion of what it means to be intelligent is caught up in cultural images such as Einstein, white lab coats, and MIT. We are reminded continually that we live in a knowledge economy for which science is a prerequisite. There are many reasons for the authority of science. Scientists can inspire with dazzling, counterintuitive insights such as superstring theory and genomic typology. Insights from science have enormous practical consequences, too, and this is often what inspires the most public and policy awe. Medical research in particular, especially the heroic, high-technology, scientific discoveries that go beyond ordinary experience, compel allegiance. And one can despise the destructive, souldestroying development of nuclear weaponry, but it is difficult not to at least grudgingly admire the scientific insights that made it possible. The restoration community, no doubt, will have to face the widespread availability soon of a remarkably powerful genetically engineered organism. Using it will be alluring and alarming at the same time. The question is, will we have the moral courage to confront the hard choices that have to be made? Strong scientific knowledge is critical to good restoration. So is the knowledge of experience and tradition. The former prides itself on universality, the latter on locality. Here we come back to the issue raised at the beginning of this section: What kind of nature is represented in these different perspectives? The scientist sees, or believes he or she is seeing, the world as it really is, stripped of filters of perception. Scientifically, nature is that which is independent of human taint. What we aim for accordingly is perfect description of things as they are. This view of

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science was too severe and imposing for some. Slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, philosophers, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists began to ask whether the character of the knower has anything to do with what is known. Thus was born the contemporary and controversial subject of science studies, an interdisciplinary endeavor aimed at understanding the complexity of science in practice. Science studies meshed well with other developments in universities, notably the shift toward postmodernism and socially constructed accounts of the world. Radical theorists asserted that the world is exactly what we make of it, and one person’s view of it is as relevant as any other’s. This produced a profound relativism in knowledge, and bastions of conventional knowledge and authority began to crumble against the onslaught. Why should scientific knowledge of climate change in the Arctic be qualitatively better than the knowledge possessed by an Inuit hunter? Specialists in science studies investigated the production of scientific knowledge and found that that knowledge is contingent on social beliefs and practices. Scientific knowledge accumulates by social production, on one level an obvious observation and on another a profoundly upsetting one. If what one observes is conditioned by who one is, then the enterprise of science is shaped at least in part by subjectivity. The most extreme views emanating from constructivist and postmodern theories asserted that there is nothing permanent on which our knowledge rests. It is entirely a swirling mass of belief. Such radical positions are theoretically fascinating but hold relatively little weight in shaping the practice of science. Still, they have stirred deep emotions among scientists. Most significantly, they have compelled us to ask difficult questions about the conduct of science as a social practice, about how knowledge is made, and about the cultural beliefs that flow from the work of scientists.18 At bottom, science succeeds brilliantly because of prediction. Scientific knowledge is predictive knowledge based on the logics of induction and deduction. Shooting a space shuttle beyond the earth’s atmosphere means knowing with precision the behavior of that vessel and how to get it to its target. Knowing about the chemistry and physics of the earth’s atmosphere helps make space flight possible and also offers predictive models of atmospheric change with increasing human production of certain compounds. Science is powerful because it allows us to peer into the

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future. Why is this important? It gives us increased control. Through prediction we know within a range of certainty how likely something is and then what adjustments are needed. In the case of forces as powerful and variable as weather, we are less adept at controlling the processes per se and instead adjust our own activities accordingly. Prediction is important to ecological restoration. All things being equal, we want to know whether a particular planting is likely to flourish, and if it does, what kind of pattern it will create. Such knowledge becomes especially important when restoration moves from creative muddling through to professional practice. A restoration professional makes decisions on the basis of scientific evidence and experience. During a visit I made in 1993 to the Tree of Life native plant nursery north of San Diego, California, experiments were underway with mycorrhizal inoculations of potted seedlings. Experience indicated that healthy stock more often than not contained a symbiotic fungal mat in the soil medium. Shifting from this insight to deliberate inoculation invoked scientific trials: What amount of inoculant is ideal? What species? What are the costs-to-productivity ratios? As this treatment becomes widespread in nursery stock, increasing scientific data adds nuance to predictive measures. A restoration professional charged with a large-scale planting wants to know the likely success of plantings. A difference of 10 percent viability might make a critical difference to the success of a planting and would certainly change the financial bottom line. The mark of a seasoned and respected professional is judgment, which is usually a combination of experience and knowing when to trust in and abide by scientific data. As powerful as science is in ecological restoration, it also tends to create problems by displacing other kinds of knowledge. Landscape architects, for example, who are trained to think in several different ways often alternate between scientific knowledge that accounts for why some plantings work better than others, and an aesthetic judgment that suggests why one planting will look better than another. We are often too quick to leap to a distinction between objective and subjective knowledge, where objective knowledge is represented by science and is indubitable. Subjective knowledge, on the other hand, is merely preference and cannot be evaluated in any reliable way. The predictive power of

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science tends to quash other approaches on the basis of universality and reliability. In a limited but significant way this is appropriate. We are advantaged by the power of scientific knowledge. However, what we think of as subjectivity is composed of many kinds of knowledge, each bearing a slightly different account of the world. For instance, Borgmann distinguishes between paradigmatic and testimonial knowledge. Paradigmatic knowledge is the knowledge of pattern whereby what one learns in one place can be transferred to another. At the simplest level, this is the kind of knowledge that allows a restorationist to achieve rapid insights when moving from one site to another. More than this, it is the knowledge that originates in metaphor and analogy, and these are powerful ways of representing the world. Testimonial knowledge is the knowledge of direct conviction, such as one finds in music, art, poetry, or other forms of creative expression. The meaning is not usually intended to be literal and often points directly at a particular experience. It is not based typically on prediction. Testament is very powerful. It is often what moves us to act on something, the kind of knowledge that binds our commitment to something. As much as we might want to believe that sound, scientific data tells the entire story, people are often moved to do something described by the data because they are affected by testimonial knowledge. Another kind of knowledge that has moved to the fore in the last decade is traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom, commonly known as TEK or TEKW.19 Rooted in struggles for identity and survival by traditional peoples—First Nations, Aboriginals, indigenous peoples, and those adhering to long traditions of land management—TEKW is one way of recognizing that knowledge other than science matters. Knowledge of this kind is accumulated over time and often organized through oral tradition. It is passed from generation to generation, and those whose lives are attuned to the land will attain the status of elder or wise person, someone who bears the tradition. TEKW has been important in conflicts over resource use and management in regions inhabited by traditional peoples. For example, in preparing evidence for legal land claims the G’itxsan people of northern British Columbia mapped traditional land use based on oral histories and the testaments of elders. This provided a different view of the land and its use than was promulgated

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by industrial interests and government officials in the Province of British Columbia. Recognizing perhaps that knowledge about a place accumulated slowly and carefully over time amounts eventually to wisdom, and that wisdom is required to make sustainable decisions, TEKW is swelling in popularity. There are two ways an overreliance on science can distort the work of restorationists. The first, already discussed, is to push other forms of knowledge to the sidelines. Second, science tends to reify nature, or in other words to take an abstraction and make it appear real. This has potentially dangerous implications by distorting how we comprehend what we are restoring. It gives more weight than it should to our particular view of things, instead of understanding this view as historically and culturally contingent. There is little room for humility when we believe the challenge is simply to put the right pieces into place. This is why constructivism has been important in broadening our understanding of science. To see things as though the production of knowledge is unimportant masks social realities. We do look (and hear, smell, taste, and reflect) on things through social filters. One example is the way we have tended to systematically exclude people from our understanding of ecological history.20 Jasper National Park is a wild, imposing, unfriendly place to people who have grown up with accounts of untamed wilderness. This is my cultural legacy, too, but my experience in Jasper has given me a different understanding of the place, one that is peopled, complicated, and ever-changing. Cultural contingency matters for restorationists because we need to understand that people make sense of a place in different ways. Adaptation and creativity are needed to mediate local and universal perspectives. This is what Donna Haraway intended in her call for “radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects . . . and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world.”21 Katherine Hayles proposes a different version of this middle path by advocating positional reflexivity: Reflexivity, understood as recognizing that one has a position and that every position enables as well as limits, can make the double move of turning outward to know more about the world because it also turns inward to look at how one’s own assumptions are constructed. If constrained constructivism does nothing more than enhance the humility we feel when we realize that the world is a much

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bigger place than we as situated human beings can imagine, in my view it is worth the price of admission.22

Borgmann points to the significance of nature as being something beyond which either science or experience can go; reality is other than us, beyond the explanations of science and poetry.23 The world in between the extremes of essentialism and constructivism makes more sense. We are presented with an ambiguity that arises from understanding that the world is simultaneously comprehensible and unknowable, or to restate the formulation at the beginning of this section, that there is nature out there that lies beyond our ability to cocreate, and that our forms of perception make it resemble what we choose. I think of this as creative ambiguity because it encourages observation and understanding while forcing us to confront the limits of such knowledge. It is a blessing as it reveals to us the extent and thickness of the cultural layers we impose on top of reality. It offers a new way of seeing wilderness, for example, one that admits of human practice in its myriad forms. At the same time, such critical constructivism is tempered by the presence of wild places that still exist beyond the beaten path in remote, inaccessible, or forgotten places, and that possess undeniable presence and continuity. So-called natural processes have a way of poking through in any case, exposing the hubris to those who believe that nature can be fully ensnared. For the restorationist this ambiguity is critically important. Strong science is needed that helps us predict what will happen. Too much reliance, however, will foreclose on the vernacular knowledge of places (chapter 4) and trick us into believing that what we are doing is either the right way or the only way of accomplishing salutary work with natural processes. We need to understand the cultural lenses that focus our view of the world. Ambiguity can be too creative. One can read the peopled quality of the Athabasca Valley in Jasper as evidence of the disappearance of wilderness, and as a license to reconfigure it according to contemporary desires. After all, so runs the argument, if people have been present all along, using and transforming the place, why not perpetuate the tradition? This view makes a crucial mistake in necessarily justifying current practice on the basis of former activities. It is almost certainly the case that the context, and often the intensity and scale, of human activities

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in the past was different. Equally troubling is the threat to the notion of ecological integrity. Robust accounts of integrity depend on some hard realities: historical reference conditions, presence of keystone species, species diversity and abundance, absence of weedy or exotic species, and so on. Sophisticated definitions of integrity also allow for long-standing, typically traditional, cultural practices. In hovering too close to a constructivist idea of wilderness we court the loss of ecological integrity as well as a misreading of historical human activities. Restoration is unleashed from conventional constraints and a licentious commerce is permitted with popular notions of nature and wilderness. The Commodification of Nature The ambiguity of our epistemic commitments to wilderness and nature is compounded directly by a more general shift in our allegiance to reality. Borgmann argues that reality is giving way to hyperreality, a kind of reality detached from direct experience and context. In losing an authentic engagement with things, we lose sight also of moral commitments to those things. Images become the currency of morality, but images lack stability and resonance. Electronic communications and scientific approaches to image management and marketing, fusing advertising and propaganda, have increased the rate of change of cultural images and produced a uniformity of perception. The potency and pervasiveness of such imagery make local, vernacular conditions less attractive, and compel their replacement with sophisticated commodities.24 The globalization of imagery collides with local views and creates confusion over what to believe and when it is appropriate to believe one thing over another. As Jennifer Cypher and I suggest, the pervasiveness and intent of image generation constitute a “colonization of the imagination,” or a reconfiguring of people’s imaginative capacities.25 Nowhere is this system of colonization more advanced than in the products of the Disney Corporation. For forty years, Disney has pumped out film and television images that have shaped the imaginations of millions of viewers around the world. Wild animals are anthropomorphized and domesticated. The boundaries between wild and tame are redrawn, and primary experience of wild things is displaced by voyeuristic and

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mediated experiences. The works of culture industries such as Disney accelerate the reception of a constructed nature. People are flocking to Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, for example, as an escape to a land far away in time and space. The fact that this large, luxurious resort is a simulacrum seems not to disturb most people. And most people are apparently unperturbed by the presence, in Florida, of redwood trees, Northwest Coast Native American artifacts, bison, and Western log construction. A development such as the Lodge builds on ingrained public ideas about wilderness, which is to be expected. In the hands of an organization as powerful as Disney, it has the potential to reshape meaning by imparting its ideological message to the visitor (or viewer) as though it were part of the natural order of things. The Disney version of nature becomes a primary referent for experiences in real nature, not the other way around. How long will it be before we are searching for those elusive mouse ears carved on the wall of the Grand Canyon? In colonizing the imagination, what the Lodge and similar projects are accomplishing is a friendly takeover of the reality that underlies themed experience. By turning wilderness into a conceptual product, one that is adaptable, delimitable, endlessly pliable, and available, Disney is also creating a new reality in which to experience it. Then, in recursive fashion, consumption conditions our understanding of reality; nature outside of the empire becomes subject to the interpretations of the empire. Of course, Disney’s products are converging with and abetting other simulations. The worry is that this takeover of reality to produce a world filled with hyperrealities will displace reality as a moral center. But isn’t hyperreality supposed to produce a world richer in opportunity and experience? Shouldn’t this be preferable? An abidingly intractable question is whether authentic nature (i.e., reality that has commanding presence and telling continuity) possesses attributes vital to the health of people. Are the rough edges on reality important? In the absence of limits and boundaries as imposed by reality, nature is opened to endless manipulation, not only in the style of domination to which we have become so accustomed in the modern era, but now in a thematic sense that creates a theme out of concepts such as ecological integrity.

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For ecological restorationists, questions of historical fidelity and ecological integrity will be reset within a context of artificiality. The goals chosen may resemble manufactured images instead of carefully negotiated ones rooted in participation and faithful articulation of locale. Inclined this way, and possessed of sophisticated skills, the restorationist is able to specify, say, a trade-off between forest cover and openings more congenial to the touring public. Historical authenticity could drive restoration goals, but it may be that in a changed landscape of roads and utility corridors, Disney and niche tourism, corridors for threatened wildlife species could be placed conveniently along safe, unobtrusive watchable wildlife areas. From here, the theming of a national park begins in earnest, satisfying the latest in cultural views about nature and wilderness. As Tad Friend points out in an article on Disney’s newest and most ambitious ($1 billion) attraction, Animal Kingdom, “As I experienced Disney’s treats, it became clear that in an important sense this park isn’t about animals at all. It’s about us, about our wishes and needs. For how we behave toward animals taken from their natural surroundings reveals us to ourselves.”26 A logic of justification forms against this backdrop: if we do not think it really matters to the ecosystems, but it does matter to us, then implement a design based on our desires and values. Yes, ecological integrity still counts, but even this concept becomes a commodity to be rendered more efficient (how many grizzly bears are necessary?). Restoration becomes part of a thematic endeavor and is pushed along the multilane production highway of the future and away from the gentler choice at the fork in the road. Through an elaborate system of simulation and image management, corporations such as Disney produce commodities that change the meanings of nature and wilderness. This complicates the task of restoration. Modern restoration, the style still favored by many practitioners, meants returning an ecosystem as closely as possible to its predisturbance condition. Postmodern restoration, which appears ascendant, means adapting to a variety of contingent meanings and thus to ambiguity. There are blessings and curses in this shift. That we are moving away from believing in a single approach to restoration is a hopeful sign. What we are restoring and how we restore it becomes a deeply reflective investigation

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into our own values about what can and should be done. It is a curse, too, in that such openness may give way to an “anything goes” approach. This view would potentially push aside considerations of ecological integrity and historical fidelity in favor of practicality and desire. A postmodern restoration mostly creates a healthy reflexivity for the practitioner, and it also entails wrestling simultaneously with scattered purpose and technological ambition. This is another way of restating the ambivalence at the core of contemporary restoration practice. Now that restoration has become a diverse activity, ranging from natural urban gardens to whole river-basin megaprojects, and now that historical fidelity is relative, what restoration is, exactly, is difficult to discern. When this uncertainty is compounded by a culture of hyperreality, the danger that restoration will conform to the pattern of the device paradigm becomes real. Commitments to authentic engagement with reality, to things, are unhinged. Ecosystems become devices as the rush begins to (re)produce commodities in the form of restorations that meet the interests of those who pay the bills. The commodification of nature and wilderness, therefore, diverts the project of restoration along a technological path. The more pervasive technological restoration becomes, the less easy it is to articulate and justify focal restoration—the path less traveled. What will restorationists of the future restore: things or devices, reality or hyperreality? The Commodification of Practice There is a further way in which ecological restoration is becoming more devicelike: via the commodification of practice. To understand fully the implications of the device paradigm for ecological restoration requires examination of the commodification of nature, which I did in the previous section, as well as the commodification of practice. To commodify a practice means to change the locus of attention from things to devices and to transform it into an exclusive professional enclave geared to efficiency.27 This is a well-known phenomenon identified under a number of labels: professionalization, specialization, a decisionistic society (pace Habermas), a culture of expertise. That we should detect it as a trend in ecological restoration is hardly surprising.

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Part of the reason for restoration’s assimilation surely has to do with its seeming “win-win” qualities. Reacting against zero-sum thinking in which all compete for the slices of the same unchanging pie, disputeresolution experts and policy and business specialists turned to a new paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s. If the size or quality of the “pie” could be changed, then decisions, presumably more creative and usually more profitable ones, were possible. In the landmark book that kicked off much of this discussion, Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes proposed that seemingly intractable problems could be resolved by demonstrating, sometimes with considerable difficulty, that a mutually advantageous solution was possible.28 Ecological restoration opened a potent new opportunity for corporate and governmental environmental management: ecosystems could be rebuilt or reconfigured, thereby augmenting and extending increasingly costly commitments to environmental protection. During an era of environmental loss of innocence, restoration represents hope for converting past destructive practices; it has tremendous symbolic authority. Government agencies, sometimes in concert with corporate partners, are providing more support for restoration projects, in some cases sponsoring enormous endeavors such as the Kissimmee River initiative.29 Corporations have taken up the cause, supporting restoration through modified development projects, grants, and awards. Jonathan Perry reported a surge of interest beginning in the 1970s in mollifying the effects of corporate development, typically office complexes, and improving environmental profile. Such projects serve to “naturalize the presence of the corporation” and lend the appearance of solidity to a (likely) transitory local commitment, create a history for exurban sprawls seeking identity, and provide a calming experience to the corporate world. The uses of restoration in corporate environments serve to justify the political-economic interests of the firm as much as or more than the ecological interests of the site.30 Another controversial practice concerns ecosystem mitigation. In areas of intense development pressure, notably along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, property developers gaze longingly at parcels that are protected by local, state, or federal environmental statutes. A popular approach is to compensate, or mitigate, the effects of development on, say, coastal wetland, with purchase,

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dedication, and restoration of another property of equal ecological value. In 1992 I organized a session at the Society for Ecological Restoration Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, on the ethics of mitigation. I had hoped to make several detailed case studies available to the panelists that would spark conversation. To my chagrin, it was difficult to find wellrounded descriptions of such projects in the literature, and when I called several well-known practitioners, they were reluctant to offer specifics. Concerns were expressed about offending clients and revealing proprietary knowledge. In the end I resorted to fictional cases.31 This raises a further concern about the corporatization of restoration practice: privacy. Proponents of corporate projects have less interest in producing comprehensive accounts for fear these might either undermine competitive advantage or reveal unflattering information about the project. What is published in the end are typically project descriptions that are largely one-sided reports of successes; the unsuccessful projects seldom see print. We are missing critical accounts of restoration projects, and also those that are multidimensional, including ecological, technical, scientific, social, economic, and ethical concerns. Mitigation is a clear example of the commodification of restoration; restored ecosystems are converted to tradable units for consumption. Mitigation also illustrates the commodification of practice. Most restorationists in my experience view mitigation projects as a crass commercial endeavor that ought to be avoided. Yet mitigation is on the rise and is producing a cadre of professionals skilled at such arrangements. If ecosystems can be bought, sold, and traded, does this mean they will also be subject to economically analogous processes of disposal and recycling? Will professional practice be codified and restricted? Will certain techniques become proprietary? Will ecosystem designs be franchised? Such questions seem farfetched today. They point, however, directly at larger trends in the commodification of experience and the production of a hyperreal environment. When we cease to find such questions peculiar, that is the point when the commodification of restoration will have reached a zenith. The tension between professionalism and volunteerism is a critical issue for restorationists and not a new one. At the 1992 Society for Ecological Restoration conference, the late Alexander Wilson organized a

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seminar on certification. In a packed room some of the architects of SER battled over whether restoration should remain a variegated practice with volunteers predominating, or whether restorationists should have professional ambitions. The argument was raised again in 1995 and continues to be hotly questioned.32 In regions with a relatively high concentration of practitioners such as California, the press for certification has been strong. Some view the advent of professional standards as a logical road to maturation. Others think it spells the death of authentic restoration. A compelling feature of ecological restoration, perhaps the single feature that has lifted its profile, is community involvement. There are no accurate estimates of the total number of restoration projects that have been undertaken in North America—tens of thousands, I would wager—but many have involved volunteers. Restoration is so labor intensive: weeding, clearing brush, hauling away refuse, digging, planting, seeding, and so on. The volunteers are often the people who motivate the project in the first place, and either take it on themselves by drawing on local talent or hire a consultant to assist with planning. The value of this participation is a political theme that is gaining attention in restoration and one that I discuss in chapter 6. The twin benefits of efficiency achieved through low-cost labor and the enlivening of community effort have created considerable momentum and defined an archetype of restoration. This ideal of restoration has been celebrated in essays by William Jordan, Stephanie Mills, and Freeman House, among others. They advance this view of restoration because it heals landscapes and also the relationship between people and landscapes. This idyllic view of restoration fails to encompass the full range of activity. I mentioned above the demands of mitigation and creation projects. The growth in industry- and government-sponsored projects is rising, and this development has a ratcheting effect. Policies such as “no net loss” for wetlands are put in place to encourage restoration over other management alternatives. Professional biologists and others heed the call for specialized services. Struggling restoration consultancies are suddenly flush with work. Engineering and landscape architecture firms hire a part- or full-time restoration practitioner. These practitioners have a vested interest in advancing restoration initiatives and do so by

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lobbying agencies and companies, joining professional organizations, and marketing their services. The moral burden imposed by restoration takes hold. Where government agencies such as Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation) formerly were content with old-style reclamation or rehabilitation, they now demand restoration of sites. Restoration is gaining considerable cultural capital, leading to more growth, and so the cycle continues. It would be wrong to assume from my account that professional restorationists are overwhelmed with work at present; rather the point is that the need for professional restoration is growing. A government agency may be unlikely to sponsor a volunteer restoration project, preferring the predictability and guarantees offered by a professional firm (unless of course there is professional assistance in designing and supervising a volunteer project). This segment of restoration practice is growing and becoming a stronger force. The tensions between volunteerism and professionalism are escalating. This tension between those who want restoration as a professional practice and those who fear the loss of the practice of volunteerism threatens to pull apart restoration practice. There is a familiar refrain among restorationists—especially young ones—that goes something like this: “I was so excited by the prospect of restoration, and realized suddenly that my life could be made whole by practicing what I had been preaching and earning a reasonable living at the same time. Now that I’m into it, the opportunities seem few and far between.” These specific conditions may change sooner rather than later. There is no denying the impulse behind people wanting to find, as Wendell Berry recommends, “good work that does no harm.”33 To make one’s lifework healing the land, integrating the skills of planning, management, and hands-on ability, and working outside more than in, is a noble enterprise. It seems to stand on the same pedestal as traditional professions and trades such as carpentry; mind and body are engaged in a demonstrably worthwhile purpose. There are no obscene profits, questionable ends, or fashions to worry about. Restoration practice is preeminently wholesome. What could possibly be wrong with this? Andrew Light, a philosopher, is concerned about the extent to which professional tendencies will deflect the real work of restoration. His argument is one with which I have considerable sympathy and partici-

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pated in developing.34 Ecological restoration has inherent democratic potential. This is different from arguing that restoration is inherently democratic. There are too many reasons why this is not the case, not the least being that restoration projects can and are being conducted in undemocratic ways. Having inherent potential means that restoration practiced well would preserve “the democratic ideal that public participation in a public activity increases the value of that activity.”35 Thus, restoration has the capacity to increase the value of a place through participation. This is a distinctive feature of restoration as distinguished from, say, preservation. To preserve something actively or passively means to leave it alone, to allow the value already in place to rest by itself; no new value is created. The fact that restoration increases the value of the place does not mean it is a better activity than preservation; instead it means that they have different ends and manifest value differently. Restoration produces value that would not be produced otherwise, presuming that autogenic regenerative processes do not result in restoration in many cases. It is the process of restoration involving human agency that produces value, which Light argues forms its unique character. Participation is a vital evaluative component of restoration, and most restoration projects involve not just individuals but communities. If restoration is public participation in ecological processes, and presuming that more rather than less participation is good, the more participatory restoration is, the better. The inverse of this argument, and the one troubling for many professional restoration practitioners, is that a lack of participation degrades the value of restoration. Light is careful to stipulate that there may be good reasons for a lack of participation in some circumstances, although he does not clarify what these are. In any case, participation forms a vital dimension of restoration, one that is less obviously championed through professional approaches to restoration. The value of human agency in ecosystems and ecological restoration is explored in chapter 6. The most worrisome feature of professionalization for Light is certification. Certification is a process by which restoration practitioners would be evaluated and then accredited. A minimal model would be a voluntary certification process with relatively accessible standards that could perhaps even be contemplated by dedicated volunteers. Such a

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model might run along the lines of the master gardener programs that are proliferating. The intent is less to guard the gate than to provide an incentive for rigorous instruction. A lack of widespread or universal standards would limit the force of such certification. At the other extreme would be a full-scale certification process governed by a professionally appointed regulatory body. The standards would be high and the outcome severe. Those unable to pass standardized tests would be prevented from practicing as restorationists. Major professional groups use this model presently: physicians, engineers, and accountants. To certified practitioners, however, the professional doors swing wide open and there are built-in professional responsibilities that ensure work (e.g., the need for engineers to sign off on construction plans). A more rigorous approach to certification has mixed benefits, which is why it has been hotly contested. The most obvious benefit for clients is at least the promise of uniform, sophisticated knowledge. An accredited restorationist would possess a minimum suite of skills and knowledge as well as a clearly articulated commitment to a code of practice. A signature on a restoration plan would entail some form of legal liability. The benefits for the restorationist would be the ability to anticipate a more stable professional atmosphere, and the right to charge a standard or at least professionally set fee. There are considerable perils as well. First, and most relevant to the discussion above, accredited professionals would have a vested interest in limiting who can conduct restorations in the same way that medical professionals restrict who can practice medicine. Some would argue that this ensures a high level of competence, but professionalism would likely limit the amount of public participation and lower the value of restoration. Second, certification would create a new kind of political economy for restoration, where the cost of restoration would rise to meet the needs of professionals at the expense, perhaps, of community clients. Third, and perhaps most vexing, is the uniformity of practice. While creating a uniform or at least less heterogeneous curriculum that is regulated by standard tests, one ensures a solid base of knowledge. There would be some heterogeneity in engineering curriculums, for example, in the way that some universities are known for problem-based learning while others follow a more traditional approach. The problem is that such uniformity will restrict

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creativity. Ingenuity often occurs outside the main currents of practice. True rebels are often the parents of invention. By pressing restorationists into a certified mold, there is a danger of losing some of the vitality that makes restoration so bountiful. Light identifies the main issue in terms of closed versus open content of restoration. Certification, he worries, will close the content of restoration by enforcing an exacting definition of restoration. What counts as restoration will be restricted and measures will be put in place to enforce the content, including an appropriate vocabulary. Those who understand the restricted content—those who are specialized and certified—will prosper. A related worry, and one that emerged in discussions of the Chicago Wilderness project, is that volunteers (i.e., nonprofessionals) are sometimes scapegoated because they lack specific qualifications.36 Open content, for Light, is the key for maintaining the participatory character of restoration: “If open content is an important part of the democratic potential of ecological restoration, and certification is a move toward closed content, then certification can threaten the egalitarianism of ecological restoration.”37 Further, moves toward closed content tend to be irreversible because of the institutionalization necessary to develop professional practice. This is not an argument against certification, just a further cautionary note. I take these arguments less as a rejection of professional aspirations and more as guidelines for advancing restoration practice. This is based on two practical assumptions: that there is a pressing need for the creation of meaningful restoration work, and that participation remains a vital aspect of restoration. Perhaps these tensions are not irreconcilable. They may well require new thinking about how best to grow the practice of restoration. It is clear, I think, what we do not want: an overly controlled, circumscribed professional practice that forecloses on community involvement. The answer may be to form small-scale practitioner guilds that can encourage high-quality local practices. Training and education programs should aim to impart the best available knowledge, including ensuring that students are aware that restoration builds participation and is a critical cultural practice. Finally, there is a need to develop and enlarge models for effective participation. There are many possibilities for mixing professional and volunteer activity, and

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developing strong volunteer programs is becoming a priority in many sectors, not just restoration. Kellie Westervelt’s Cape Florida volunteer program, an ambitious restoration initiative operated by the American Littoral Society just a few miles south of Miami, has clear standards of conduct, mandatory training, and clear responsibilities. These are not meant to be onerous or restrictive, rather to encourage and enliven possibilities for volunteers. Judging by the care taken in preparing the volunteer handbook and by the hundreds of participants, this seems a good strategy. There are alternatives worth exploring that do not involve either stalling the ambitions of people who want to earn a living as restorationists or creating a professional orthodoxy. It is nonetheless a tension, and one that will not go away easily or quickly. That we live in a society geared to experts and specialization is an indication that participation will be the one needing defense, not professional ambition. Life in a consumptive culture amplifies this tendency by making ecosystems commodities. The theming of nature, mitigation projects, and corporate restoration conspire to turn restoration into a process of commodification. The tendency toward professionalization through certification and other mechanisms is an indication that the very practice of restoration can be a product. The Promise and Problems of Ecological Restoration The process of commodification threatens to undermine the subject of restoration by distorting our relations with natural processes and also by turning the practice of restoration into a product. There are other reasons why we should worry about the prospect of restoration, and they have to do substantially with the growing success of restoration. Ironically, the greatest strength of restoration—its capacity to embrace a new way of looking at involvement with natural processes—is also potentially its greatest weakness. Too much success as well as the specter of commodification risk denaturing restoration. Restoration becomes not a practice of authentic engagement but one of detached, unapologetic, technological repair. Restoration is prey to forces such as commodification because of its broad cultural reach. We read into it aspirations that go significantly beyond quotidian concerns, and it is the expanse of the

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promise of restoration that makes it especially ripe for the picking. Perhaps the most transparent view of the larger cultural significance of restoration comes through the notion of redemption. Restoration offers a redemptive opportunity—we heal ourselves culturally, and perhaps spiritually, by healing nature (in redemption, to carry the biblical image further, there is also the possibility of absolution, which provides a strong incentive for action by those racked with guilt over environmental degradation). Thus, restoration taps potent cultural values that may well accelerate both participation and commitment to its practice. William Jordan and Frederick Turner have argued separately that restoration engages profound cultural beliefs such as shame, and this calls for rituals to process the pain of destruction and the rebirth of beauty.38 I find myself frequently describing restoration in terms of health, as in restoring planetary health. All of this is grand, heady stuff, and reflects the extent to which restoration evokes profound reflection. Closely connected with these claims is a win-win attitude that has swept public and corporate life. Traditional conservation and preservation techniques were, and are, perceived as denying certain groups (e.g., industrial loggers) their lifestyle in order to protect an ecosystem. With restoration, degraded lands are returned to a former or ecologically diverse character, and in the process new value is created through social participation.39 This has not escaped the notice of environmental groups, government agencies, and corporations. Restoration is finding an especially comfortable home in corporate boardrooms, as I mentioned earlier: an act of restoration is perceived by all as a sound investment, for example in sites around corporate offices. We are caught also in a vortex of change about one of the most basic questions: What counts as proper representation of nature? Older images of bucolic country woodlots and mountain vistas are giving way to the cultural productions of roadside rest areas, MTV backgrounds, nature themes in video games, imagineering at Disney World, and a host of televised images of nature that bear faint resemblance to more deeply rooted cultural ideas about nature.40 Thus, hyperreality moves increasingly to the foreground. The ambiguous notion of postmodern restoration, described earlier, is fueled in part by this new approach to reality. Through new ways of critically assessing what nature means to us and how restoration can best

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function, it also offers the best hope we have for advancing good restoration. The world we are entering in the early twenty-first century is only partly comprehensible in terms of antecedents. Taken together, this partial list of cultural values and ideas expands the conception of restoration from practice to mode. The broad reach of restoration means that it has significance at the level of a cultural idea instead of only at the level of practice. The idea of a restorative mode is borrowed from Leo Marx’s work on pastoralism, especially his speculations on its future. Marx’s work is significant for restorationists in that he defines and describes a characteristic American mediation between culture and nature. Pastoralism is an ancient concept the essence of which is “a sophisticated vision of the simple life led by a shepherd (or surrogate) figure, one who mediates between the imperatives of nature and culture, between the dangers and deprivations of the undeveloped environment (wild nature) and the excessive constraints of civilization.”41 Emphasizing its constitution as a mode instead of, say, a practice, is to underscore the mentality or general principle of pastoralism. Restoration may be divided similarly between the manifold practices of restoration and restorationism. The latter is a mode referring to a characteristic way of thinking about the relationship between nature and culture and signals perhaps a reunion of these two traditionally opposite representations. Restorationism directs attention to the increasing habit of repairing damage or despoliation, and acknowledges the cultural significance of the capacity to mend ecosystems. Taken as a mode, then, restoration becomes a way of understanding nature that is connected to a diverse set of practices and institutions. The difficulty comes in assuming that restorationism is necessarily good. After all, there are some features of it beneath the surface that should cause us concern—for example, the way restoration can easily become a technofix or a Disney prop, and there is little to prevent it from being an apology for increased development. The crucial question is this: How can the restorative mode be shaped to honor our relations with ecosystems? This was, to a certain extent, the theme of chapters 2 and 3, and a theme to which I will return in the final chapter. For now, let us invert the question and ask what is dangerous or worrisome about restoration. There is excitement about restoration, the kind

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of infectious, boundless enthusiasm that one finds at any restoration conference. There is a sense that one’s own practices are tied to a world of practice, and that small steps taken together can remove the corrosion of too much heedless activity. With anything, however, true belief can turn easily into blind obeisance if not tempered. We risk courting restorationism as an ideology, in other words a strong mode that may initially advance our cause but may ultimately undermine our best intentions the way so many ideological positions tend to do. The fact that restoration is an easily identifiable mode is one clue. The late David Brower, a champion of American environmental causes, rejected restoration in the 1980s because he feared that it would deflect energy from preservation and conservation. He caused quite a stir at the first SER conference in Chicago in 1989 when he claimed that restoration should be opposed at all costs: it would distract the serious work of environmentalists in protecting precious places. He recanted later, producing his global CPR—conservation, preservation, restoration—strategy on behalf of the Earth Island Institute. He touched a nerve with many who believed that restoration was an industrial apologia, a mop to clean up after our messes. The underlying fear is that we will become so proficient at restoration that this will give us license to despoil anything we want and later fix it up. The point is legitimate. Think of the analog with recycling. In the 1970s when I first helped with volunteer recycling programs, we practiced the four Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Twenty-five years later, four R’s have been reduced to three. The first and to my mind the most radical one has been dropped: refuse. During this interval large wastemanagement companies began to integrate operations moving toward processing trash for purposes of industrial recovery. Sophisticated waste-separation systems are now available that obviate the need for source separation. A combination of fancy machinery and hand labor separate the streams into compostable, reusable, and landfill waste. With such a system in place, and with no minimal additional demands on the consumer, the incentives are removed for refusal to consume. In fact, quite the opposite is true. It becomes economically productive to generate more waste if a significant portion can be recycled. The implications are similar with ecological restoration. If restoration becomes embedded deeply in social practice, will this deflect our best intentions around

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protection of existing places? Will restoration give us the technological capacity to lay waste to areas with the promise of restoration or creation elsewhere? David Brower was right: we should be worried. Some philosophical critics of restoration amplify this concern by pointing to restoration as an elaborate practice of fakery. This charge originated in Robert Eliot’s 1982 essay “Faking Nature,” in which he described restoration as a kind of forgery.42 Andrew Light interprets Eliot as distinguishing between malicious and pernicious forms of restoration. At the core of Eliot’s case is the “restoration thesis,” which stipulates that “the destruction of what has value is compensated for by the later creation (recreation) of something of equal value.” Cast in this light, it is easy to see why restoration is a pernicious activity: this opens the door wide to mitigation and wholesale creation of ecosystems solely according to human interests. Restoration recreates value where the original value was eliminated. Hence, the art-forgery analogy makes sense. A forgery is seldom (never?) accorded a higher value than the original on which it is based. Surely Eliot must be referring to specific kinds of restoration, not to restoration practice as a whole. Stripping value from one place and giving some of that value to another is not representative of all types of restoration. Eliot indicates as much in his later work when he proposes that “artificially transforming an utterly barren, ecologically bankrupt landscape into something richer and more subtle may be a good thing. That is a view quite compatible with the belief that replacing a rich natural environment with a rich artificial one is a bad thing.”43 I agree with Light that this paves the way for a distinction between good and bad restoration and that Eliot has done a thorough job of dismissing the latter. Eric Katz, who fuses interests in the philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy, took up Eliot’s position a decade later and argued that restoration as a whole is a misguided and a dangerous distraction. Restoration is “the big lie,” in which human arrogation and domination are worked out on the land yet again. Restored ecosystems are human artifacts, not natural ecosystems. Despite good intentions people are remaking nature, often in their own image. Ecological restoration is a preeminent device for managing nature; it encourages by its very constitution the deliberate manipulation of nature. Unlike other envi-

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ronmental practices that typically are intended either to remove human insults or protect places from abusive activities, restoration obliges people to pick up shovels, plant, seed, weed, burn, and selectively use biocides. For Katz, restoration represents lamentable meddling; it conforms to the same destructive patterns that produced the problems to which restorationists are now responding. Restoration is a product of a commodified relationship with nature, one that provides technological fixes to damaged ecosystems at the expense of the important matter of environmental preservation. In a sense restoration is a philosophical category mistake: one cannot do what it is impossible to do—that is, restore nature. Nature is self-regulating and autonomous.44 This philosophical dispute also exposes a very basic differerce of opinion between those, like Katz, who see a sharp divide between nature and culture, and the many restorationists who prefer an integrated view. For a strict dualist it is inconceivable that human intervention in ecosystems could be anything but instrumental and therefore corrosive. Apart from this ontological difference, which is difficult to mediate, Katz (and Eliot, too) seriously underestimates the cocreative process of restoration, the fact that restorative acts are insignificant without ecological processes. Restoration practice is always about assisted recovery and not about the creation of artifact even if the deliberate (or otherwise) remnants of human activity are later evident. To counter the instances of domination advanced by Katz, it seems equally plausible that restoration liberates ecological processes that are stalled or eradicated by malicious or heedless human activity. More important is the possibility that restoration creates positive value.45 Moreover, Katz seems unmoved by alternative propositions about the way restoration is practiced. He is right to point out that restoration easily manifests human arrogance toward natural processes. At the same time he does not admit that restoration practice can also produce profoundly humbling, salutary relations between people and ecosystems. I agree entirely that restoration risks commodification, and disagree completely that this is either an inherent property of restoration or an inevitable condition.46 What Katz, Eliot, and earlier, Brower, argue is that the broad constitution of restoration is destructive of our best ecologically inclined ambitions. The arguments work in three substantial ways, first by pointing to

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the problem of faking nature, second by proposing that restoration mirrors destructive technological patterns, and finally by deflecting attention from things that ought to matter to us more, such as conservation and preservation. All three arguments warrant attention by practicing restorationists if restoration is to advance beneficially for natural processes. As I have already indicated, the argument about fakery seems naive in light of what we know about ecological process. The second argument ignores the possibility that beneath destructive technological patterns that may harm restoration are patterns that enliven participation and benefit natural processes. Finally, it would appear at least so far that restoration has, if anything, underscored the importance of preservation and conservation of precious ecosystems. After all, most restorationists are attuned to the fact that restoration is a regrettable necessity in the wake of wanton human activity. In all three of these arguments one finds inattention to the practice of restoration, or what it is that restorationists are actually doing. Several years ago in an essay that delineated the meaning of good ecological restoration, I traced an expanded conception of restoration (figure 5.1). My argument was simple: we measure the value of restoration not by narrow measures of scientific effectiveness but by the broader implications of this practice, or taking inspiration from Bruno Latour, “restoration in action.”47 Restoration depends on two foundational principles: ecological integrity and historical fidelity (chapter 3). Thus a restoration is effective to the extent that these two principles are satisfied according to prior criteria and normative practice. Few would disagree that this is the core of ecological restoration.48 What if the notion of efficiency is introduced? Supposing that two talented restoration professionals are bidding on the same contract. Both will deliver a top-quality product by satisfying all the stated criteria. An efficient restoration is an effective restoration accomplished in the least amount of time with the least input of labor, resources, and materials. In adding efficiency we shift away from strictly technical criteria in defining good restoration. Efficiency introduces a different value system. Efficiency matters for several reasons. In a competitive market of ecological restoration, which in some cases is beginning to form in the wake of American policies such as “no net loss,” efficiency provides a

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Effective Restoration Satisfies ecological fidelity: structural/compositional replication functional success durability

Efficiency economic prescriptions

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Expanded Conception historical cultural social political moral aesthetic

Figure 5.1 Expanded conception of ecological restoration (adapted from Higgs, “What Is Good Ecological Restoration.”).

performance edge for the restorationist. A doctrine of efficiency runs deep in North American culture, suggesting that in the competition between two activities heading for the same end, the more efficient one is more valuable. Beyond interproject competition, efficiency is defensible because it frees up more resources, materials, and personnel for restoration. Thus, if we want restoration to flourish, we ought to want efficient restoration. Recognizing the expanded context of efficiency results in a disquieting view of restoration. What happened to public participation, cultural revitalization, social justice, beauty, and a host of other considerations? Is efficiency as far as we want to go? I suspect not, which is why I argued that we need an expanded conception of ecological restoration that acknowledges that good restoration is more than technical competence and efficiency, but embraces a range of social, cultural, political, moral, and aesthetic qualities that vary from place to place. In expanding the conception of restoration to include these additional qualities, we adjudicate its worth on a wide basis. This means that factors other than scientific measures will determine the worth of a

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restoration project, that additional kinds of practice and knowledge are vital. On reflection, I realize there are two serious flaws in this position, although I think the notion of an expanded conception is still useful as a heuristic device. First, in opening up a broader context for restoration, there is little to suggest that restoration practice will be informed by constructive principles such as social justice, moral regard for nonhuman species, attentiveness to different kinds of cultural knowledge and practice, and so on. Attention to these kinds of concerns is far from guaranteed. In fact, what seems more likely is that the broader pattern of the device paradigm—commodification—will infect the practice of restoration, leading us increasingly to evaluate its worth on the basis of technological considerations. This constitutes a grave threat to the promise of ecological restoration as a socially responsible practice. Once again, restorationism suggests the great power of restoration to inform our cultural practice of redressing ecological damage, and at the same time risks being co-opted by destructive patterns. The problems and the promise, therefore, are two sides of the same concern. The second oversight was inattentiveness to the matter of cultural integrity. I recognized in proposing an expanded conception that cultural, political, social, aesthetic, and moral beliefs would loom large. However, the model I proposed still had only effectiveness at its core. It is apparent to me now that restoration is successful only to the extent that the life of the human community is changed to reflect the health of the restored ecosystem. In other words, we are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with ecosystems that are close to us. This shifts the locus of the model of good restoration to include a bicameral view of restoration, one that combines cultural practices and ecological integrity. This is the main subject of the next chapter. Social involvement through focal practices is a crucial factor in the success of ecological restoration. By focusing on things of enduring significance that bear scrutiny and reflection, it is possible to avoid or at least reduce the distractions of commodified restoration. The solution, or more properly the reform, is locally enacted and globally sanctioned. The countless small acts of restoration carried out by people who value participation in natural processes will continue to make a difference as long as this cooperation is acknowledged and

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supported by the broader movement. If restoration becomes overly professionalized and scientifically determined, or we lose sight of what is authentic and what is distraction, restoration will become merely another instance of human arrogance. Ecological restoration is too easily absorbed by the device paradigm unless there is a conscious, sustained local participation in decision making and practice. Science is a critical ingredient in restoration, but so too are those practices based on long-standing, firsthand experience with places. This highlights the theoretical distinction between technological restoration and focal restoration. Technological restoration is that which results from commodified practices in a hyperreal setting. The reference points for such restoration are conditioned by the device paradigm. Glamorous distractions are produced by a machinery of illusion that manipulates us into consuming packaged, digestible cultural products, and these morsels appeal to deeply held beliefs about community, family, adventure, achievement, and nature. Similarly, we are witnessing the rise of technological representations of nature and wilderness that are proving alluring, and they condition our awareness of the real thing. Our cultural beliefs affect our practices, and spectacles such as the Disney Corporation’s Wilderness Lodge are transforming our beliefs about wilderness. The message is that nature is more pliable and congenial than previously thought, and this undermines the potential for locally engaged ecological restoration. Alternatively, focal restoration resists the device paradigm by centering on reality and the precarious resourcefulness of local participation and focal practices. The former describes the wide, paved road to the future, the latter the meandering and less traveled one. Can we bring focal restoration to prominence and articulate its character in a society given over to technological spectacle? Are our imaginative capacities diminishing, so that we are less and less able to conceive of positive encounters with real nature?

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6 Focal Restoration

Sailing for Oriental civilizations and unconscious of either true destination or the motives that drove the sails, Columbus and his successors broke in upon mythic zones wholly unsuspected. It is impossible to overemphasize their error. What soon became known as the “New World” was in fact the old world, the oldest world we know, the world the West had once been. Now the onward press of Christian history brought a civilization into contact with its psychic and spiritual past, and this was a contact for which it was utterly unprepared. The ensuing conflict was so deep that it has yet to be resolved or even understood. —Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit against the Wilderness The transformative power of the great romance—be it with an admirable mate or a noble cause—remains marvelous. Surely the possibilities of it linger, surely as the seed bank of the forest will reproduce the woods, given the least advantage. If I could wish the total and complete restoration of the world, and the banishing of despair, I would wish for the immediate preservation of all species, all prairies, all forests, all swamps, all deserts; and for a return of crazy love, of go-for-broke passion between women and men, men and men, women and women, humans of all ages and places; between humans and soil and everything that arises there from. Let the love and commitment between beings be part of this great healing, and purify us of cynicism. If only we can dare to belong to one another, and to our land. —Stephanie Mills, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Lands For my part, I will be thinking about what salmon are trying to teach us. That there is a way for us humans to be, just as there is a way for salmon to be. That we are related by virtue of the places to which we choose to return. —Freeman House, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species

In this chapter I present an antidote to technological restoration, which was critiqued in the previous chapter. If technological restoration reduces

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ecosystems and the practice of restoration to commodities, focal restoration rebuilds our concern with things that matter. In this chapter we learn that restoration is about more than ecological integrity and historical fidelity; it is also about focal practice. In fact, what is so distinctive about restoration as a practice is that it builds value through participation, and in doing so strengthens human communities. Restoration is doing well when it nourishes nature and culture. The journey begins on Discovery Island near my new home in Victoria, British Columbia. The Lekwungen people, or Songhees First Nation, are regenerating their way of life by restoring the harvest of a traditional food plant, camas. This act of cultural restoration is at the same time ecological restoration, and so the two are inextricably bound. A number of restorationists have advanced different ways of bringing ecology and culture together. I admire, for example, the impulse behind terms like ecocultural restoration, but I want a term such as focal restoration that goes beyond merely binding two agencies together (ecology and culture). An appropriate antidote to technological restoration must be capable of pointing to what is good restoration. A discussion of the cultural dimensions of restoration would be incomplete without an account of ritual, which has been a minor if persistent theme in restoration literature, and participation, which moves focal practice in restoration onto a political platform. Finally, having worked with different models for representing good restoration, from expanding circles of consideration to one that situates cultural practice and ecological integrity at the same level, I conclude the chapter with a process model: landscape evolution. I propose that ecological processes and focal practices are in a continuous, spiraling relationship. Restoration now has three bases: historical fidelity, ecological integrity, and focal practice. Discovery Island I sat in the hazy morning sun near the boat launch at Cattle Point watching recreational fishers and boaters prepare for a day on the water, including an unreasonably large trailered luxury yacht whose owner had neglected to replace the engine compartment drain plug. Misfortune aside, there was satisfying hubris in the mad scramble to stop the salt-

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water from drowning the engine, one of many nightmares a yacht owner can experience (I was rooting silently for the saltwater). This was my fifth day on Vancouver Island, the beginning of a several-month sojourn as a visiting professor at the University of Victoria. Nancy Turner, my host and noted ethnobotanist, had invited me to tag along on a camas (an important root vegetable in the traditional diet of First Nations in the region1) harvest and traditional pit cook that was to take place that day on Discovery Island. It was difficult to gauge how much weight to attach to the invitation; I knew that Turner had inspired many students and First Nations colleagues through recovery of traditional practices. She had filled me in on the background for the trip, the people who would be attending, and what I should bring. I tried to be attentive, but I find there is so much to absorb arriving in a new place that details sometimes do not stick, or the ones that do end up not being the important ones in the longer stretch of time. I sat on the boat launch sipping coffee from a thermos, expectant but not yet excited. Discovery Island is part of a small chain of islands easily visible from the east side of Victoria, a city of several hundred thousand and the capital of the Province of British Columbia. Victoria is located at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, the largest island off the west coast of Canada. Through quirks of history, politics, and ecology, Victoria is located considerably south of the Canada-U.S. border and is caught in the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains. Summers are dry and warm; winters are wet and mild, but less wet than most places on the west coast. Plants grow here that are reminiscent of the Mediterranean region. Gardeners in Victoria are the envy of all Canadians, and are often heard smugly on national radio programs extolling the virtues of fresh figs and artichokes. The small group of islands just off Victoria is a popular destination for picnickers and overnight campers (as is the larger archipelago of U.S. and Canadian islands known as the Gulf Islands, but these are farther away from Victoria). These islands—Discovery and Chatham being the main ones— are designated ecological reserves and First Nations land, as well as being host to communications towers and navigational aids. There are no permanent residents, the last person, a member of the Songhees First Nation, or Lekwungen people, having left Discovery Island in the 1950s.

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The dozen of us heading to the north side of Discovery Island that day were shuttled in two groups. I volunteered for the second crew, assessing quite accurately, I think, that my help was less vital. I had never participated in pit cooking, knew few of the coastal species of plants, and was dumb as a post about marine travel and organisms of the littoral zone. It was a new world for me. The four people left behind were conversational in that awkward way that strangers are who are about to embark on a voyage together. I struck up a conversation with Cheryl Bryce, a woman who had been introduced to me earlier as one of the prime movers behind the day’s activities. I asked about her connections to this place. Bryce gestured over her shoulder toward Cadboro Bay: “My great-great grandfather lived there. I am descended from the people who once lived here.” Then it sank in. This is her place. She is one of the Lekwungen people, whose lives in this region stretch back thousands of years. Concerted British colonization began in 1843 when James Douglas was dispatched by the Hudson’s Bay Company from Fort Vancouver on the mainland to establish a presence on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Concern was growing over American annexation of the Columbia River basin and settlement in the Oregon and Washington Territories. A British presence across the narrow Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Olympic peninsula would solidify British colonial ambitions. Douglas arrived on March 14, 1843, and chose a site for Fort Victoria on land owned by Lekwungen people.2 The Treaty of Washington between the United States and Great Britain in 1846 secured the border at the forty-nineth parallel, with exceptions being made for Vancouver Island and several of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland, which lay well to the south of this latitude to become British-claimed territory. On January 13, 1849, in a move that would boggle the mind of even the most zealous property developer today, Queen Victoria assigned Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Rapid settlement of the region would effectively fend off lingering American interests, and there was no better agent than the Company. With the decline of fur trading in the nineteenth century, this monumental corporation was diversifying into property sales and management, fish harvesting and curing, farming and logging—basically anything that would turn a handy profit from a fecund landscape. An

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initial order of business was to secure prime lands for settlement by following the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that required the supposed extinguishment of Aboriginal title to lands.3 Prevailing colonial policy of the era compelled Douglas to negotiate sale of the lands from First Nations, who would retain ownership of limited village lands and enclosed fields. The compensation was modest by any calculus: £103.14 Sterling.4 Thus was completed the sale of lands that to the British meant unbridled opportunity and to the Lekwungen the promise of continued use of traditional hunting and gathering areas in unoccupied lands. The misunderstanding was profound. Over the next sixty years, having been decimated by smallpox and other diseases brought by traders and settlers in the late nineteenth century, the Lekwungen were relocated twice, ending up in their present reservation, about 100 acres in what is now Esquimault, a suburb of Victoria, mostly surrounded by suburban development. The first move was a gathering of people from scattered village sites into a reservation in the inner harbor of Victoria, roughly where the posh Ocean Pointe housing and resort complex now lies. The second move from there to the present reserve further to the west took place in 1911. There were fewer than 100 survivors of several thousand that lived here prior to historic times. The scope of the misunderstanding and devastation is difficult for me to comprehend, but imagine what it is like for Cheryl Bryce. Sitting at the boat launch that summer morning, I looked north along the coast toward Cadboro Bay and saw a lush city, expensive waterfront homes, sailboats in the harbor, commercial shipping vessels in the distance, and in the foreground were people hauling coolers of beer and snacks to their boats. Bryce sees this, too, but her imagination connects to the life of her ancestors in the way all of us do who stand in the place where our people once stood and lived—except that her vision is continuous for hundreds, thousands of years. I cannot come close to understanding the loss she feels each time she gazes at the landscape. She assembles the knowledge of smallpox, manipulative land deals, promises to hunting, fishing, and gathering areas that were overtaken by development, and the compression of her culture into a piece of reservation land smaller than many settlement farms further north on the Saanich Peninsula. Bryce can walk anywhere along the coast of what is now Victoria from Metchosin to

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Cordova Bay, past the Empress Hotel, the tony housing complexes of the inner harbor, the promenade along Dallas Road, Clover Point (named for a native species of clover long extirpated from the site), Oak Bay (“more British than Britain”), and the University of Victoria, and know that her ancestors used this land. Former village sites dot the landscape, but these are covered by the laminations of other people’s lives. Bryce knows that if the practices of her ancestors die, if their distinctive dialect is lost, the world becomes less diverse and we have lost yet another model for how to live in a place. The pressures of assimilation are tremendous in an era of wage labor and technological distraction, and to a certain extent all of us are caught in a web of consumption (see chapter 5). The challenge is one of balancing tradition with the lifeways of a dominant culture. The Songhees First Nation now numbers about 400 people, rebounding from the devastatingly low numbers at the turn of the twentieth century. Activists such as Bryce, who works for the Nation as a cultural program specialist, and Dave Bodaly, a member of the Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) First Nation who lives among the Lekwungen people and works to document the life histories of people through photography, are part of a cultural revitalization. Their work is a kind of restoration, at least to the extent that what took place in the past guides their work in the present and opens possibilities for the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Discovery Island activities. Discovery Island and Chatham Island are also vestiges of traditional Lekwungen land that are deeded in part as reserve. Lekwungen families lived on the islands as recently at the 1950s, and the islands were important locations for harvesting and fishing. Joan Morris was ten years old when her family left the island, and she remembers three or four longhouses now obliterated by vandalism and vegetation overgrowth.5 The rich meadows were cultivated primarily for blue camas, a critical food source and trade item for the Lekwungen.6 Camas fields were carefully tended, eliminating competing plant species such as the related but deadly death camas (Zigadenus venenosus), and burned regularly to increase fertility. Harvesting of the camas bulbs would take place in the springtime after flowering. Women, primarily, would use digging sticks (which still remain the best way to harvest camas bulbs) to lift the

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meadow sod, select the large, healthy bulbs, and replace the sod containing smaller bulbs for harvest in subsequent years. Regular tending of this garden would result in easy harvest of large quantities of bulbs.7 Camas bulbs are prepared for eating traditionally by pit cooking, an elaborate and ceremonially rich practice. Bryce had first approached Nancy Turner in 1998 for help in identifying plants near Cattle Point for a research project on traditional food and medicinal plants; Cattle Point, one of the closest points to Discovery Island, was a site of former Lekwungen occupation. In addition to Turner’s renown in ethnobotanical circles, she is a fixture in Victoria, having grown up here, raised a family, written many definitive field guides on plants in British Columbia, and most recently teaching in the popular School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. She is often the first point of contact for anyone wishing advice on local plants. Brenda Beckwith, a graduate student at the University of Victoria with a specialty in the ethnobiology of blue camas, accompanied Turner to help identify plants at Cattle Point. The discussions that day on Cattle Point turned to the idea of traditional harvesting, and this set in motion the idea of harvesting camas on Discovery Island. Bryce did some research and found out that the last camas harvest likely took place in the late nineteenth century, over 100 years earlier. Here was a chance to bring back an important cultural practice and reassert traditional land management on an island crucial to Lekwungen history. This is how the group of us, including a half dozen Lekwungen teenagers who might have had other activities in mind on that sunny summer morning, managed to be sitting on the boat launch waiting for a ride to Discovery Island. The trip to the island took only fifteen minutes by inflatable boat powered with a substantial outboard engine and piloted by Marilyn Lambert, a renowned local naturalist and local caretaker of the island ecological reserves. We passed over the wide part of the channel but not far to the left was Strongtide Island, which is an emblem for prodigious tidal races and large standing waves. We arrived on the north shore of Discovery Island at low tide. When the boat engine shut down, the world was serene. The sound of voices carried clearly but not noisily across the tangle of reefs and tidal pools that separated us from the beach. The first

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party had chosen a site for the pit cook on the beach just above high water, surrounded by huge drift logs and shaded by a Garry oak tree. Volunteers had radiated out, some in search of the camas meadow and others for suitable pit-cooking stones, firewood, and plant materials. I helped with the fire, which needed time to build a strong bed of coals to heat the pit-cooking rocks. The principle of pit-cooking is straightforward, but knowing how to make it work well is a finely tuned art. Two dozen stones free of cracks and smaller than an adult’s fist were needed. If too large, they will not heat sufficiently; too small and they are difficult to handle and will not carry the heat. Once the fire was roaring we placed the stones on top and fed the flames for an hour until some of the stones were glowing hot. The pit itself is roughly one and a half meters across and a half-meter deep, and we dug through coarse beach gravel and sand. Making a good pit is an exercise in meticulous preparation and then furious action. With the fire well underway and the pit dug, we headed for the camas meadow. A camas meadow in midsummer on a sunny slope is unremarkable to the novice. The camas bulbs send up glorious blue flowers in spring (April), produce distinctive seed stalks, and then die back. Growing among grasses and other plants, most of which have passed their seasonal flowering, the camas can be hard to locate. Beckwith lectured us on avoiding death camas, a relative of the edible species, which by its very name inspired respect. In well-maintained traditional camas meadows, people would weed out the death camas. It is most reliable to identify the three members of the lily family likely to be found in association on Discovery Island—common camas, chocolate lily, and death camas—by their bulbs, and thus samples were dug for us to compare. Several of us tried shovels to turn over a patch of sod, lift the bulbs, and then replace the sod. My experience was similar to all those who try a new harvesting technique for the first time: How on earth could people survive if they relied on such a slow activity? Bryce had brought along a traditional-shaped digging stick, which is a tool of simple sophistication. Formed from hardwood, the stick is straight and roughly one meter long. One end is cut in a spatula shape, and this is the end that is plunged into the meadow. Designs vary on this theme, some with t-handles at the top, some longer or shorter, and some with decorations. Digging was a

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relatively new experience for Bryce, too, but with the digging stick she was able to achieve almost immediately what I had been struggling to accomplish with the shovel. The stick loosened the sod and turned it over easily, revealing the multiple bulbs. Most of them were small, about the size of a clove of garlic. Beckwith assured us that in an actively managed camas meadow these would have been considered too small for collection and left for harvest in subsequent years. Her theory, which is one of the main ideas she is testing through her experimental work on camas, is that traditional methods enhanced the production of larger camas bulbs. We found a few larger bulbs approaching the size of a new potato. The lack of production did not surprise Beckwith, Turner, or Bryce: this meadow had not been tended for over a century. We combined our meager harvest of approximately two cups of camas bulbs and some Hooker’s onions that someone had found, and joined the rest of the group around the fire. It was just after noon. Turner and others had brought vegetables to cook in the pit—carrots, potatoes, yams, leeks, onions, and garlic. These were mostly nontraditional vegetables, but they allowed us a good feast in any case. There is nothing to suggest that traditional cooking methods must be matched entirely with traditional foods. The blending of past and present brings heightened meaning to both. Everyone was assigned a task to match the exuberance we shared once Turner had finished explaining the operation and gave the signal to commence. First, two people with shovels separated the burning embers from the rocks, lifted the hot rocks, and placed them evenly across the bottom of the pit. Someone spread a layer of wet kelp fronds over the rocks and a cloud of steam rose. A two-meter-long stick was held vertically in the center of the pit to create an opening for pouring water later. Wet Douglas-fir boughs went on next,8 then a layer of spinachlike orache (Atriplex patula). On this, all of the food was arrayed. Another layer of the orache was next, followed by a final layer of fir boughs. The stick was removed from the pit, leaving a narrow hole in which to pour about three liters of water for steaming the food. Two overlapping canvas tarps covered the entire pit—woven bark matting would have been used in earlier times—and were completely covered with a layer of sand and gravel. Any leaks of steam were sealed with more sand, and two large sticks were placed across the pit

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to ensure that no one would step on it. The entire loading operation took under five minutes. Speed was of the essence—controlled chaos—to ensure that as much heat as possible was retained. Elated, we began the long wait. A few of us headed out crab fishing after the pit was set. Pits are often left for twenty-four hours to fully cook the food, which in the case of camas helps convert the complex carbohydrate, inulin, in the bulbs to simpler sugars based on fructose. When cooked completely the camas tastes like a sweet, sweet potato. Turner’s vast experience with pit cooking, stretching for several decades among the many First Nations of British Columbia, indicated a minimum of four hours would be required. There is always mystery with pit cooking, wondering whether the food will cook well, how it will taste with the essence of different plants. In this case, Turner was worried that the Douglas fir might impart too strong a taste. Pits vary considerably in their construction and purpose. Different plants are used for the base and surrounding the food, and each imparts special qualities. Vegetables are commonly cooked in pits, but so are seafood, fish, and meats. The afternoon was radiant, with Mount Baker, an exhausted snowcapped volcano, glowing to the east, and the crystalline Olympic range to the south. A rising tide changed the shape of the small islands. After setting the crab trap we headed for Chatham Island to look at a rare orchid and to show me, the visiting restorationist, the problem with invasive plants and careless activity. Few request permission as they should of the Songhees First Nation to camp on the islands. We counted several dozen people preparing for a weekend of sun, armed with portable barbeques, coolers, large tents, portable generators, and portable stereos. One of the islands was burned to a crisp by campers who needed rescuing; their signal fire got away. Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), the bane of local naturalists and restorationists, was evident everywhere. Broom is a tenacious weedy shrub that closes out most native vegetation, a fine example of ecological imperialism.9 The story has it that a Scottish settler, Captain Calhoun Grant, who stayed on Vancouver Island for a brief time, brought with him a few seeds of broom, and it was from this germination that the tangle of green originated. Like so many weedy exotics, its presence is often a bane only to those who can distinguish a

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weedy plant from a nonweedy native one, and who care about plant invasions. For many, broom is welcomed as hardy greenery that sports brilliant yellow flowers in the spring. To a restorationist these islands need limits on human practice, removal of garbage, elimination of invasive species, selective planting and seeding of plants, erosion control, and intensive work on heavily used camp and picnic sites. I wondered what restoration meant for Bryce. If she had been standing here 500 years earlier looking toward Cadboro Bay, she would have seen the homes of her ancestors. This place has continuity for her that I cannot understand given my own mobile family history. Her recollections recover a deep past, but nostalgia is never enough. The motivation for her and others in the Songhees First Nation is cultural survival and flourishing. Remember, this luscious landscape that is home to one of North America’s most desirable cities was once the place of the Lewungen people, and all of it has boiled down to an urban reservation, smaller than the average-sized farm in Canada, and a couple of islands. There is no prospect of restoration in the sense of returning to some point in the past. Moving to the future depends on strategic alliances with the dominant culture and rejuvenation of historical practices. Why are these past practices so vital? They tap into cultural continuity and provide inspiration. The strength of the culture that thrived here for thousands of years remains protected in the ceremonies, practices, stories, and lives of people. Bringing these back or guarding them is the only sure way of continuing, and one of the best ways that the dominant culture has of learning a different way of being on and with the land. The weight of Bryce’s responsibility is tremendous. I met with her after the Discovery Island experience at the Songhees Band office, a modest building along busy Admiral’s Road in Esquimault, and we headed for coffee at an upscale café in the adjacent shopping mall. She moves between two cultural realities, making sense of both and bringing what is necessary to each. The challenge of restoration for her is not just in revitalizing a lost practice, but also in convincing people of the need for maintaining such practices and ensuring the ecological conditions that underlie such activities. The ecological aspects of restoration on Discovery Island, for example, are critical. Ensuring healthy communities of native plants, including rare ones, will ensure the harvest of

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camas and other medicinal and food plants. Restoration would involve active management of the camas meadows, not to create a monoculture of camas even if this were possible, but a complicated perennial polyculture.10 Restoration might involve bringing people back to live on the island, not in large numbers, but a few who would watch over the place. Restoration would make the island more integral, both culturally and ecologically. The tide was high after the crab-fishing expedition, and we were able to beach the boat not far from the pit. Turner had prepared a large kettle of tea made from plants she collected within easy reach: wild rose (Rosa nutkana) and thimbleberry leaves (Rubus parviflorus), and some Labrador tea (Ledum groenlandicum) that she had gathered recently on the San Juan ridge near the Jordan River, west of Victoria. We built the fire up again for the crab water. People began to assemble, stirring themselves from a snooze on the beach or wandering on the island in search of botanical curiosities, or just inhaling a perfect summer day. When everyone had gathered, Bryce offered a prayer of thanks for the forces that made this moment possible. Two people were given the important task of pushing away the coverings and revealing the full, sweet steamy essence of the pit. Plates were passed around and everyone dug in, loading up with favorites, trying the camas bulbs, which were the star of the afternoon, and exclaiming how good everything tasted in the way that only outdoor-cooked food can taste. Everyone present, even the teenagers for whom this excursion was a somewhat forced distraction, recognized this was a remarkable event in the continuity of time. Something old had begun again in a new way. Ecocultural Restoration Dennis Martinez, founder of the Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network and former Society for Ecological Restoration board member, champions the idea of ecocultural restoration, the fusion of ecological and cultural restoration implicit in projects such as Discovery Island. The meaning of ecological restoration has evolved from a singular focus on bringing back ecological integrity to a recognition that both the process and product of restoration can have salutary benefits for people—bring-

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ing people together in the act of restoration builds community, and the restoration projects themselves often offer educational, recreational, and scientific value. This view fits well with ideas from diverse commentators on restoration: John Cairns’s proposal for “ecosocietal restoration,” William Jordan’s restoration-as-celebration, Stephanie Mills’s “reinhabitation,” Daniel Janzen’s “biocultural” restoration. All of these, including Martinez’s ecocultural restoration, push closer the connection between ecology and culture. Not only are there instrumental benefits from restoring places, but also presumably the very goal of restoration ought to be one of cultural as well as ecological restoration. Thus, what is being restored encompasses cultural beliefs and practices along with ecological processes, structures, and patterns.11 Recall the expanded conception of ecological restoration presented in the previous chapter (figure 5.1). With this I argued that as we would expect, the core of ecological restoration is ecological, comprising ecological integrity and historical fidelity. Recognizing that economic concerns enter restoration decisions regularly, an additional circle of consideration could be added that would convert merely effective restorations into economically efficient ones. Having added such a value perspective, and realizing that our judgments about the worth of a restoration project depend on such values, the circle can be expanded outward to include a host of other factors (aesthetic, political, and so on). Most conventional evaluations of good restoration depend only on the core ecological considerations of restoration and not on expanded concerns.12 Surely economic considerations and public participation are just two among many possible variables that could be used readily in determining whether or not a restoration project is successful. Hence, determining what good restoration is depends on a host of factors, not just on ecological ones. Suppose we follow Martinez’s lead and admit that the core of restoration is not just about ecological conditions but cultural ones, too. Our view of restoration would change to a bivalent core, and the need for expanding circles of consideration would be eliminated (figure 6.1). One of the clearest examples to support this is the one that Martinez provides of the Sinkyone Intertribal Park in Northern California. The goal of this project was not simply about recovering ecological integrity

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Ecocultural Restoration

Ecological Fidelity structural/compositional replication functional success durability

Cultural Fidelity Based on participation + cultural livelihood language place health and well-being traditional knowledge sustainable economies regional design social justice

Figure 6.1 A model of ecocultural restoration that shows how cultural values can share the core of ecological restoration.

after decades of industrial forestry, but also about restoring some of the traditional practices of Aboriginal peoples in the region. By restoring a near-shore fishery, a subsistence economy was being restored, too. Through management of the forests for sustainable harvesting, an economic mainstay was being provided in addition to the ecological benefits of selective harvest. This much has become standard fare in sustainable forestry.13 The Sinkyone project also wanted to restore old trails that provide historical ties with earlier movement patterns on the landscape, and to rejuvenate the harvest of food and medicinal plants. Thus, the restoration objectives were both cultural and ecological. This kind of fusion is evident in many restoration projects conducted by First Nations that aim to rekindle traditional practices and beliefs as a way of securing cultural sustainability; this was plainly evident on Discovery Island. I wonder whether the idea of restoration holds up very effectively in circumstances where the long-term human connections with the land are either severed or unknown. Turning again to Jasper National Park

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(chapter 1), people used the upper Athabasca Valley for thousands of years and almost certainly affected the ecological patterns with their activities. Depending on the intensity of use, it could be argued that the landscape evolved as an interplay between cultural and ecological processes. In setting goals for restoration, as much as we might try to base the work on historical patterns and processes, it is unlikely that human agency will follow history. Park managers who restore fire to the valley bottoms might do so informed by inferred patterns of Aboriginal burning practices, but it is unlikely that historical human agency will be restored. In the well-known Chicago Wilderness restoration, an ambitious, two-decade-long restoration of extirpated oak savanna and associated ecosystems within the metropolitan boundaries of Chicago, new cultural practices are growing up around the restored ecosystems; earlier ones might be celebrated but they are not returned.14 The Morava Rwer restoration projects (chapter 2) in the Slovak Republic depend on the successful management of wet-meadow function, which in the distant past was conditioned by routine hand mowing and is now threatened by changes in human agency, or more specifically changes in technological practices. Ecocultural restoration acknowledges the ecological diversity that has sometimes grown because of human activity, not in spite of it. However, restoration from a cultural standpoint means not necessarily bringing back a traditional activity, for example hand mowing, but rather developing ways of matching functional characteristics of former practices. For reasons that perhaps are all too apparent, returning to the human past in a literal way is unappealing in many cases. Nostalgia beckons us to reflect on the past, but the lessons are often painful. On close examination we find cultural wounds among the ecological ones: First Nations whose lands have been dispossessed; backbreaking labor that bespeaks poverty, not elegance; careless land clearing in the interests of profit and a peculiarly arrogant view of landscape. We need to know earlier mistakes and also the ways of living more gently that were washed away by tides of colonialism and industrialism. In human terms, the past offers wise counsel but no simple lessons. The price paid for power over First Peoples and the land is estrangement. The connections to place that are bound by respect and reciprocity have been substantially lost, which is why at least to a significant

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extent we are able to construct and celebrate virtual worlds, giant shopping malls, cities without centers, and national parks that are more like museums than living landscapes.15 By creating nature as a category separate from culture, and by always ranking civilization over wildness, we have evolved a cultural viewpoint that makes it terribly difficult to create the conditions of reciprocity and respect.16 If nature is regarded as something else and we are not participants, there is no way of exercising responsibility—nature will always fall victim to human authority. The divide between nature and culture in contemporary Western cultures is deep and wide.17 With the surge of interest in environmental responsibility in the last several decades, many have made the point that we need to move beyond a strict dualism, but few theories have been successful at inspiring change. A notable exception is the Gaia hypothesis, originally promulgated by two scientists, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.18 The earth is understood as a self-organizing system in which life can take place. We are, as individuals and as a species, organisms that are part of a larger organism. The intuitive and metaphorical appeal of such an idea is strong, and it has begun to gain hold in a way that may lead to change away from nature as a separate estate. Restoration pushes against this line by implicating human practice and participation inside ecological processes. A restored ecosystem is usually hard to separate from the human participation that went into its making. If ecological restoration exists only to perpetuate the separate estates of nature and culture, it will not break the pattern. What is inspiring about restoration is that it does change the pattern under the right conditions. I find the idea of ecocultural restoration appealing but not ultimately compelling. It has tremendous heuristic power in highlighting cultural practices and values. In the end the term itself leaves me cold in the same way that so many neologisms do. I want something plainer, more earthy, to describe desirable restoration practice. And again, the concept of restoration proves confounding. In cultural terms, is it restoration we want or something akin to regeneration or rejuvenation? It is far from clear in many instances that we would want to return in a rigorous way to many prior cultural practices. In what follows I present a case for focal restoration, a sympathetic alternative to ecocultural restoration. To focus on something means to give it concerted attention, to comprehend

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that thing in its own right, and to understand how it fits within a larger social setting. The word thing has a special technical meaning for Borgmann, and always seems to trip up the first-time reader. A thing is something situated in a social history such that an individual, or a group of people, have cultural commerce with that thing. The thing achieves substantial meaning from its particular setting and the traditions that surround it. A device, on the other hand, exists almost exclusively outside of any particular setting. Focal restoration is distinguished from technological restoration and by invoking bodily and social engagement with place, restores as well as creates meaning. The value of restoration resides substantially although not exclusively with process, and the process properly conceived brings people to a new, enlightened awareness of human relations with place. Instead of restoring culture in a literal sense, which I think has limited application, cultural practices and beliefs are being reconfigured and generated anew to reflect the character—historical, literal, and metaphorical—of a place. Focal Restoration If ecological restoration is threatened by a growing tendency toward technological restoration, and the underlying pattern is explained by the device paradigm and reinforced by a colonization of the imagination (chapter 5), then the prescription is focality. The device paradigm describes a systematic transformation of focal things—things that matter to us—into machinery and commodities that are largely stripped of continuity and presence. The rise of this pattern, Albert Borgmann argues, is “the most consequential event of the modern period.”19 It is most easily visible in the devices that surround us, but more significantly in the processes, habits, mindsets, ways of living, and systems that populate our lives. The spread of the paradigm is the story of the twentieth century and accounts for the transition of lives lived primarily in communal settings unmediated by technological systems, to our present state of technological saturation. This pattern easily extends to restoration, both in the way we are increasingly rendering nature as a conceptual product and through the commodification of practice. We should not be surprised that restoration is subject to such a powerful social pattern. At the same

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time, we can take comfort in the fact that restoration practice is sufficiently grounded in participatory communities and hands-on effort that it can resist these trends to a certain extent. Nevertheless my worry, which is the worry that animated the writing of this book in the first place, is that restoration will become increasingly technological at the expense of engaged, local, grassroots initiatives: restoration as technofix. Focal things, the practices that support them, and the reality that enfolds are critical in orienting us to matters of significance in our lives. Thus, it is not simply the focal things and practices that matter, but also the extent to which they place the rest of our lives in perspective. The challenge is to develop effective, resilient focal practices, ones that when combined with shared practices and economic reforms, produce authentic communities centered on matters of concern greater than mere consumption. Repairing damage by designing interventions that reconstitute ecological and cultural integrity requires treating ecosystems as things rather than devices. For the ecological restorationist, this entails focal restoration: practices that create a stronger relationship between people and natural process, a bond reinforced by communal experience. A focal restoration is one that centers the world of the restorationist, expresses the commanding presence of nature, and demonstrates continuity between that particular act of restoration and other activities on the landscape. Focal restoration is mindful restoration. Focal restoration is the antidote to technological restoration. Technological restoration manifests in the abstract a distinctive pattern of converting a place to a site and thereby forcing a split between the machinery of restoration and the commodity of a restoration product. What is significant in the foreground of restoration is the commodity as represented by a completed restoration. The phenomena that brought it into being— professional designs, extensive labor, plantings, excavations, and so on— recede from view in order to concentrate attention on the commodity. Foreground and background become increasingly separate, and the capacity for volunteer restoration, for example, diminishes in the face of demands for increasingly predictable, professional projects. Action and consequence are unhitched, too, and this creates problems of responsibility: the greater the separation of an action from direct and indirect

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consequences, the more difficult it is to act responsibly. The pattern of technological restoration is of one piece with the larger pattern, the device paradigm, that describes a widespread reduction of things that matter into objects for consumption. That this pattern exists is not peculiar. What is peculiar is that we tend not to see the pattern at work, partly because it is now so widespread. With the expansion of technological approaches to life it becomes more difficult to imagine how restoration, for instance, might be done otherwise. The power of the device paradigm is what makes me wary of a concept like ecocultural restoration, which is focused primarily on bringing cultural practices back to landscapes in a good way. Ecocultural restoration lacks a critical perspective that gets to the root of things. A focal thing is distinguished in Borgmann’s sense from a device because it has presence and continuity. Something is focal if it operates within a rich, comprehensible context. All of us experience focal things as the features in our lives that permit the flourishing of social and bodily engagement with the world. I used the example of a guitar in chapter 5, but let’s turn to one of Borgmann’s classic examples, a wood cookstove: A stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth marked the beginning of the day. It assigned to various family members tasks that defined their place in the household. . . . It provided the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together with the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks. . . . Physical engagement is not simply physical contact but the experience of the world through the manifold sensibility of the body. That sensibility is sharpened and strengthened in skill. Skill is intensive and refined world engagement.20

Some have criticized Borgmann for nostalgia—that is, for presenting paradigmatic images that bespeak a former time. Recall, however, that the point of his theory is to show the steady conversion of focal or centering things into devices for consumption. The woodstove was supplanted by hand-fed, coal-fired furnaces, which ushered in central heating. Later came oil, gas, and electricial heating systems that offered a commodity, heat, via an increasingly concealed infrastructure. Beyond the thermostat, few people have much interaction with a gas-fired

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furnace, and certainly few would make their furnace into a hearth in any profound sense. Focal things are precarious and require continual nourishment. Devices that offer compelling alternatives easily supplant them—heat that is more easily and safely procured with a furnace than with a woodstove. Lost, however, is the social milieu that went with wood heating, and so also is the skill required to operate and maintain self-reliant heating. Those attentive to these issues will make careful preparations to ensure that focal things continue to grace their lives once a decision is made to abandon a particular thing. This requires careful and measured reflection on the significance of things and awareness of the fragility of centering forces in our lives. The promise of technology is compelling, indeed, but liberation and enrichment are rarely delivered without consequence to the things we value. One way of maintaining focal things is through focal practices, which in effect are the challenging, skillful, sometime tedious activities required to keep something of value alive. The woodstove does not work well in the hands of someone who simply tosses wood in without knowledge, practice, and preparation. One cannot be accomplished at pit cooking without a steady regimen of practice that builds confidence and skill. With the acquisition of skill, there are always disappointments and hardships that must be acknowledged and reconciled. There are bad guitar lessons, practices that do not work, and the occasional embarrassment in front of others. These must be measured against the larger and more significant accomplishments and self-realization that come about through practice. The same holds, I believe, for most things we value. Taken together, focal things and practices produce a focal reality wherein technological reality is relegated to the margins of experience. This suggests that things that matter to us are given prominence. We might, for example, use a number of conveniences in the preparation of a pit-cooked meal, but these would be merely preparatory in the process of arriving at the focal thing: the celebratory meal. During the pit cook on Discovery Island, a number of devices were used to aid our work: lighters, outboard engines and inflatable boats, cameras, and storebought snack food to get us through the day. The pit cook did not depend

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on these devices. Rather the skill of the individuals who were engaged with their practice made it work. Most cooks I know, pit cooks or otherwise, have enduring things that are central to their preparations— a knife once given as a gift, a chopping block that holds good memories. These are things, not devices. More often than not focal things are relatively simple, although this is not always the case. Focality requires that a thing have commanding presence, which means that it must not be ephemeral or disposable. For something to have presence it must also have engagement with a person. A superb knife may have no resonance with an individual, who may turn instead to an old, pocked blade that has contributed to many fine meals and moves sinuously in the deft hands of the cook. A brandnew, ergonomically designed digging stick, assuming something like this existed, might be put aside in favor of an old handmade one: sentiment, experience, and function exist in a delicate balance. Something that makes demands on us has such presence; it requires attentiveness, grace, and skill. Continuity is central to understanding focal things, practices, and reality. Borgmann suggests that things depend on long-term connection with the past to take on significance. As we noted in chapter 4, where continuity was proposed as one of the main reasons for the significance of ecological restoration, the past orients the present. A cook takes special pride in a recipe that issues from an ancestor or old friend. The recipe might have associations with a good evening with friends, or conjure up the first attempt at creating a new dish. I have a recipe card smeared with batter, typed by my late mother, for my maternal grandmother’s scones. There is always the tingle of memory when I bake these. Continuity is maintained by the narratives we create to explain our place in the flow of things. For this, Borgmann proposes, we need to illuminate and guard focal things and practices with the principled testimonies that come from our creative endeavors: visual art, stories, evocative writing, and so on. He uses the rare word deictic, which is transliterated from a Greek word that means “to show,” to describe this kind of discourse. I do not need a mathematical proof to explain why a great meal is a good thing; I only need to recount my experience with that meal and to have it resonate with others.

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Borgmann argues that wild nature is possessed of “commanding presence and telling continuity.” This is what makes it real. No matter how much we might try through various machineries of simulation and enhancement, there is nothing that can compare ultimately with the experience of reality. Imagine an artificial skiing experience, as Borgmann does, where a person experiences skiing through elaborate representational technologies (immersive video, realistic sound effects, and so on). Even taken to the brink of perfectibility, this contrasts with the experience of true skiing: In the higher reaches of a ski area, you find yourself in a beautiful and forbidding world, and at seventy-five hundred feet you are the only charismatic megafauna in sight. The bears are hibernating; the cats and ungulates have descended to five or four thousand feet. The trees have been transformed into snow sculptures. You may come across a weasel, scurrying in and out of the snow, or a snowshoe hare flitting from one bush to another. Otherwise the chickadees in the trees and the crows in the air have the high country to themselves, a world extending endlessly, austere in whites and blues and, but for the peaks and ridges, soft and smooth of shape. Skiing down, you dive, bank, swoop, and turn much like the crows overhead. The world’s center of gravity has shifted to these high and pristine slopes, and you are the animal that has the skill and grace to appropriate them fully.21

I find David Strong’s idea of correlational coexistence to characterize the distinctive mutual relationships that emerge between people and things very powerful. A thing is enlarged by care, and a person is rewarded with a more profound understanding of existence and responsibility. This is what happens in ecological restoration when lives both human and natural are inspired. Correlational coexistence makes many kinds of restoration into focal practices and places that we restore into focal things. Ecosystems have a commanding presence, a sense that there is something other, some would argue greater, than our actions can control. In thinking of restoration as an act involving narrative continuity (chapter 4), we are motivated to respect the manifold complexity of a place and work. It is easy to understand restoration in terms of focality. The practice of ecological restoration is blessed with many fine writers who have articulately mapped a view of restoration that connects the restoration of ecosystems to the restoration, regeneration, or reinhabi-

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tation of human values and spirit. Stephanie Mills, in her eloquent treatment of restoration, In Service of the Wild, emphasizes self, community, and nature. Writing from her unremarkable but deeply loved plot of land in northern Michigan, she links the restoration of her own spirit with the restoration of the landscape around her: “Restoration is what lies before us, but the restoration must be of the whole system, and that whole ecosystem includes the human self, the personal heart.”22 Mills also accounts for other restoration projects—the Curtis Prairie in Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold’s land in Sauk County, the Mattole Restoration Council in California, and Auroville, an intentional community in India. A common theme is the extent to which the restoration projects connect individuals and communities to place, or in other words, the extent to which they involve focal practices. The story Freeman House tells of the Mattole watershed restoration is especially instructive. Faced with overfishing, destructive landscape practices in spawning areas, and increasing genetic homogeneity of hatchery-raised stock, a native strain of king salmon faced extinction in the Mattole River. Too much of this kind of loss had taken place and people in the watershed banded together in the early 1980s to see what could be done. The obstacles were daunting: to restore spawning and rearing habitat in the stream, instream and streamside restoration and enhancement were necessary. This was only the beginning. Siltation from forestry operations continued to cover spawning beds, which meant a change in the way forest operations were conducted. A change in industrial practices necessitated shifts in the local economy, and economic changes always beget social transformation. The technical challenges were daunting, not least because the project was too small to interest state fisheries biologists. This left the problem of figuring out ingenious, low-cost hatchery techniques for dedicated amateurs, who poured through technical journals. Community tensions among ranchers, loggers, environmentalists, and back-to-the-landers rose sharply at times and threatened to undo the work. Twenty years of work is chronicled soulfully in House’s Totem Salmon. It is overwhelming and inspirational at the same time, but through it all runs the same message as in Stephanie Mills’s writing: dedication to place through restoration is a focal practice that engages individuals and communities.

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I recall how my understanding of shortgrass and tallgrass prairies changed when I helped create the Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden at the University of Waterloo (chapter 2). My studies of ecology and countless hours in the field were no match for the knowledge required to arrange an integral assembly of organisms that would ultimately work together in a fashion closely resembling what must have once occupied this site. It was humbling to know this hard work was but a slight contribution to the autonomous ecological processes that took over the moment planting had ceased. I discovered myself making countless tiny decisions—for instance, the outer boundaries of a Monarda fistulosa planting—rooted in the integrity of organisms and their relationships, and my art. Hence, reciprocity formed between me and the garden that opened up an appreciation of things that I had long taken for granted. Ten years and 2,500 miles distant, the Dorney Garden has left deep contours in my understanding of restoration. In the words of Gary Nabhan, I was “building habitat as well as memories.”23 A main figure in the conceptualization and popularization of restoration, William Jordan, has written extensively on the integration of cultural practices and ecological processes. His regular editorial in Ecological Restoration (formerly Restoration and Management Notes) has invoked qualities of devotion, sacrament, shame, ritual, community practice, and spiritual renewal.24 Jordan emphasizes that restoration is artful as well as scientific. Against the backdrop of scientific accuracy, a restorationist is always attending to the subtle business of ensuring that projects meet broad cultural canons of taste. For Jordan, restoration is a kind of performance or ritual that points to the possibility of focal restoration. Can a restored ecosystem be focal? The answer is yes, although this must be tempered by concerns about commodification. There is nothing inherent in restoration that makes it focal. For something to remain focal it must engage people in some kind of focal practice. A thing is not focal unless it is maintained in practice. Focal things and practices are central to reforming of the device paradigm. Thus, the debilitating effects of a life centered in consumption can be countered by embracing focal things: things in our lives that have significance through the definition and delin-

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eation of context. Focal things and practices help distinguish technological restoration such as corporate projects and hyperreal commodities (it is not proper to call Disney’s Wilderness Lodge a restoration project per se, but it does indicate a drift toward increasingly contrived views of nature and wilderness), from focal restoration activities of grassroots restorationists. In this way I have found the theory of the device paradigm helpful in clarifying the extent and means of assimilation of restoration into technological culture. Fortunately restoration continues to produce a stream of practices and commitments that resist the desiccating effects of technology, providing hope for the field as a way of integrating ecological concern and cultural practices. What we need is not less intervention, perhaps even more intervention. But such deliberate involvement must center on things, not devices. Focal restoration offers the promise of being a main force against incursions of the device paradigm into nature and wilderness. Ritual and Restoration Ecological restoration is seldom a solitary pursuit; it works beautifully as a demonstration of communal focal practice. For example, the “Bagpipes and Bonfire” festival in Lake Forest, Illinois, developed out “of the yearly act of burning all the exotics and weedy nonnatives” removed from the Lake Forest Preserve.25 On a Sunday afternoon in the fall several years ago more than a thousand people participated in a festival that includes “family entertainment, period actors, hot-air balloons, food and drink . . . [and] . . . at dusk, a 100 piece Scottish piping band [that] emerges from the prairie, solemnly circles the brush pile, and plays traditional airs.” Karen Holland suggests that ceremonies such as this are “celebratory, rousing, and filled with pageantry,” and that “they invite participation by society.” Moreover, “with its bonfire ritual, [the festival] renews the spirit of a community sharing in the regeneration of a native ecosystem.”26 Historical connections are invoked and respected. The strict division between nature and culture is blurred, and people are brought into closer connection with natural processes and cultural patterns. Communities are strengthened through the gathering of energy and commitment.

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The fusion of art and restoration, such as the artist Barbara Westfall’s “Daylighting the Woods” at the Curtis Prairie in Wisconsin, turns restoration into a performance. Restoration-as-performance is more often than not a public activity, such as the Bagpipes and Bonfire festival or any of the growing number of restoration projects that invite participation. Viewed as celebratory performances, such events renew “the spirit of a community sharing in the regeneration of a native ecosystem.”27 Some performances arise spontaneously and others are elaborately organized to achieve specific results. By bringing performance to scientifically based activities, one can presumably tap into profound and earthy connections between people and places.28 Some think of such performances as ritualistic and advocate ritual as a necessary aspect of restoration practice. Chief among these is William Jordan, whose thinking is substantially informed by the work of Frederick Turner, a literary scholar, and his parents, the renowned anthropologists Edith and Victor Turner. Jordan urges that restoration should come to terms with the shame of killing, an essential part of most restoration projects, through ritual. Ritual provides a formal structure for transformation of self and community and for the transubstantiation of ecosystems. Jordan’s arguments are powerful because they tap into deep cultural roots. Ritual invokes religious experience, and religious values and beliefs are at the heart of his program for successful restoration. My hesitation to embrace ritual stems from wanton use of the word ritual and also from some of the questionable undercurrents of such a concept. At the same time, I am enthralled by the connections Jordan makes between religion and science, spiritual belief and restoration practice, and also support in limited ways the use of ritual in restoration. Lisa Meekison and I explored a number of instances of ritual in restoration and compared these with the results of anthropological studies of ritual.29 Our concern was people who, as Meekison suggested, “liked their ecology straight,” and would be unnerved by a quasi-religious practice. Claims have ranged widely, from the idea of restoration as a spiritually transformative experience such as the Christian sacrament of communion to the view that ritual is simply regular, attentive activity. In any case, a simple rejection of ritual risks losing it as a conscious way of bringing people into deeper participation with natural processes.30

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Part of the difficulty in understanding ritual in restoration has to do with terminological and conceptual variation. Performance has the most general meaning, referring to any public presentation or exhibition. The words ritual and rite are often interchangeable. Conventional use of ritual to refer to virtually any routine activity of special significance to a group of people has obscured other meanings. Some use ritual to refer to religious activities and rite to refer to secular ones. Again, the confusion is considerable and such a distinction does not always hold up. Both terms, ritual and rite, are sufficiently loaded with meaning that searching for an alternative label for intentional, transformational social experiences is wise. This is the basis for proposing the idea of focal practice as an alternative. If many restorationists, especially those who view their work primarily as a technical or scientific practice, would look askance at ritual, why should we consider it at all? Ritual, according to many sources (notably Victor Turner, who made a long study of the meaning of ritual and performance), offers a way of examining, expressing, and even changing relations between nature and culture. This latter consideration is especially important if we accept the idea that restoration has the potential of rearranging destructive patterns. William Jordan has weighed in heavily supporting the role of performance and ritual in restoration. Restoration is transformative if understood at least in part as a means for connection. He is critical of environmentalists who separate nature and culture, a perspective that he warns “turns us all—hiker, birder, and strip miner alike—not into members of the community but into users and consumers of the natural landscape.”31 Environmental problems are “rooted in human ideas, values and beliefs.” Thus, technical solutions are inadequate and recourse is necessary to culture change. Performance and ritual associated with restoration offer an alternative by showing us “not only how to have a healthy ecological relationship with the world but also how to articulate and celebrate that relationship in a personally and socially effective manner.”32 Victor Turner’s concept of liminality has inspired thinking about how culture changes. An activity is liminal, in Turner’s sense, if it occupies the border zone between two states of being without being either one or

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the other. Arnold Van Gennep, for example, proposes a three-phase model for rites of passage: separation, liminal state, and incorporation. In the first phase, an individual is removed from everyday patterns where transformation is difficult. Once removed and in the liminal state, a kind of limbo, conventional patterns are weakened, dissolved, or rearranged in preparation for reworking. The liminal state is often difficult, but it is also a time of considerable freedom and creativity. Incorporation takes place when the individual is returned to ordinary life in a new role. This general model applies widely to classical notions of formal ritual and also to more private and unacknowledged forms of change. The collective expression of shared liminal experience is what Turner calls communitas. Communitas is that exhilarating sensation when human unity transcends ordinary social structures, the kind of uplift one senses when sharing with neighbors and friends an afternoon of affirming work on a restoration project. The conditions can be put in place for communitas, but more often than not achieving it is elusive and unpredictable. Ritual, therefore, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such an experience. Some speak of change in terms of epiphanies, leaps of understanding based on ordinary but striking circumstances. What Turner and others would argue is that such observations and subsequent change are made from a liminal condition—that is, when one is prepared to accept a new way of understanding the world. What is the transforming capacity of ritual? Barbara Myerhoff, an American anthropologist, suggests that ritual is genuinely transformative but that the change is not necessarily durable. Sustaining change is often the greater challenge. Regardless of the staying power of such change, to what end is the change directed? Proponents of ritual in restoration have generally adopted the view that ritual has benefits such as enrichment, community, creativity, and liberation. However, there is also evidence that ritual can have a conservative function and constrain social possibility. It can exert a powerful normative force on a community, which is often the case with devout and heavily prescriptive religious practice. And ritual is very powerful. As both Myerhoff and Abner Cohen suggest, the techniques of ritual—repetition, costuming, dancing, and so on—can effectively convince participants of the desirability of the ritual’s purported goal.

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This is best illustrated in the authority of liturgy and ecclesiastical practices of organized religions. Taken to an extreme, such techniques contribute to mind-shaping experiences associated with cult activities. Ritual, no matter how it is understood, is political. Anthropologists offer no conclusive evidence as to whether ritual is more often transformative or normative, or that it should be one or the other. Four factors influence the outcome: the goals of the people organizing the ritual, the expectations of those participating; the content and style of the activities; and the context of the ritual. Analyzing ritual from these four perspectives opens it up and allows intentions and processes to be made clear. The primary difficulty with ritual, in my estimation, concerns orthodoxy, authority, and control. The strategies for restoration are as diverse as the communities in which they are based. Advocates of ritual must be sensitive to such multiplicity and ensure that social justice or at least equity is ensured. The right to perform the rituals one chooses can be a political issue on a par with freedom of religion and expression. Thus, questions such as “who participates in ritual and why?” need to be posed. Open questioning is the surest way of guarding against orthodoxy in restoration ritual and guaranteeing informed participation. There are no serious concerns that restoration will be taken over by unsavory ritual, resulting in undesirable ecological practices. What is more likely is that some will promote ritual activities in such a way that will exclude broader participation. At some level this is perfectly acceptable in the same way that certain religious practices exclude broad participation. William Jordan’s writings have sometimes moved beyond advancing secular forms of ritual to considering religious themes such as the attainment of Holy Communion with nature. In the collection of essays on restoration and culture titled Beyond Preservation, Gene Willeke and Jack Kirby both express concern that Jordan is moving restoration in the direction of an environmental religion. Willeke comments that “the restoration ecologist’s aim is to do nothing less than save neo-Europeans’ souls. Salvation is accomplished by ritual, which reconnects human with nature.” Kirby is sanguine about participation in restoration and formalized practices that honor connections between people and ecosystems, but he doubts seriously “if weeding or firetending will save [his] soul.”33 What is most important at the bottom of

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this is that coercion be avoided in restoration. People have and will find myriad ways of expressing their relations to a place, and some of these will end up being quietly or openly spiritual. Some will be religious. A principle of open expression is needed that allows everyone to find a congenial way of practicing restoration. If it turns out otherwise, that people begin to feel that their background or beliefs are unwelcome or incompatible, restoration will be alienating. It may be true, as many anthropologists have suggested, that there is a widespread desire for myth, religion, and performance. Whatever the case, it should not mean that all restorationists should or will be able to express this impulse through restoration projects. Ritual and performance are ways individuals and groups can reconfigure their relationships with place. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of such social processes. Moving toward an ecological society, as is clearly the case with the work of restoration on Discovery Island, requires a shift in consciousness and belief. To the extent that restoration is a kind of performance, it is prudent of us to understand the potential that resides within it as regards transformation. If the camas harvest and pit cook become an annual event on Discovery Island, and serve as a focal point for cultural renewal as well as restoration, specific traditional and novel practices that bind the Songhees people together may become ritualized. Ritual can be a powerful agent of transformation. And, as Jordan points out, the most effective way to restore ecosystems is to engage “the full array” of human activities and abilities, including the aesthetic and performative.34 The challenge is maintaining vigilance to ensure that ritual enlivens tradition instead of merely perpetuating it. This brings me back to the idea of focal practices. Even modest kinds of performance achieve in part the work of engaging people with place and facilitating change simply through literal practice. Full-blown ritual is unnecessary in many instances to effect change and secure relations. I am convinced that the sharing of labor and practice, the fidelity to regular tasks whether extraordinary or quotidian, is often enough to elevate the significance of a place. Focal practices are engaging at least to the extent that they demand attentiveness to and care for things that

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matter deeply. Individual focal practices are strengthened and made more meaningful through collective focal practices. The idea of focality does most of the work that ritual does, and at the same time saves ritual for describing focal practices that have a deliberately transformational purpose. There is an intuitive appeal to focal practices understood by almost everyone who has participated in a restoration project. They are unthreatening and open. Participation in Restoration There are two main ways of justifying added social involvement in ecological restoration. First, participation in restoration is an added bonus of restoration practice. All things being equal, if there is community participation that achieves a strengthening of ties among people and between people and place, this is an external good. It is important, but not part of the traditional core of restoration (figure 5.1). It is, in other words, the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. The second approach is to locate participation at the center of restoration practice as some inherent quality of what counts as good restoration. This second approach is more congenial to the overall argument I am making about the cultural significance of restoration, but is there anything beyond merely stipulating that participation ought to be part of restoration? Are focal practices anchored somehow to democratic politics? Could there be a political warrant for focal restoration? This was the question that haunted Andrew Light and me several years ago.35 We reasoned that ecological restoration has inherent democratic capacity. The qualities of restoration practice promote community engagement, experimentation, local autonomy, regional variation, and a level of creativity in working along with natural patterns and processes. It is the combination of value to nature and value to community that gives it the capacity to enhance a participatory politics. What is distinctive about restoration in contrast to other environmental practices such as preservation is its potential to build value. Restoration builds value in two ways. First, restorationists bring back a set of ecological conditions undermined by heedless action that would not likely recover otherwise. This is in a sense a neutral kind

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of value; it is true that value is being returned that would not be returned otherwise, but it is also the case that in the end the ecological conditions are merely being brought back to a former condition. However, there is a positive value, too. Restorations do not happen by accident but by conscious intention. There is, therefore, political value created in the act of deciding to restore and through the action of restoration. The value of a restoration project can be measured in part by its contribution to democratic participation, and the greater the participation the greater the value. Our argument rested on a distinction between politics in restoration, encompassing the larger questions about the character of restoration that we believe to be relatively constant, and politics of restoration, in which the political conditions vary from one circumstance to another. Restoration has inherent democratic potential through its capacity to add value through participation. Whether or not a restoration project is participatory has everything to do with specific practice.36 Light has refined these arguments by pointing to the unique character of restoration as producing something that would not exist otherwise and arguing that this production is tied to “a participatory act by a human.”37 Thus, participation is an aspect of restoration that can be revealed through practice. This inherent democratic potential can easily be thwarted by unsavory or unscrupulous practice, which is another way of pointing out that participation is only potential. Commitment and fortitude are required to maintain community-based focal restoration practices, and to ensure that the political terrain remains hospitable for this more embracing view of restoration. Thinking of restorations as focal practices is the surest way of maintaining such openness. To ignore the political significance of restoration is to underestimate its power and potential by giving too much importance to restoration as a technical practice. The politics of and in restoration reveal much deeper currents of human social practice, so deep indeed that restoration stands alone as an environmental activity. The kind of engagement that comes of restoration-as-focal-practice builds lasting ties to the land that are stronger than those possible with many other forms of environmental action. This is obviously a contentious claim, and it is not intended to diminish the significance of habitat protection, park creation, and

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various kinds of preservation activities. These are crucial, but they do not build constituency in the way hands-on involvement can. A few select activists—those who give their lives literally and figuratively to a place or those who are involved in the nitty-gritty challenges of saving a piece of land threatened by development—feel the engagement that extends between people and place. The commodification of the environmental movement generally, which has produced endless requests for cash donations instead of local commitment, as well as the belief that environmental problems are merely economic problems in a different guise, have diminished involvement or turned it into yet another aspect of cultural hyperactivity. The conclusion from the earlier discussion of ritual and now participation in restoration is that social engagement is a vital part of restoration and not merely an afterthought. Since restoration has inherent democratic potential, careful attention is needed to ensure that the politics of restoration affirms this. The obligation is more significant: restoration must be conceived in a way that makes the connections between culture and ecology, people and place, prominent. The best way of accomplishing this is, I believe, through the recognition and enlargement of focal practices, not only to advance restoration in an ecocultural fashion but also to provide a counterforce to the withering forces of the device paradigm. Borgmann’s theory of the device paradigm is a compelling account of the social, political, economic, and moral crisis in contemporary life. We risk losing the ends of good citizenship, justice, and a healthy planet because of overreliance on consumption. This pattern is evident intuitively, but as a pervasive pattern it eludes easy detection. Recognizing debilitating consequences now and in the future for ecological restoration connects restoration to the need for wider reform.38 Thus, developing focal restoration is one piece within the larger reform of the device paradigm. It is an especially significant one, given the unique potential of restoration as regards the regeneration of positive human practices together with ecological processes. Are focal practices sufficient for the reform of the device paradigm? In particular, if we accept the implications of the device paradigm for ecological restoration through the commodification of nature and practice, then engagement with focal things (ecosystems) is the best place to

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begin a concerted program of reform. Change must begin with individuals (re)appropriating things that matter in their lives and developing practices that uphold and protect the significance of these things. Borgmann wants us to undertake two important challenges: first, to clarify our understanding of things that have final significance, a list comprising widely agreeable civic, physical, and character virtues; and second, to acknowledge the way things serve clearly and unambiguously as the center of our lives. The next stage of reform involves the translation of personal focal practices to a civic level. Communal focal practices—athletic gatherings, public events, participation in local decision making—are not merely an aggregation of individual practices, but an awareness of the importance of maintaining a vital communal life. There is a third and final stage that involves the establishment of a two-tier economic system. At one level is an artisanal economy comprising locally autonomous practices. At the other would be economic institutions that would produce desirable goods deemed too complicated and intensive to be produced through decentralized processes. By this, Borgmann means consumable goods such as refrigerators, automobiles, computers, and so on. Governmental actions to encourage an artisanal sector would also lessen the grip of large industrial activity. People committed increasingly to focality and against the device paradigm would resist as much as possible the use of culturally and ecologically destructive goods. Pragmatic choices would be made to lessen our dependence on mass-produced goods, seeking to use and support local ones. Ecological restoration would be an important element of such reforms. By steering away from manufactured nature—technological restoration—to community-engaged practice, critical new patterns would be laid down for the relations of people and place. Restoration, by virtue of a commitment to locality—local seed and plant sources, labor, and so on—would benefit the artisanal sphere of Borgmann’s proposed economy. I have been puzzled by Borgmann’s economic reforms since first reading about them in 1984. They seem inadequate against the size and effectiveness of institutions involved in what Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky have termed “manufacturing consent” in their book with the

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same name (1988). The continued spread of television, increasingly stealthy and inventive approaches to advertising and marketing, corporate concentration of the media and entertainment industries, and the confluence of information technologies beginning with the Internet, have changed the character of the economy. Borgmann’s theory of the device paradigm accounts for the implications: as the pattern of decomposition of machinery and commodities becomes more pervasive, the more difficult it will be to imagine a world other than one captivated by this pattern of manufactured consent. The manufacture of consent becomes easier and easier, making it more difficult to resist the incursion of technology, and imaginative possibilities are narrowed. The result is a hyperreal economy, and one that is more resistant to conventional strategies of resistance. In my mind, arresting the device paradigm is a race between the formation and stability of focal practices, and the manufacture of consent.39 These dour observations are offset by the endless resourcefulness and motivation of individuals and communities who remain steadfast in their support of focal practices; there is nothing, fortunately, that can remove the possibility of focal concerns and practices, in the same way that spirit and private conviction survive through extreme deprivation. This is good news for ecological restorationists who have thrived mostly on local ambition, experimentation, and humility. The fact that restoration is a grassroots movement, by and large, bodes well for the near future. What concerns me is the longer-term trajectory. The warning signs of commodified practice within a hyperreal nature are close enough to witness, and the energy required to steer toward the gentler path is much less now than it will be in a decade. Landscape Coevolution A model of ecological restoration is needed that represents the core principles of ecological integrity and historical fidelity as well as creating a central position for cultural practices, which has been the main argument of this chapter. Figure 6.1 goes some of the distance, but there is no dynamic quality to the relationship that shows how this interaction between people and nature changes over time and in turn affects the

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landscape. An effective model must show the dynamic qualities of landscapes and acknowledge that what makes a landscape is a continual interplay between human activities and ecological processes. Human participation in landscapes also changes over time in response to shifting values about appropriate action. Hence, the perception of good restoration changes despite being anchored to core concepts such as integrity and fidelity. Even more daunting is the notion that in twenty-five or fifty years, restoration may no longer map onto contemporary meaning. This evolution in perception is not itself a bad thing. In fact, it is critical that change take place to respond to the changing landscape itself. The degrading forces of the device paradigm will continue to have an impact, as will other corrosive forces, and effective resistance lies in knowing that change is both possible and inevitable. Human agency is not only important in bringing about change that is sustainable and salutary, but such involvement is necessary. Ecological restoration depends on participation. One note of caution: the fact that restoration builds community and thus is valuable does not lessen the need for the critical practice of preservation and any associated management efforts that may be necessary. In the areas where we have done damage and in those we choose to inhabit, restoration offers a way of connecting and reconnecting with natural processes. Gary Nabhan suggests that “the entire continent was not a Garden of Eden cultivated or hunted by Native Americans, nor was it all pristine. Many large tracts of the North American continent remained beyond the influence of human cultures and should remain so.”40 Underlying my thinking about restoration, then, is the notion of landscape evolution.41 Landscapes change in response to cultural and ecological processes. Over sufficiently long periods of time, the length of which varies widely depending on the ecosystem in question, landscapes evolve to fit new conditions. If human practices are part of this change without overwhelming them, this can be said to be coevolution. From a cultural perspective, coevolution implies a reflective process of learning in response to shifting ecological conditions and cultural values. The model I propose is place based (figure 6.2). Any given place changes over time as a combined function of cultural and ecological processes. Narrative continuity is assumed from the past to the future. To act

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Landscape Evolution

Cultural imagination

Ecological future

Present Reference conditions

Time

Cultural reflection

Ecological history

Cultural memory

Cu ulture

Ecology

Figure 6.2 A model of landscape evolution showing how ecology and culture are knitted together through time. Historical knowledge is translated into the present through cultural reflection and knowledge of reference conditions, allowing us to make sense of the future.

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effectively in restoring something for the future, we must take account of cultural memory and ecological history. These two kinds of knowledge, which have now been brought together by environmental historians but remain in large measure separate for many people, must be understood together. In the present, knowledge of the past combines to provide an understanding of ecological reference conditions as well as reflection on cultural practices: how they have changed, how they need to change. In the future, of course, is cultural imagination—that is, the free play of possibility, or what the landscape can be like. This knowledge must be tempered by knowing what is likely to happen to the landscape under various conditions. This general model brings together the main ideas I have presented so far: ecological integrity, historical fidelity, historicity, narrative continuity, reference conditions, and cultural value. Beyond this, it also imbeds the idea of focal practice by virtue of its unapologetic rootedness in place. Wrapping the cultural and ecological strands together asserts the connection to specific places, and this in turn enlarges the prospect of focal things, practices, and reality. On that perfectly sunny July day on Discovery Island I glimpsed the future of ecological restoration, one that makes the regeneration of cultural tradition contingent on ecological tradition. Harvesting camas may not prove more than a symbolic practice that binds the present community with the past, although we must not be so certain. Who knows?— Cheryl Bryce and her colleagues may well find a specialty and local market for camas and reconnect with a much older economic tradition. Traditional foods are considered much healthier than modern fast food diets. In this sense, restoration may contribute not only to ecological health but directly to human health, too. Such reconnection, whether symbolic or economic, makes possible the respect and understanding necessary to love a place thoroughly. Restoration-as-focal-practice gives place significance in our lives and gives prominence to the things that matter outside of restoration. We are doubly blessed by the act of restoration. The plight of the Songhees First Nation (Lekwungen) and many other First Nations in British Columbia is serious. Resisting at least two centuries of colonization, struggling for legal definition in the treaty process,

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and balancing the need of tradition with the demands of contemporary life is an ongoing fight. It is presumptuous of me to express a vision, but I hope that in ten or twenty or a hundred years, cultural and climate change notwithstanding, Bryce’s relatives will be harvesting the rich camas meadows of Discovery Island and looking back on the restorative moment in the summer of 2000 when the possibility became real. And I hope that the rest of us—newcomers—will learn from this. There is much to be learned from thinking of ecological restoration in cultural terms. What I have searched for in presenting a model of ecocultural restoration is a formulation that works widely and not just in the confines of conventional restoration. It builds on an expanded conception of restoration—the “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?” model in which I argued that a broader social interpretation is necessary to evaluate good restoration—by proposing that ecological values must share the stage with cultural ones. The core of ecological restoration remains ecological, but the model also now requires that the core be enlarged to make room for cultural involvement. This high measure of interconnection between ecology and culture is necessary insurance for the kind of restoration that produces positive value and builds support for the complex lives of ecosystems. Focal restoration achieves this: it resists the corrosive forces of the device paradigm, instantiates participation, makes space for ritual if that is what makes sense for a specific project, and makes absolutely certain that good restoration practice knits together culture and ecology.

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7 Nature by Design

The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. We can enjoy our humanity with its flashy brains and sexual buzz, its social cravings and stubborn tantrums, and take ourselves as no more and no less than another being in the Big Watershed. We can accept each other all as barefoot equals sleeping on the same ground. We can give up hoping to be eternal and quit fighting dirt. We can chase off mosquitoes and fence out varmints without hating them. No expectations, alert and sufficient, grateful and careful, generous and direct. A calm and clarity attend us in the moment we are wiping grease off our hands between tasks and glancing up at the passing clouds. Another joy is finally sitting down to have coffee with a friend. The wild requires that we learn the terrain, nod to all the plants and animals and birds, ford the streams and cross the ridges, and tell a good story when we get back home. —Gary Snyder, The Etiquette of Freedom The mind and the body are ruined by too much rectilinearity. —Freeman House, Society for Ecological Restoration Conference, 1995

Remembrances of Landscapes Past The curtain between dream and reality was diaphonous one cool summer morning at the Research Center in Jasper National Park, the place where this book began. I nursed a coffee on the back deck and smelled the first downdraft scents of mountain slopes, squinted my eyes, pushed the present to the edge of perception, and conjured the place a hundred years before. I basked in an utterly different landscape. Instead of a dense thicket of aspens, spruce, and fir, I stared straight up at Pyramid Mountain, the largest massif in this part of the park. A few monumental Douglas firs were visible, as well as some standing, dead trees, waiting for the next major windstorm to bring them closer to rest. Fires had

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raced through the area a decade earlier, clearing out many of the trees, leaving the characteristic sense of openness that Ross Cox described seventy-five years earlier, in early June 1817: We had an extensive view of the surrounding scenery. The genial influence of a June sun relieved the wintry perspective of snow-clad mountains, and as it rose above their lofty summits, imparted a golden tinge to the green savannahs, the open woods, and the innumerable rivulets which contributed their waters to swell the Athabasca. It was indeed a landscape of contrarieties, scarcely to be met with but in the Alpine regions of the Rocky Mountains.1

Over my right shoulder, just a few hundred yards distant, were the several buildings that Lewis Swift and his family had erected in 1895. I could hear the sounds of their daily activities—the rasping of a crosscut saw, or the voices of children. Working the dry land, Swift had begun an irrigation system to feed the market gardens in the fields a short distance away. An old trail ran along his family’s side, the west side of the Athabasca River Valley, the river itself flowing but a short walk away. Following the trail north and east would bring me to the doors of several Métis families—the Moberlys, Joachims, Finlays (now Findlays), and Adams—who had for a couple of decades after the decline of the fur trade been farming in the valley. Traveling south and west would yield few encounters with people, just some old fur-trade buildings moldering away. It was just at the beginning of the period of alpine adventure in the region; few were coming this way yet. More remarkable still are the features I would not have seen a hundred years ago: the town of Jasper; the Dominion Forest Preserve (later, Jasper National Park), and all its associated infrastructure; the Yellowhead highway (Hwy. 16); two railway lines; telegraph, telephone, and fiber-optic cables; oil and gas pipelines; campgrounds; motor courts; fire roads; tote roads; sewage and water treatment lines; hiking trails and hikers. None of this existed on a quiet, cool summer morning in 1899. How you interpret these changes is very much a matter of perspective. Some will lament the loss of a wilderness. Some who know that the upper Athabasca Valley was farmed before the park was created will see the loss of pastoralism. Still others will see a logical sequence of develop-

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ments culminating in present conditions, an inevitable reflection of a wider culture. Irrespective of viewpoint, visible to any keen observer are both the extent and rate of change. And the changes are mind-boggling. In less than a hundred years, the complexion of this valley has changed irrevocably. This is a simple fact we sometimes neglect because of the incremental quality of the changes. The trajectory is clear so far, but how will the changes unfurl in the next century (figure 7.1)? Taken as one piece, the sweep of history ought to incite a consideration of the future in the thinking of park managers, scholars, citizens, and visitors, or so one would think. The problem, perhaps the central one, arises when we try to arbitrate different interpretations of history. There are those who see a dim future, a wilderness ensnared by fences and developments, a grand and greatest-of-all theme park; then there are those who walk optimistically into a world of greater amenities, carefully designed ski areas, outdoor hot tubs facing snow-swept peaks, and more opportunities for visitation. We may call these, respectively, the incarcerated and the cornucopian futures. Adherents of the former will try their utmost to prevent further development and to decommission existing operations. The battle will be tough because the perceived adversaries—amassed capital and the patterns of technological development—are deeply entrenched (chapter 5). The focus is on setting aside whatever remains intact, and keeping it safe from hordes of despoilers. Adherents of the cornucopian view believe with equal fervor that wild places and human visitation are compatible, that amenities are precisely what make the world better. Yes, there will be problems, but each and every one can be solved as it arises. Theirs is a truly cornucopian vision. Its critics see it as shortsighted, financially motivated, and intent on breaching the limits of ecological integrity. These critics believe that such a vision for national parks, far from being cornucopian, is deluded and dangerous. This dichotomy represents a fundamental confrontation of cultural values. On its own terms, each worldview is consistent; each has its stalwart supporters. Skirmishes will be fought regularly—a road might be ripped up, the proposal to expand the size of a hotel outside the town will be granted (when push comes to shove, it seems that the cornucopians are winning right now). Such confrontations help throw

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Figure 7.1 View of the town of Jasper facing north from Whistler’s Mountain. The top photo from 1915 is by M. P. Bridgland (see chapter 4), and the repeat image (below) is from exactly the same location in 1998 (J. Rhemtulla and E. Higgs). The build-out of the town is striking, as are the changes in vegetation.

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into relief the fact that national parks and natural areas generally are shaped by our cultural values. Once realized, that fact obliges us to acknowledge that cultural values change; they do not tend to resist time well; like those of us who make them, they are mutable. We do not allow hunting in Jasper today; we did once. We did not have several million people driving through the Yellowhead Pass twenty years ago; now we do. With the current trajectory, certain kinds of development will continue in the park, although perhaps under much greater scrutiny. That scrutiny must be informed by a satisfactory understanding of how we got to where we are. There is a third way of looking at the future, a restorative one, and this is the point of this book. By contemplating the legacy of change in Jasper National Park, we can all imagine a different kind of place in the future. What if we were to take a different lesson from historical change? What if we understood the many changes as contingent, as mere points on a longer timeline? We might then wonder whether it is possible to make equally large changes in the future, yet do so with greater conscious intention than ever before. I hear often that the Yellowhead highway, a major east-west highway equivalent to any interstate highway in the United States, is with us for good. Perhaps it is. Yet there is no reason why, over the course of several decades and with a change in popular values, the highway would not be phased out. It seems unlikely now, but who knows what will happen with transportation technologies? Cars were barely rolling off the dreams of inventors in 1899, a century ago. Perhaps we will adopt a scheme of placing all vehicles on railcars for a trip through the park, as is done in certain mountainous areas in Europe, or of limiting travel within the boundaries to shuttle buses. Who is to say whether Jasper’s boundaries will remain fixed? They have shifted several times over the course of the last century, mostly by shrinking. However, the bold vision of the Yellowstone-to-Yukon project, with its call for a cordilleran-connected wildland, and changes in economic activity might create the conditions for expanding the responsibilities of Jasper National Park and, thereby, bringing it into closer connection with the working landscapes surrounding it.

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The third way of conscious intention is ecological restoration. It compels us to regard the past and the future with equanimity. The past provides information about reference conditions, patterns of disturbance, and models for healthy activity as well as lessons about destructive activity. Historical knowledge is used to set goals for the future, goals that inscribe our intelligence on the landscape. The point is simple: the future holds dangers as well as possibilities. We have filled the landscape to this point with commercial activities, park amenities, and communication programs; moreover, we have inscribed the landscape with a plethora of human intentions. In the future, as in the past and present, we will continue to write on the landscape. What kind of authors will we be? Our goals will not be perfect. We should aim at the very least for respect of ecological and cultural patterns and processes. As authors, we must strive to do our very best work. It is important to realize that people will look back on our efforts with the circumspection with which we now regard the work of those who came before. If we do our very best, then, we trust, people looking back will say that we had the right idea, that we sparked a new way of thinking about the management of precious wild areas. We need to gaze a hundred years into the future and ask what we think Jasper (and of course other places) should—not will—be like. The image will be vague and difficult to resolve at first. Because it is subject to new knowledge and shifts in value, it will change. It is bracing to realize that we have both the capability and the responsibility to act so far into the future. The Ambiguity of Design We restore by gesturing to the past, but our interest is really in setting the drift pattern for the future. This is the foundation I tried to create in chapters 2 through 4. What I have not yet dealt with is how restorationists ought to grapple with the future. I hinted at the importance of temporal continuity in the landscape-evolution model at the end of chapter 6, and that a commingling of ecological conditions and cultural imagination shapes the future. What is missing is a clear statement of

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the intentionality of ecological restoration, the fact that any act of restoration makes explicit our inscription of the future. Every act of restoration is also and always an intentional reach for what will be or what might be. In this chapter I propose that intentionality—or what I later call wild design—occupies, or at least ought to occupy, a main spot beside ecological integrity, historical fidelity, and focal practices, together constituting the four keystone concepts of restoration (figure 7.2). Understanding intentionality in restoration brings the issue of design into prominence. As restorationists we are involved in the design of ecosystems and places whether we like it or not. Landscape architects have worked with this idea for a long time. Ian McHarg’s study of how to plan landscapes ecologically, Design with Nature, was greeted enthusiastically in the late 1960s in North America because it broke with traditions that took ecological processes and patterns for granted. The entire river of activity in ecological and environmental design over the last three decades, whether it be closed-cycle waste treatment, earthfriendly buildings, civic plans that mandate green space, or engineering

Focal practices

Wild design

Ecological restoration

Ecological integrity

Historical fidelity

Figure 7.2 The four keystone concepts of good ecological restoration.

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alternative energy systems, has reached a confluence where for the first time we are able to glimpse the possibility that ecological principles will be taken seriously in civic and private development.2 The Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio is a crystallization of this vision. Opened in 2000 after almost a decade of student-centered design activities and work with some of the top architects, designers, and environmental engineers in the United States, the building boasts zero-waste outflow and a positive source of energy for the college. More than this, it is a living laboratory for students who will emerge with an integrated understanding of ecological problems and their solutions. In the words of David Orr, a leading force behind the Lewis Center, It is a means to the larger end of improving how and how creatively we think. In the century ahead all of those who will be educated here must learn how to: power society by sunlight and stabilize climate, disinvent the concept of waste and build prosperity within the limits of natural systems—in ways that can be sustained over the long term, preserve biological diversity and restore damaged ecosystems, and do these things while advancing the causes of justice and nonviolence.3

Ecological design is heralded, and justly so, as being a primary way through the muddle we find ourselves facing at the beginning of the third millennium. By conscious reflection and intention we make whole what has been ripped apart, clean what has been contaminated, and use less more intelligently.4 The promise is beguiling. The prospect is not nearly so elegant for ecological restorationists. Restorationists aim their work at historical fidelity and ecological integrity, in effect honoring the patterns and processes given by ecosystems. In one very important way, to restore is simply to hold a mirror to nature. Thus, human intention can only be perceived as getting in the way or giving an otherwise hygienic project a taint. Design in this sense is an ugly concept. It conjures the worst of our technological impositions. Some restorationists will argue that the highest goal is selfabnegation, the deliberate denial of human artifice. In this book I have tried to show that ecological restoration is a heterodox practice comprising diverse activities and intentions; there is no single, correct approach to restoration but many kinds of good restora-

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tion. I have argued that beyond the integrity of ecosystems, history matters and needs to matter to the restoration enterprise, and that people and their particular kinds of involvement matter, too. As we walk deeper into a technological world, restoration conducted as a focal practice that engages people with places will help orient us and prevent restoration from becoming another commodity. However, this does not address the crucial fact that as restoration advances, as more people become involved, techniques will be refined, efficiencies sought and achieved, and performance measures documented. These are perfectly obvious ways of moving forward, at least by our contemporary standards. They are desirable if we wish to significantly advance the practice of restoration. Presuming that we are able to forestall wholesale professionalization and instead ensure room for diverse practice and widespread participation, even schoolyard projects and community stream restorations will want to learn from successes and failures. Moreover, the way a project comes into being, how it is presented, what the construction phases look like to passersby, how successfully vernacular elements have been incorporated to make it an enduring part of the local human community, and the kind of design elements—yes, we will call them that—matter in the end to the durability and success of a project. Such ambitions clearly fall into the realm of design. Thus, on top of ecological integrity, historical fidelity, and focality, we have another suite of concerns. For those who were queasy when I introduced cultural features alongside the ecological core of restoration, envisaging restoration as a continuous spiraling of culture and ecology, this move toward design is farther out toward the edge of the known world. The difficulty lies in reconciling apparently opposite tendencies in restoration: the fact of intentionality and the independent character of ecosystems. This is the ambiguity that motivates the title of this book, Nature by Design. The title can be read as both a criticism of restoration for those who worry that restoration is becoming a technological artifact, and as a call to arms for those who would fight for restoration to become a fully flowered practice. My sense is that design is considered an implicit part of most restoration projects at least to the extent that plans are required for how to proceed. These plans involve considerable detail in professional contracts, where detailed maps show

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engineering and planting features, walkways and access points are identified, interpretive facilities are laid out carefully, and artists’ concepts are rendered to give the client and the public a glimpse of the future. Such designs are taken for granted as a necessary and mechanical means to a specified end (the end being an ecological one). I am arguing that we need to take design to another level, a more explicit one, in which we acknowledge human agency in restoration. More than this, we need to acknowledge that restoration is fundamentally a design practice. Abnegation is not the proper path—we should celebrate and enlarge our skills and wisdom in restoration design, not bury it under the patina of ecological accuracy. Besides, no matter how much we try to attune ourselves to the interests of ecosystems, to bring something back to the way it was, or to honor our relations with natural processes, we end up exerting some of our will. Hence, design is unavoidable. The dilemma presented by this ambiguity is not about erasing design, rather figuring the best way of understanding design. Is there good design in restoration? How best can we understand the character, function, and perils of design? Can restoration design help us avoid the debilitating consequences of technological restoration (chapter 5)? To design is to work something out in a skillful or artistic way. When we think of design conventionally we think of plans, arrangements, models, and structures that impose a particular image on the world. While design is not a unified profession in the same way as medicine, law, or landscape architecture, design professionals operate in a wide variety of settings: automotive design, interior design, landscape design, industrial design, and many others. Richard Buchanan, a central figure in theorizing about design and editor of the journal Design Issues, suggests that design has shifted enormously in the last century, growing “from a trade activity to a segmented profession to a field for technical research and to what now should be recognized as a new liberal art of technological culture [original emphasis].”5 This more recent role as a liberal art of technological culture is intriguing. It suggests that design is a way of integrating an assortment of practices and bringing these to bear creatively, perhaps at times critically, on technological matters. Design offers the prospect of reorienting our typical relations in

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a technological culture, enhancing the possibility of focal practices and creating openings for things (instead of devices; see chapter 6) to flourish. Design is never able to offer a magic solution to a problem. Think of good design as a necessary but not sufficient condition for focal practices. What makes Prospect Park in Brooklyn so remarkable is its capacity for absorbing and gracing so many kinds of public activities. Designed in the 1860s by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, it is undergoing intensive restoration of historic structures, designed landscapes, and woodland ecosystems. I lived in Brooklyn for a year in the late 1980s when Prospect Park was beginning to rebound from its low ebb in the 1970s. Low on cash and without adequate community support, the park had decayed from the original vision of a pastoral retreat—stately forests, great lawns, ponds for skating and boating, and equestrian trails. To my mind, Prospect Park is more interesting than the better-known Central Park because Olmsted left sizable tracts of native vegetation in place—these were worked into an elaborate arrangement of trails and viewpoints.6 I walked through the park almost daily. It sopped up some of my urban anxieties and eased the transition from a small cabin on Lake Huron to the buzz of metropolitan New York. On my frequent journey from a small neighborhood, Kensington, at the southwest side of the park I would usually skirt Prospect Lake and Lookout Hill, cut across the Nethermead to the trail around Quaker Hill, before walking the entire length of Long Meadow, that vast nearly mile-long grassland, and out the north end of the park near the Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Public Library, where I did some of my work. The walk was a gentle adventure and great tonic, but was nonetheless disturbing to my ecological sensibilities. Litter was everywhere; scattered around benches were crack cocaine vials. The ponds were heavily fertilized from an abundance of well-fed waterfowl. Trails cut everywhere through the forested areas, and weedy plant species were spreading. Most of the facilities suffered years of decay, except the boathouse and a few of Olmsted’s decorative stone arches, which had recently been restored. Most pronounced was the roar of traffic around the circular road that Olmsted had intended originally as a carriage road. At rush hour a moving barrier encircled the park.

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I returned for a visit in February 2000, hosted by Anne Wong, director of landscape management for the park. It was a misty, cool day, expectant with rain. We toured some of the most ambitious projects in a breathtaking and widespread restoration plan that has occupied park staff for nearly a decade. Buoyed with higher public and private funding and with a much-enhanced volunteer program, park staff have restored The Pools, small ponds that now sport native vegetation and are better shielded from heedless activity. Remarkably, I saw a great blue heron at close range, and heard tales of increased bird life. Shortcut trails have been ripped up and revegetated, original trails fortified, and weedy species removed, all with the aim of returning some of Vaux and Olmsted’s original viewpoints. Some of the graceful rustic timber shelters have been rebuilt based on photographs of the originals, and most dramatic is the restoration of The Ravine, a small gorge, waterfall, and associated trails, as well as lookouts and shelters. Here the aim was to bring the original design back to life, and in doing so represent the admixture of artifice and natural process. The Ravine was entirely contrived, but it runs through a section of historic woodland. The effect is stunning; at once one is transported back in time to a very different era, succumbing to the contemplative elegance of the design and the grace of an old forest. Prospect Park is an astounding restoration, beating the odds of urban decline and fusing cultural and ecological arrangements.7 The designs at Prospect Park, both the original ones and all those that followed (including the most recent restoration initiatives), created possibilities for flourishing ecosystems and focal cultural practices. They did not, however, determine the character of the place; this depended, and depends, too much on the manifold ecological processes and patterns of human caring that unfold from the designs. A good design is one that makes room for these possibilities, respecting the literal and figurative contours of the place. Good planning, like good design, according to Lawrence Haworth, depends on openness, flexibility, and adaptability.8 The success of Prospect Park has much to do with its openness to many forms of life and ecological processes, including ones continuous with a much older landscape, the flexibility of its structures for diverse activities that respond to community (ecological and social) needs, and adapt-

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ability in accommodating new activities such as drumming circles, running clubs, fishing contests, nature hikes, and pedal boating. There is little question that cultural processes edge out ecological ones in Prospect Park, but what is remarkable is the large amount of ecological diversity and integrity present in a multimillion-person urban sea. Design was necessary for the restoration and flourishing of natural processes in this Brooklyn oasis. This is an inescapable verity about ecological restoration, which points us toward understanding the reach, meaning, and limits of design. Wild Design Design practices are pervasive in contemporary life not least because of the complexity of technological systems and choices. It is no longer sufficient, for example, to design a product by itself. A computer workstation, for example, can be thought of as a single product for design and shaped according to available materials, engineering constraints, marketing demands, and consumer opinion. A new approach to design, emergent in the last two decades, considers design challenges more broadly: it is not the workstation per se that is designed, but the user’s experience with the workstation. The relevant sphere of consideration now includes the surfaces on which the computer and peripheral devices are placed, lighting, seating, the visual experience of the user, and myriad other factors that shape experience. Well beyond ergonomics, experience is now modeled and designed to achieve specific human-centered goals, although typically in the realm of corporate objectives, too.9 Buchanan suggests four ways in which design is now deployed: Symbolic and visual communication, which includes traditional tasks of graphic designers, advertising personnel, and similar specialists, is shifting away from “bookish” familiarity to a fusion of language and images that is being driven significantly by Internet technologies. •

Artifacts, which includes the design of every conceivable product from clothing to food to automobiles, are shifting away from the design of objects as noted above to a consideration of the interaction of users and objects. •

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Activities and organized services—“which includes the traditional management concern for logistics, combining physical resources, instrumentalities, and human beings in efficient sequences and schedule to reach specified objectives”—are expanding into how experience can be made “more intelligent, meaningful, and satisfying.”10 •

Complex systems or environments for living, working, playing, and learning, which include traditional practices such as engineering, architecture, urban planning, are a high priority.

•

Hence, design practice spreads across signs, things, actions, and thoughts, and moves up and down this list to accommodate specific needs. It is the fourth area, a critical one emerging in technological culture, which comes closest to representing ecological restoration. Buchanan writes that this approach to design “is more and more concerned with exploring the role of design in sustaining, developing, and integrating human beings into broader ecological and cultural environments, shaping these environments when desirable and possible or adapting to them when necessary.”11 Designers need nimble responses to changing circumstances and particularities, which is why Buchanan advocates thinking in terms of placements instead of categories. Placements “have boundaries to shape and constrain meaning, but are not rigidly fixed and determinate.”12 Categories are more rigid and shaped within a well-established philosophy or conceptual framework. What allows designers to be creative is recognizing that new placements, in effect the possibility of multiple new perspectives, allow for creativity, serendipity, and invention. At the same time placements are also place—that is, they manifest tradition. This agrees with constructivist sensibilities that have been current in the last decade or more, the notion that reality comprises socially negotiated meaning (see chapter 5). Functioning well in a complex technological culture requires good design, and good design depends on a fusion of science and the arts, the kind that John Dewey called for so clearly early in the twentieth century: If modern tendencies are justified in putting art and creation first, then the implications of this position should be avowed and carried through. It would then be seen that science is an art, that art is practice, and that the only distinction worth

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drawing is not between practice and theory, but between those modes of practice that are not intelligent, not inherently and immediately enjoyable, and those which are full of enjoyed meanings.13

Defining good design is notoriously difficult. Here one confronts canons of aesthetic taste and shifting value positions. This is the art of design. But there is also a science to the extent that we learn from the systematic application of different techniques, approaches, strategies, and arrangements. Good design demands that we integrate across sciences and the arts, a gulf that defies so much in contemporary institutional life. Ecological restoration as a design discipline demands attention to tradition and novelty at the same time, searching creatively across the spectrum of the arts and sciences for the best way to respect ecological and cultural integrity. Design specifies intention, meaning that our biases and dispositions and practical concerns are revealed through design: the cards are well displayed on the table. There is no sense that we are merely conveyors of nature, even to the extent that we work incredibly hard to honor the historical character of an ecosystem as well as its contemporary patterns and processes. In the most sophisticated restoration projects, we do more than arrange material objects; our concern is with communication, appearance, function, organization (both ecological and social), and experience. There are two main problems with design as a model for ecological restoration. I am worried that there are relatively few examples from the core of integrated design that take the interests of ecosystems seriously instead of just the interests of people. This is a serious shortfall, and perhaps constitutes another “wicked problem” for design.14 The design literature is filled with examples of better designs for human experience, but little is available on how design can represent the unspoken concerns of other species. Landscape architects and designers have certainly engaged these questions, but most of their work is aimed at satisfying human clients. Restoration pushes the boundaries around relevant design elements. The ecological design movement that produced the Environmental Studies building at Oberlin College is understandably enthusiastic about the integration of human and ecological processes. For example, William McDonough, one of the Oberlin project’s main designers, is reported in an interview as saying:

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The philosophy of the work I do is really about community. When we begin a project, we don’t really think of ourselves as designing buildings, we think of ourselves as creating an environment for a community. And we start with the idea of all species in that community. Instead of simply saying, How can we begin loving our own children, even for seven generations, we ask, How do we love all the children of all species for all time? In that sense it’s a fundamental act of restoration and regeneration.15

The approach that McDonough and other designers take is encouraging, but the process still begins with human concerns instead of ecological ones. Ecosystems are valuable to the client primarily in terms of ecological services, and whatever independence ecosystems are given, say the rooftop prairie that The Gap headquarters facility sports in San Bruno, California, is a component of the overall design. Restoration design demands that ecosystems be taken seriously. Despite my claims that ecological restoration involves the knitting together of cultural practice and ecological processes, it is the ecosystems that have priority (from a strictly logical point of view, ecological restoration would not be ecological without the starting point of any project being the ecosystems themselves). The second problem concerns the character of design as an outcome of technological culture rather than as a critical response to technology. Design, especially in its newer integrated forms, is clearly an adjunct to technology, and this is made clear in Buchanan’s formulation of design as the liberal art of technological culture. Such a definition cuts two ways. In one direction design practice can make things more functional and beautiful, but is this not paving the way for a further entrenchment of technology? Judging from the evidence of so much that now passes for design, this would seem to be the case. In the other direction design can attune us to critical responsibilities. Think, for example, of the provocative, satirical print and television advertisements produced by Adbusters, a Canadian organization dedicated to exposing the dangerous underbelly of marketing, advertising, and experience management. In this sense, design can be a subversive instrument, to follow Andrew Feenberg’s account of how technologies can be turned into socially constructive, sometime revolutionary devices.16 The challenge for designers, then, is to make their work a critical practice that simultane-

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ously uses the best advice and equipment of technology and resists the incursions of the device paradigm. Put differently, can design practice emphasize focal reality? It seems to me that there is nothing inherent in design as a practice that would lend itself either to focality or commodification. Much depends on how design practice is construed and the kinds of values on which it rests. Buchanan proposes design as an argument that “moves toward the concrete interplay and interconnection of signs, things, actions, and thoughts.”17 Design is an appropriate mixture of core content, usability, and desirability. This is Buchanan’s view of human-centered design, which he believes can be adapted for ecological restoration. The primary task is divided two ways: designing the ecosystems knowing that ecological processes will be at least partially autonomous, and designing human experience and engagement with the ecosystems. The attentiveness to ecological matters emerges through core content in which the designer assigns significance to the ecological character (instead of usability and desirability) of a project.18 As elegant as this is, it neither solves the problem that restoration presents for design in terms of ecological priority, nor does it effectively resist technological patterns. The “new,” human-centered design carries a deeper argument about integration of experience in a technological culture. This provides an obvious opening for arguments that embrace focal practices—that is, placements in the case of ecological restoration that emphasize engagement with natural processes. This can be extended to good design being about the excellence of material culture, as Borgmann proposes. Restoration designs, accordingly, would approach excellence to the extent that they benefited human excellence and the integrity of nature. Borgmann writes, “In preservation and restoration, design takes on a both more subservient and more significant role, more subservient because it submits to the conditions that history has left it, but also more significant because careful design alone can recover historical depth for present use.”19 Borgmann rests his argument on the idea of engagement to refer to “the symmetry that links humanity and reality.” When one is bodily and socially engaged with reality, focal things take on central importance.

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Focal things demand attention, fidelity, and skill on the part of the person, and things develop in character with the attention of the person.20 Superficiality is what impels Borgmann’s proposal for engagement, or to adapt his phrasing, focal design. Sophisticated designers concentrate on modeling experience and on providing a rich, complete adventure, whether this be the feel of a Web site, the ambience of a building, or the disposition one has while walking through a restored prairie. Suppose that you are charged with designing a tour through Jasper National Park for a group of politicians studying the fate of national parks. Their time is limited, and the impression you wish to convey is one of transcendent beauty and threats to ecological integrity. You would integrate the design of advance material, provide special menus that highlight provocative themes of ecological stewardship, arrange for walks at the time of day most likely to encounter either large crowds (threats) or sun puddles on a montane forest floor (beauty), and make sure that there is some kind of memorable outdoor experience, perhaps a campfire but nothing that will tax the energy or suggest true physical hardship (the trick, in fact, might be to gesture toward hardship, the rugged outdoor experience, without actually doing the work; this could be accomplished by having a renowned mountain guide lead a short hike with lots of harrowing anecdotes). Hence, the experience could be designed masterfully to convey specific messages. In the end, the problem suffered is one of superficiality: you are not truly engaged with a place, especially a wild place, without being there on its terms, not yours. The antidote for superficiality is depth. Depth is achieved by ensuring that a primary professional obligation of designers is nurturing engagement, which comes about through emphasis on personal and community focal practices. “The good of design,” writes Borgmann, “is the moral and cultural excellence of the humanly shaped and built environment.”21 Thus design is doing well if it can move away from straightforward concern with products—form and function—to the manifold and deep experience of things. This concept of design is compatible with much that is progressive in contemporary design circles. Design is very political to the extent that it reflects the ideologies of its practitioners, and these in turn inspire and are shaped by public response. In a hyper-

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active marketplace that depends on increasingly sophisticated image and imagination technologies, the politics of design is largely conditioned by postmodern capitalism. At the risk of touching a larger body of debate without engaging it, whatever the authority and compulsion of contemporary capital arrangements, the ideology neither encourages nor supports focal practice. Fortunately, focal practice remains an intensely local experience, and one that is not easily co-opted by advanced market forces. Gardening, for example, has become a gadget-oriented avocation with a rising number of expert expectations, but in the end the experience of gardening, of mucking and planting, transcends the distant distractions of commodities (these commodities, hopefully, serve the focal practice). Ecological restoration is the same way. Participation in restoration encourages focal practice, and the tide of corporatization and efficiency measures, at least as exclusive or dominating forces, is held at bay. Good design in restoration encourages such openings. Restoration pushes design, too. Designers are used to working with the artificial—humancentered or made objects. Restoration defies this orthodox view because of natural process. No matter how much human agency and intention are applied to the practice of restoration design, natural process kicks in and sometimes takes over completely. What is more, this is typically desirable. Call it wild design. This goes beyond conventional ideas of ecological design, which are based typically on ecological services for human use. There is always some measure, even if very small, of humancentered interest in restoration. What, then, can design offer ecological restoration? First, restoration designs can follow convention, albeit recent convention, in design and emphasize the experience of the human visitors to or dwellers in a restored place. The ecological integrity of a site is assumed or ensured through ecologically minded interventions, much like what restorationists do presently. However, the experience of the visitor is designed to balance ecological integrity and appreciation. After all, and this is a difficult lesson generations of park managers have had to learn, animals and plants do not typically require management. Rather, most of the emphasis must be on designing experience for the visitors and dwellers that emphasize long-term responsibility, respectful action, and

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contribution, material or otherwise, to the flourishing of ecosystems. Explicit design of human experience in restoration will improve receptivity to restoration activity and bolster the livelihood of places. A more radical role for restoration designers is pushing beyond human interests to meet the implicit demands, patterns, and character of ecosystems. The language is difficult to come by in describing such practice. We must become especially attuned to what ecosystems want, knowing of course that ecosystems will never express their wants in conventional terms. This implies a heavy, perhaps the heaviest responsibility: we are not designing for ourselves, articulate clients, or identifiable users, but for the largely silent interests of ecosystems. Engagement is a key to such practice. Many restoration practitioners have a profound feeling for the places they work, and by intention—careful planting, well-timed releases of new species, mimicking historical watercourses—encourage the flourishing of natural process. I am pushing the traditional meaning of restoration in emphasizing intentionality and through this, design. Design is a practice that emphasizes intention, and good designs nurture individual and community engagement. Achieving excellence in design means creating convivial settings for focal things and practices, and to this extent design emphasizes human agency and the relationship of people to ecosystems. The notion of design can be pushed further, I believe, toward wild design—that is, the deep appreciation of what an ecosystem requires to flourish, and then making such conditions possible. There is in such action always an element of intention, but this is soon overwhelmed by the fecundity and diversity of ecological processes. We need to acknowledge that restoration is an intervention in natural process; the greatest and most demanding challenge is to figure out how our actions, our designs, can work alongside natural processes. In grasping the significance of restoration as a focal practice we ensure, or at least show how to ensure, a reduction in linear thinking, pure efficiency measures, greed and shortsightedness. Alas, there is no magic solution for dealing with debilitating patterns in a technological culture. There is no singular way to practice restoration that will work perfectly against the rising tide of development that engulfs natural areas and threatens also to displace restoration from its roots as an engaged, par-

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ticipatory activity. Oddly perhaps, restoration is the best hope we have not only for repairing damage but also for creating new ways of being with wild processes. It engages minds and bodies in ways that build visceral connections to natural processes, even in the middle of cities and desolate, ravaged landscapes. Restoration is hard work, and for this reason alone tempers our ambitions; it urges conservation and protection. It brings perspective to life in a technological culture and suggests there are other ways of living that are sustaining. These alternative ways of living will not rise to the surface without some help. Design enables openings for nature and culture, as one being, to go wild. Restoration as Conversation: A Storied Landscape In chapter 4 I made extensive use of the idea of narrative continuity to show the links between past, present, and future in ecological restoration. The depth of our engagement with a place depends on our connections both forward and backward in time, and the greater the reach, generally the stronger our connection. Depth depends on more than the passage of time. Our connections depend on the practice we engage and on the stories we tell, literally, about our involvement with place, and how these are transmitted from one generation and group to another. The ardor and commitment required by restoration practice tends to ensure that stories will be told for a long time and that these will enrich the care of a place. Restoration is about restorying place. In the end I am uncomfortable about leaving restoration at the doorstep of design in spite of the many benefits that accrue from the association. Intentionality is critical to the success of restoration, but intentionality courts hubris. We take the risk that participatory practices of restoration will lead to a fast-forward, can-do, technofix approach to natural processes—this was one of my main worries in the previous section. Even the word design, despite attempts to qualify it for participatory engagement, connotes for the contemporary mind a power over artificial and natural things. Design needs a counterweight to keep it honest, some practical model that sticks easily in people’s minds and remains true to the clarity and directness of design. I propose that we think of restoration as conversation.

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A conversation in the most general sense is a reciprocal exchange. Reciprocity implies mutual interest. Conversation is typically communication that occurs between two people or among a small group. Conversation is talking with, not talking to. Conversation also implies continuity in the sense of bringing together events and ideas from the past to bear on the present, and sometimes conversations between or among longtime friends or colleagues have in themselves a distinctive continuity. Usually conversations have a point, or a reason for taking place, although this is not always the case with conversations that erupt spontaneously. A lovely aspect of conversation is that a true conversation implies a sharing of information, perspectives, knowledge, and wisdom. If one person gets the upper hand, it turns into an argument, a fight, or the domination of one will over the other. In applying the idea of conversation to restoration, I wish to emphasize the idea of reciprocity between restorationists and ecosystems, and among science, aesthetics (cultural values), and participation. Restoration is working well as long as there is a genuine conversation between restorationists and natural processes, which in a more grounded sense means that the interests of people and ecosystems are both engaged. Ecosystems cannot speak in any conventional sense, but attunement to the specific needs of ecosystems allows restorationists to represent their interests. And a conversation of this kind proceeds only when the restorationist takes the time to know a site on the site’s terms, and as much as possible, to let the vernacular conditions shape the project. The loud, garrulous humans will always dominate unless specific attention is given to the soft-spoken ecosystem, just like the attention and respect required of a teacher when there is a shy seminar participant being drowned out by more forceful discussants. It is a gift to know when someone wishes to speak and when that person wants only to listen to the goings on. The restorationist-as-designer must be skilled at the art of conversation. There is another, more figurative kind of conversation, the one that takes place among the demands of observation and experiment (science), judgment (aesthetics, construed broadly to mean what is beautiful to us), and the engagement that comes of participation. Restoration practice is

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anchored strongly in science, either in the site-specific gathering of information or the application of systematic knowledge borrowed from other projects. We rest comfortably on a foundation of good sense about how ecosystems work.22 Science demands both experience and skill, which means that those who contribute this knowledge to a restoration project are specialists. The risk, of course, is that their knowledge will be all that matters in formulating a design. Matters of taste and judgment matter at the very least because we want to encourage support for restoration and certain kinds of human involvement. As I suggested earlier, design is directed in one sense to shaping the experience of the people who walk in or around a restored place. The conversation that might take place between scientists and professional designers would lead to a professionalized kind of restoration. In some cases this may be necessary or desirable, but for most restoration initiatives, the ultimate success of a project depends on participation by as many people as practically possible. Thus, we admit the third and crucial discussant: participation. Together, science, judgment, and participation will create the best designs, and restoration becomes a conversation. I finish where I began, in Jasper National Park, a landscape of contradictions, ambiguities, and hope. It is a wild place without being wilderness in the conventional sense; people have been too much part of that landscape for any people-less notion of wilderness to make sense. Yet there are vast areas that have likely always been hostile to regular travel and encampment, places remote from regular trails and shielded by dramatic rock and roaring rivers. Even in the main Athabasca Valley, the zone of heaviest historical and contemporary human use, there are nooks away from the buzz. I do not envy the daunting responsibility faced by park managers who must manage and restore, although I must remember that these are places held in trust and bear some action by others. This is why so many citizens have been active in pushing park managers to act on various issues, from continued visitor development on the inside to the rapid resource development along the perimeter, and this is also why I have given my energies to understanding the culture, ecology, and restoration

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of Jasper. Such a wild, contradictory place is an acid test for ecological restoration. The main question, of course, is what to do? Let us begin with what not to do: turn away from resolute action. The pace and extent of human change—whether indirect effects such as suppressed wildfire to increased trail use—demands some redress. The simple act of packing up our managerial responsibilities and letting nature take its course, the old natural regulation model, will result in a freakish landscape far outside the known historical range of variability for the landscape. Action is necessary in one form or another to ensure ecological integrity and fidelity to historical conditions. Fortunately, such resolve is taking form in Jasper. Second, there is a need for more, not less, engagement with people. Certainly it is crucial that human activity be routed away from fragile areas or those that require healing. And something will have to be done about the sheer volume of people who want to love the place. Beyond this, however, the surest way of creating a durable ecologically integral future is building the engagements—scientific research programs, volunteer restoration projects, education activities—that create fidelity. Ecological restoration, with its intentionality and commitment to focal practice, makes this possible. The largest challenge is in thinking into the future, and then connecting the future with the past. Restoration builds on this connection. Once long-term intention (and responsibility) comes to the fore, the possibility of design enters, too. We know an increasing amount about past ecological conditions and cultural practices, and these data form the basis of future action. Models are just that—models of reality. We must not confuse them with what will be. They provide guidance for conversations, paint portraits of future landscapes, and bind together our intentions. One thing that must change is the degree of participation in such decision making. Precious natural places such as Jasper must be open to involvement by citizens. Some managers fear loss of control, and others worry that militant environmentalists or wanton developers will seize the agenda. My hunch is that people who are given a vast responsibility and provided the opportunity for genuine engagement come around to a deeper appreciation of the place. There is a better chance of wise

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decision making with such participatory processes. Any such decision making must operate within an adaptive framework, too. Climate change, cultural values, visitation pressures, and so on will change over time, and intentions must adapt to meet these major and minor shifts. With restoration design, the point is not to be an author of nature, but to create a narrative in which natural and cultural processes can write the text.

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Notes

Chapter 1 Portions of this chapter are adapted from E. S. Higgs, “The Bear in the Kitchen,” Alternatives 25, no. 2 (1999): 30–35. 1. The town of Jasper and the park as a whole undertook a major campaign in the 1970s to secure garbage in sealed, animalproof metal containers, a strategy that great reduced the number of bears habituated to human food. That this particular black bear found attractive pickings was testament more to the hunger or habituation of the bear than to the conditions in the town. 2. Since grizzlies are a sufficiently unusual sight and the park likes to keep track of their movements in the busy summer visitor season, we phoned in a report. News traveled back to the center and a small cadre of people drove up right beside the paddock in a van, which drove off the bears. After this disappointing experience, we thought twice before making subsequent wildlife reports. 3. E. S. Higgs, S. Campell, I. MacLaren, J. Martin, T. Martin, C. Murray, A. Palmer, and J. Rhemtulla, Culture, Ecology and Restoration in Jasper National Park, 2000 (available at ·www.arts.ualberta.ca/~cerj/cer.htmlÒ). 4. J. Baird Callicott, Larry B. Crowder, and Karen Mumford, “Current Normative Concepts in Conservation,” Conservation Biology 13, no. 1 (1999): 22–35 (quote on 25). 5. Information on the Wildlands Project is available at ·www.twp.orgÒ. 6. Ian MacLaren, “Cultured Wilderness in Jasper National Park,” Journal of Canadian Studies 34, no. 3 (1999): 7–58 (quote on 42). 7. See Thomas Birch, “The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons,” Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 3–26. 8. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 14. 9. Ben Gadd, Handbook of the Canadian Rockies (Jasper, Alberta: Corax Press, 1995), 188.

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10. I draw on a number of historical sources, including MacLaren, “Cultured Wilderness in Jasper National Park,” 42; J. Urion, “An Ecological History of the Palisades Site,” unpublished manuscript, 1995; Gerhard Ens and Barry Potyondi, “A History of the Upper Athabasca Valley in the Nineteenth Century,” unpublished manuscript, 1986; Great Plains Research Consultants, “Jasper National Park: A Social and Economic History,” unpublished manuscript, 1985. 11. Métis describes a complex ethnicity that refers to people of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry, and seldom yields to simple definition. The Métis families in the upper Athabasca Valley traced their ancestry mainly to Iroquois, French, and English fur-trade workers. 12. R. M. Rylatt, Surveying the Canadian Pacific: Memoirs of a Railroad Pioneer (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991). 13. Mary T. S. Schaeffer, “Old Indian Trails Expedition of 1907,” in E. J. Hart, ed., A Hunter of Peace: Mary T. S. Schaeffer’s Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies (Banff, Alberta: Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 1980). 14. Archaeological Research Services Unit, Western Region, Canadian Parks Service, Environment Canada, Jasper National Park Archaeological Resource Description and Analysis (Calgary: Parks Canada, 1989). 15. Charles E. Kay, Clifford White, and Brian Patton, “Assessment of LongTerm Terrestrial Ecosystem States and Processes in Banff National Park and the Canadian Rockies,” unpublished manuscript, 1994. 16. Edward Wilson Moberly, interview conducted by Peter Murphy, August 29, 1980 (unpublished; original tapes available at the University of Alberta Archives). 17. Nancy Turner has written extensively on the management practices, especially as regards the traditional use of plants, of First Nations in what is now British Columbia. See, for example, her 1979 book, Plants in British Columbia Indian Technology (Victoria: British Columbia Provincial Museum), as well as Sandra L. Peacock and Nancy J. Turner, “ ‘Just Like a Garden’: Traditional Resource Management and Biodiversity Conservation on the Interior Plateau of British Columbia,” in Paul E. Minnis and Wayne J. Elisens, eds., Biodiversity and Native America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 133–179. 18. Henry T. Lewis, “Traditional Uses of Fire by Indians in Northern Alberta,” Current Anthropology 19 (1978): 401–402. 19. Ross Cox, Adventures on the Columbia River, Including the Narrative of a Residence of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, among Various Tribes of Indians Hitherto Unkown: Together with a Journey across the American Continent, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831); quoted in MacLaren, “Cultured Wilderness in Jasper National Park,” 10. 20. Archival research in 1997 by J. Urion and M. Norton, two members of the Culture, Ecology and Restoration team, uncovered correspondence in the National Archives of Canada pertaining to the expulsion of the Métis families in Jasper. With such documentary evidence coming to light, and a growing atti-

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tude of conciliation on the part of the park, a process of healing has begun. At a practical level, for instance, several descendants of the Moberly family were involved in recent changes to the burial site of Suzanne Chalifoux. 21. I am guided in my analysis by William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991), in which the history of Chicago is retold from the perspective of ecological change. The construction of any city extracts a great deal from the surrounding region. 22. Banff–Bow Valley Task Force, Banff–Bow Valley: At the Crossroads (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1996). 23. Jon Krakauer, “Rocky Times for Banff,” National Geographic, July 1995, pp. 46–69. 24. Of course, such a simple gradient analysis is insufficient to account for local circumstances. For instance, Banff National Park will always be more susceptible to heavy use than Jasper because of the Trans-Canada highway running through Banff and because of Banff’s proximity to Calgary, a city of almost a million people less than an hour away by car. In contrast, the road cutting through Jasper will not likely ever be as important as the more southern route, and the nearest major city is Edmonton, a four-hour road trip. 25. Leslie Bella, Parks for Profit (Montreal: Harvest House, 1987). 26. David Graber, “Resolute Biocentrism: The Dilemma of Wilderness in National Parks,” in Michael Soulé and Gary Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 123–135 (quote on 124). 27. This expression is borrowed from Alexander Wilson’s. The Culture of Nature (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 1991). Wilson illustrates the ways views of nature have been conditioned for the motoring public and suggests that away from the road, the view often looks very different. 28. D. W. Mayhood, The Fishes of the Central Canadian Rockies Ecosystem, Freshwater Research Limited Report No. 950408 (1995). 29. L. N. Carbyn, “Wolf Population Fluctuations in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada,” Biological Conservation 6, no. 2 (1974): 98. 30. Rhemtulla developed a technique for quantitatively analyzing survey photographs taken in 1915 by a Dominion Land Surveyor, M. P. Bridgland, as well as the repeat images taken by her at exactly the same locations decades later. She used standard interpretations of aerial photographs from 1949 and 1991 to register and confirm her interpretations of the original and repeat photographs. Her methods and results are described in Jeanine Rhemtulla, “Eighty Years of Change: The Montane Vegetation of Jasper National Park,” unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1999. Her work, in conjunction with that of this author and several other colleagues at the University of Alberta, has led to the Bridgland Repeat Photography project, which aims to repeat and analyze the complete collection of 735 survey images from 1915.

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31. White, a veteran Banff National Park warden and an early advocate of prescribed fire in Canadian national parks, would probably use the word damaged in place of altered, but I want to resist this expression at least until a convincing case can be made for why and to what extent we ought to be concerned about such deliberate changes to the land. On what grounds is something damaged? My position is not to deny the consequences of intensive and often heedless human activity, but simply to ensure clarity about how such effects are understood. 32. Gertrude Nicks, “Demographic Anthropology of Native Populations in Western Canada, 1800–1975,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, 1980. 33. Graber, “Resolute Biocentrism,” 133. 34. Society for Ecological Restoration Official Definition, 2002. Available at ·www.ser.orgÒ. 35. I use the restoraton of the Old State House in Boston, where restorationists had to wrestle with the proper point of such a task, as an example in Eric S. Higgs, “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?”, Conservation Biology 11, no. 2 (1997): 338–348. Marcus Hall uses the example of the Sistine Chapel to a similar end. He points to the problem of extracting a reasonable reference point when some people were shocked by the bright, bold qualities of the restored frescoes in the Chapel: See Marcus Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture: Restoring the Land in Two Continents,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1999. 36. Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 13. 37. Richard White, “The New Eastern History and the National Parks,” George Wright Forum 13, no. 3 (1996): 31. 38. Stephanie Mills, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 34. 39. See Michael Soulé and Gary Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995). 40. Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man,” in Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair, eds., The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1988), 289. 41. There were several of these hotels in the mountain parks owned by Canadian Pacific Railway, including Jasper Park Lodge, Banff Springs Hotel, and Chateau Lake Louise. 42. Remarkably few studies have been done on the perceptions of park visitors that take into account factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, and experience. This is remarkable because it flies in the face of assumptions about the constructedness of wilderness. We sense that the idea of wilderness is constructed, yet we have few data to support the claim. More generally, relatively few studies

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examine the often-discordant belief systems that constitute the human membership in a park: park staff, workers in the private sector, the visitor industry, visitors, environmentalists, community residents, and so on. Much more research has been done on animal behavior in parks than has been done on human behaviors in and beliefs about the domains the animals inhabit. An improved understanding of the way the values of such groups both complement and tacitly contradict one another is a vital aspect of understanding how the park is collectively viewed. The reason for this lacuna is partly that anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists, key professionals who have a direct stake in understanding the practices and beliefs of people, have concentrated mostly on studying the exotic other. Those so close at hand are less enticing, less different perhaps. Hence, we have very little systematic understanding of what people really understand about the beliefs of visitors, or indeed about the larger cultural forces that condition our predisposition to wilderness. Fortunately a growing number of cultural studies are being done on subjects that bear directly on the matter of what constitutes nature and wilderness. For instance, in “Simulated Seas: Exhibition Design in Contemporary Aquariums,” Design Issues 11, no. 2 (1995): 3–10, Dennis Doordan concentrates on the cultural values featured in the design of modern public acquariums. William Cronon’s edited collection, Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995), highlights the kind of work we are concerned with. In this anthology, Candace Slater’s treatment of the contemporary fascination with Amazonia, “Amazonia as Edenic Narrative” (pp. 114–131), Jennifer Price’s wry examination of image management, “Looking for Nature at the Mall: A Field Guide to the Nature Company” (pp. 186–203), and James Proctor’s study of the divergent cultural values of those involved in debates over the future of U.S. Northwest coastal forest, “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice” (pp. 298–320), are excellent examples of how cultural studies of institutions and practices can yield important information about the larger belief systems at work in shaping parks. 43. The future of Jasper is contingent on policies that are set and implemented by managers and others. But of course these policies are conditioned by the flow of capital into the park and the region, the political climate in the headquarters of the park systems in Canada, international styles in park management, spending allocations of visitors, changing infrastructure requirements, and a host of other factors. 44. William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798,” lines 102–106, in M. H. Abrams, general editor, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume Two (New York: W. V. Norton & Company, 1993) 138. 45. Wilson, The Culture of Nature. 46. This section is based closely on the fieldwork and research of Jennifer Cypher, “The Real and the Fake: Imagineering Nature and Wilderness at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge,” unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology,

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University of Alberta, 1995, and Jennifer Cypher and Eric Higgs, “Colonizing the Imagination: Disney’s Wilderness Lodge,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 8, no. 4 (1997): 107–130. 47. Cypher, “The Real and the Fake”, 22. 48. Walt Disney Corporation, Silver Creek Star, 1994, p. 1. 49. Since opening in mid-1994, the Wilderness Lodge has been a terrific success. When Jennifer Cypher went to conduct fieldwork at the site, she could not arrange to spend even a single night in the hotel; there were no vacancies. 50. Frederick Turner, Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit against the Wilderness (New York: Viking, 1980). 51. In addition to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, cited above, three other works stand out in explaining changing views of wilderness: Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 52. Richard White points to the notable absence of labor and work in contemporary views of nature. See his “ ‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995), 171–185. 53. Cypher and Higgs, “Colonizing the Imagination.” 54. See L. M. Benton, “Selling the Natural or Selling Out?”, Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 3–22; Price, “Looking for Nature at the Mall.” 55. See, for example, Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993). 56. Russ Rymer, “Back to the Future: Disney Reinvents the Company Town,” Harper’s, 1996, pp. 65–78 (quote on p. 65). 57. Rymer, “Back to the Future,” p. 67. 58. Rymer, “Back to the Future,” p. 75. 59. Jennifer Cypher, “The Real and the Fake,” 1. 60. MacLaren, “Cultured Wilderness,” 39. 61. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). 62. David Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 86. 63. Mills, In Service of the Wild, 17–18. 64. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground; Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995), 69–90 (quote on 80).

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65. The seminar that led to the production of Cronon’s essay “The Trouble with Wilderness” and to the book he edited, Uncommon Ground, was held in California. 66. David Strong, Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), 130. 67. Albert Borgmann, “The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature,” in Michael Soulé and Gary Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 31–45 (quote on 38). 68. Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point, 1990), 24.

Chapter 2 1. Jennifer Cypher, “The Real and the Fake: Imagineering Nature and Wilderness at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge,” unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, 1995. MacMahon uses the term designer ecosystem to refer to created systems that mimic real systems, the Biosphere II project being perhaps the best-known example. See James MacMahon, “Empirical and Theoretical Ecology as a Basis for Restoration: An Ecological Success Story,” in M. L. Pace and P. M. Groffman, eds., Successes, Limitations, and Frontiers in Ecosystem Science (New York: Springer Verlag, 1998), 220–246. 2. I am in a fragile position to criticize overzealous development. Edmonton, Alberta, where I lived, is home to the world’s largest shopping mall. 3. Cost estimates are difficult to come by in the sense that they have escalated as the scope of the project has grown and as new information has come to light. Suffice it to say that the final budget will be very, very large compared with that of most restoration projects. 4. For these and other details I am grateful for a special issue of Restoration Ecology (vol. 3, no. 3, 1995) on the Kissimmee River restoration, and to Cliff Dahm, guest editor of the issue. Readers who want more information on the project, especially on ecological effects and hydrological characteristics, should consult the series of articles in this issue. 5. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Central and Southern Florida, Kissimmee River, Florida. Final Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement: Environmental Restoration of the Kissimmee River, Florida (Jacksonville, FL: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, 1992); as reported in Joseph W. Koebel, Jr. “An Historical Perspective on the Kissimmee River Restoration Project,” Restoration and Management Notes 3 (1995): 152. 6. For examples, see Roberta Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999); Satyajit Singh, Taming the Waters: The Political Economy of Large Dams in India (Delhi:

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Oxford University Press, 1997); George N. Hood, Against the Flow: RaffertyAlameda and the Politics of the Environment (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1994). 7. Clifford N. Dahm, Kenneth W. Cummins, H. Maurice Valett, and Ross L. Coleman, “An Ecosystem View of the Restoration of the Kissimmee River,” Restoration and Management Notes 3 (1995): 225. 8. Fortunately, this project and others along the Morava River have been documented in J. Seffer, and V. Stanova, eds., Morava River Floodplain Meadows— Importance, Restoration and Management (Bratislava: DAPHNE, Centre for Applied Ecology, 1999). 9. For example, see Robert S. Dorney, “The Mini-Ecosystem: A Natural Alternative to Urban Landscaping,” Landscape Architecture Canada 3 (1977): 56–62; Dorney, “An Emerging Frontier for Native Plant Conservation,” Wildflower 2 (1986): 30–35; and his posthumous book, The Professional Practice of Environmental Management (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989). 10. Eric Higgs, “A Life in Restoration: Robert Starbird Dorney 1928–1987,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1993) 144–147. 11. Dorney was an inveterate tinkerer who, in addition to producing his frontyard microecosystems and dozens of restoration installations, spent his weekends at a cottage on Georgian Bay in Ontario testing out effective ways of restoring remnants of tallgrass prairie. He installed a series of plots on which he used different treatments (rototilling, fertilizing, and so on), and then experimented with using restored nodes of diversity to provide windblown seed stock to larger patches. This work was done in his spare time, as a hobby. Dorney found it a way of helping him better understand ecological function and local conditions. 12. Expect the unexpected in restoration: one of the main participants in the garden, Larry Lamb, has had good success in using goldenrod plantings in his prairie restorations. For some reason, the particular strain used in the garden has run amok, and the best way to deal with it remains a delicate matter. 13. Practitioner-oriented publications such as Jean-Marc Daigle and Donna Havinga, Restoring Nature’s Place: A Guide to Naturalizing Ontario Parks and Greenspace (Toronto: Ecological Outlook Consulting and Ontario Parks Association, 1996), offer clear suggestions for restoration. Scientific/technical resources such as the National Research Council’s (U.S.) Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems: Science, Technology, and Public Policy Committee on Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1992), provide state-of-the-science compendiums for scientists, practitioners, agency official, and students. 14. Reprinted in Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott, eds., The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 210–211. 15. Sperry was the first recipient of a lifetime achievement award given by the Society, and the annual recognition given for outstanding contributions to restoration is named “The Theodore Sperry Award.”

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16. See Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 17. John Cairns, Jr., The Recovery Process in Damaged Ecosystems (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Science Publications, 1980); A. D. Bradshaw and M. J. Chadwick, The Restoration of Land: The Ecology and Reclamation of Derelict and Degraded Land (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); J. J. Berger, Restoring the Earth: How Americans Are Working to Renew Our Damaged Environment (New York: Knopf, 1979); W. R. Jordan, Jr., M. E. Gilpin, and J. D. Aber, Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) National Research Council, 1992; J. A. Kusler and M. E. Kentula, Wetland Creation and Restoration: The Status of the Science (executive summary), 2 vols., U.S. EPA/7600/3-89/038 (Corvallis, OR: U.S. EPA Environmental Research Laboratory, 1989); A. D. Baldwin Jr., J. De Luce, and C. Pletsch, eds., Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); S. Mills, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); W. K. Stevens, Miracle under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America (New York: Pocket Books, 1995); F. House, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). 18. J. G. Ehrenfeld, “Defining the Limits of Restoration: The Need for Realistic Goals,” Restoration Ecology 8, no. 1 (2000): 2. 19. I construe science broadly, which is why traditional ecological knowledge as applied to restoration could be restoration ecology. 20. E. S. Higgs, “Expanding the Scope of Restoration Ecology,” Restoration Ecology 2 (1994): 137–146. 21. The administrative offices of the Society for Ecological Restoration were shifted to Tucson, Arizona, in 1999. 22. Most of the historical notes are contained in chapter 6, “Learning Restoration,” in Stephanie Mills, In Service of the Wild, 113–142. 23. Robert E. Grese, “Historical Perspectives on Designing with Nature,” in H. Glenn Hughes and Thomas M. Bonnicksen, eds., Restoration ’89: The New Management Challenge, Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Society for Ecological Restoration, Madison, Wisconsin, 1998), 43–44; Dave Egan, “Historic Inititiatives in Ecological Restoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 8, no. 2 (1990): 83. 24. A number of restorationists have pieced together personal accounts of the development of restoration or highlights of restoration history, but few have taken on the more ambitious historical project of situating restoration within wider social movements. 25. Marcus Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture: Restoring the Land in Two Continents,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Hall argues for the general term environmental restoration instead of ecological restoration, especially when dis-

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cussing history. Both ecological and environmental are presentist words, but the former is more distinctly a product of the twentieth century. Further, ecological restoration and restoration ecology are, for Hall, too “easily confused” (personal communication). I accept his assertion that ecological is less appropriate than environmental when discussing the deep history of restoration, despite the fact that even environmental is a term that has low currency prior to the twentieth century. For that matter, the meaning of restoration has changed over time, which makes any attempt to construct a linear terminological path difficult. I will stick with my terminological conventions—chiefly using ecological restoration as an umbrella term (see chapter 3)—since most of the explanations that concern me are contemporary ones. 26. Marcus Hall, “Co-Workers with Nature: The Deeper Roots of Restoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 15, no. 2 (1997): 173. 27. Hall, “Co-Workers with Nature,” 173. 28. Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture,” 58. 29. This matter is addressed in an exchange in Ecological Restoration and a reply by the editor, W. R. Jordan III. See J. A. Aronson R. Hobbs, E. Le Floc’h, and D. Tongway, “Is Ecological Restoration a Journal for North American Readers Only?”, Ecological Restoration 18, no. 3 (2000): 146–149. 30. The distinction here is a fine one between a view of ecological restoration that is imposed from a single model, as is largely the case at present, and one that arises from the confluence of common interests. To think of ecological restoration as a global phenomenon is already to impose a kind of hegemonic practice, albeit one that is supposed to have a salutary goal. 31. Quoted in Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture,” 26. 32. Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture,” 43. It is also true that many gardens, strictly speaking, are built in cultural rather than natural spaces. 33. Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture,” 70. 34. See I. McHarg, Design with Nature (Garden City, NJ: Natural History Press, 1967). 35. Stevens, Miracle under the Oaks.

Chapter 3 Sections of this chapter have been adapted from my essay “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?”, Conservation Biology 11, no. 2 (1997): 338–348. 1. Wendell Berry, “In Distrust of Movements,” Orion 18, no. 3 (1999): 15. 2. Turning to an American source, the Meriam-Webster dictionary, the results are similar. There is nothing new that would indicate variant meanings between the Old and News Worlds, or for that matter anything that points directly at ecological restoration.

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3. In, “Restoration and Rehabilitation of Degraded Ecosystems in Arid and Semi-Arid Land. 1. A View from the South,” Restoration Ecology 1, no. 1 (1993): 8–17, J. Aronson, C. Floret, E. Le Floc’h, C. Ovalle, and R. Potannier. Make reference to the restoration of Renaissance paintings and buildings in creating a distinction between restoration and rehabilitation. 4. Restoration may not deserve the distinction of being a plastic word, according to Uwe Poerksen’s description of words that tyrannize language because of malleable meaning and capricious use, but it certainly is worthy of nomination. See Uwe Poerksen, Plastic Words: The Tyranny of a Modular Language, trans. Jutta Mason and David Cayley (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 5. John Berger’s book Environmental Restoration (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1990) is a prime example. 6. There is tension within the SER as to whether professionalization is a good move or not. Professional status will raise the profile of restoration but potentially limit creativity and broader participation. 7. E. B. Allen, J. S. Brown, and M. F. Allen, “Restoration of Plant, Animal, and Microbial Diversity,” in S. Levin, ed., Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, vol. 5, (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000), 185–202. 8. Among those attending were Andy Clewell and John Rieger, both former SER leaders; Nik Lopoukhine, incoming chair of SER; board members Deb Hilyard, Laura Jackson, and Dennis Martinez; Mike Oxford, future board member; and myself (future secretary). 9. For an account of the significance of this work see Stephanie Mills, “Learning Restoration,” in her In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 113–29, and also chapter 2 of the present work. 10. On reading this passage Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist and restorationist at the University of Victoria, wondered whether this is in fact true or is perhaps an artifact of our cultural amnesia about First Peoples. In regions such as California, one wonders whether the human involvement in ecosystems was at least as pronounced as in parts of England. The difference, of course, is the cultural discontinuity following European colonization of North America. 11. This is beginning to change, thanks to essays such as J. G. Ehrenfeld’s “Defining the Limits of Restoration: The Need for Realistic Goals,” Restoration Ecology. 8, no. 1 (2000): 2–9; R. J. Hobbs and D. A. Norton, “Towards a Conceptual Framework for Restoration Ecology,” Restoration Ecology 4 (1996): 93–110; and the work of the SER’s Science and Policy Working Group. 12. Definitions from the Society for Ecological Restoration were gleaned from various files and records of the Society. 13. National Research Council, Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems: Science, Technology, and Public Policy/Committee on Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems. (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1992).

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14. A. D. Bradshaw and M. J. Chadwick, The Restoration of Land: The Ecology and Reclamation of Derelict and Degraded Land (London: Blackwell, 1980). 15. J. Cairns, Jr., “Ecosocietal Restoration: Reestablishing Humanity’s Relationship with Natural Systems,” Environment 37 (1995): 4–33. 16. D. H. Janzen, “Tropical Ecological and Biocultural Restoration,” Science 239 (1988): 243–244. 17. D. Rogers-Martinez, “The Sinkyone Intertribal Park Project,” Restoration and Management Notes 10, no. 1 (1992): 64–69. 18. Available at ·www.ser.orgÒ. 19. The Science and Policy Working Group, chaired by Keith Winterhalder, included James Aronson (France), Jim Harris (England), Carolina Murcia (Colombia), Andre Clewell (United States), Richard Hobbs (Australia), and myself. 20. The definition, as well as the accompanying SER Primer, which contains a comprehensive and evolving account of SER policies, can be found at ·www.ser.orgÒ. 21. Elsewhere I argue for the term ecological fidelity, which describes restoration in terms of structural replication, functional success, and durability; see Higgs, “what Is Good Ecological Restoration?” My intention was to describe the core ecological constituents of restoration, and to this end it seemed prudent at the time not to confuse it with notions such as ecological integrity. I still like the term fidelity because it suggests a commitment to faithful work with ecosystems. However, ecological integrity has become widespread in ecological restoration circles; among other things, it was enshrined in the official 1996 SER definition. Andy Clewell has offered a third relevant term, authenticity, which, as he points out, can be neatly subdivided into historical and natural authenticity. See A. F. Clewell, “Restoring for Natural Authenticity,” Ecological Restoration 18, no. 4 (2000): 216–217. 22. This points to a difficult contemporary issue in ecology: the extent to which ecological succession is reversible. Some argue, for instance, that the ancient temperate rainforests along the Northwest coast of North America cannot recover or be restored following intensive timber harvesting. These ecosystems are simply too complicated, and rely on too much accumulation of species and relationships, to make any reasonable recovery possible. There is every indication, also, that system thresholds limit the capacity for recovery; once an ecosystems sinks beneath a certain threshold, it cannot attain, at least autogenically, a semblance of its predisturbance condition. 23. Bill McKibben, “An Explosion of Green,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1995, 61–83. A modified version of this article appeared later, in McKibben’s book Hope, Human and Wild (New York: Little, Brown, 1995). 24. The Moraine Lake story was covered extensively by the Canadian press. The quote from Ritchie appears in an article by Tom Cohen, an Associated Press

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writer; see Cohen’s “Restoring Lake Means Killing Fish,” available at the Calgary Field Naturalists’ Web site: ·www.cadvision.com/cfnsÒ. 25. M. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982). 26. A. Light and E. S. Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration,” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 227–248. 27. F. House, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). 28. D. Rogers-Martinez, “The Sinkyone Intertribal Project, “Restoration and Management Notes, 15 (1992): 67. 29. J. J. Kay, 1991, “A Nonequilibrium thermodynamic Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity,” Environmental Management, 15(4): p. 483. 30. P. L. Angermeier and J. R. Karr, 1994, “Biological Integrity Versus Biological Diversity as Policy Directives,” Bioscience, 44: pp. 690–697. 31. Aronson et al., 1993, and J. Aronson and E. Le Floc’h 1996, “Vital Landscape Attributes: Missing Tools for Restoration Ecology, Restoration Ecology, 4(4): pp. 377–387. 32. The debate between Hobbs and Norton, 1996, and Aronson and Le Floc’h, 1996, “Hierarchies and Landscape History: Dialoguing with Hobbs and Norton, “Restoration Ecology, 4(4): pp. 327–333, is a good example of how the conceptual sophistication of restoration can and will develop. Joan Ehrenfeld’s recent essay, discussed in Chapter 2, 2000, “Defining the Limits of Restoration: The Need for Realistic Goals.” Restoration Ecology, 8(1): pp. 2–9, is another example of a widening literature that advances the conceptual bases of restoration. 33. Hobbs and Norton, 1996 p. 93. 34. Angermeier and Karr, 1994, p. 690. 35. This test was inspired the late Alan Turing, a renowned British logician and cryptographer, who invented the “Turing test” to evaluate machine intelligence. It consisted of a simple device in which a judge exchanged questions and replies with a computational machine and a person sitting on the other side of a wall. The idea, simplified in my explanation, is that the person would judge the adequacy of the responses provided by the two agents, one a machine and the other a person; the teletype answers could come from a machine or a person. If, after a sufficient period and using various linguistic tricks, the person posing the questions could not tell whether the responses were coming from a machine or a person, and they were in fact coming from a machine, one could conclude that the machine had satisfied basic conditions for intelligence. 36. Higgs, “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?” 37. See W. R. Jordan III, M. E. Gilpin, and J. D. Aber, Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Research (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

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Chapter 4 1. It may appear a small semantic quibble, but I prefer the term fidelity to authenticity in describing the historical goals of ecological restoration. Authenticity implies a strict adherence to past states—a goal difficult (impossible?) to achieve in most ecological restoration. In his article “Restoring for Natural Authenticity,” Ecological Restoration 18, no. 4 (2000): 216–217, Andy Clewell makes effective use of the concept of authenticity by distinguishing between its natural and historical forms. Natural authenticity is “an ecosystem that developed in response to natural processes and that lacks indications of being intentionally planned or cultured” (p. 216). Restorationists suggests Clewell, should try to create ecosystems that will meet the criterion of natural authenticity. Historical authenticity, on the other hand, requires replicating the conditions of an earlier period. Such exactitude results in artifice. This is where the concept of authenticity runs into trouble, by placing too heavy a burden on history. Fidelity urges us to be faithful to history without necessarily replicating it. 2. As a rare exception, Dave Egan and Evelyn Howell have published a collection of papers on reference ecosystems, The Historical Ecology Handbook: A Restorationist’s Guide to Reference Ecosystems (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001). 3. By the mid 1930s, aerial photography began to supplant land-based techniques, and the phototopographic methods that transformed mountain surveying just a few decades earlier were now on the wane. M. P. Bridgland’s personnel file records his dismissal in 1931. I find it difficult to comprehend how a person with such exceptional qualifications, having spent half a lifetime climbing mountains under staggeringly difficult conditions and producing beautiful, definitive maps, could lose his job. Had he stuck like a thorn in the side of his superiors in Ottawa? Was he embittered by the arrival of an era that elevated machinery above human technique and judgment? Was the Great Depression responsible? It is difficult to piece the story together, but one reasonable explanation is that he resisted the imposition of newfangled technologies, preferring the results of his phototopographic surveys. This may also have been the typical reaction of more traditional surveyors at the end of the nineteenth century, who were faced with a choice between retraining with the arrival of photographic techniques and unemployment. 4. M. P. Bridgland, Photographic Surveying, Topographical Survey of Canada Bulletin No. 56 (Ottawa: Department of the Interior, 1924). 5. Details are provided in Bridgland’s report of the 1915 survey to Edouard DeVille, Surveyor General of Canada, dated February 9, 1916, National Archives of Canada, RG88 vol. 353 file 15756. 6. E. O. Wheeler wrote Bridgland’s obituary in the Canadian Alpine Journal in 1948 (vol. 31, pp. 218–222). This obituary was also run in the American Alpine Journal the same year (vol. 6, pp. 345–348).

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7. S. Zeller, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). 8. I directed the Culture, Ecology and Restoration project, and from this sprang the Bridgland Repeat Photography project, which originated in part in Rhemtulla’s graduate research. The Bridgland Repeat Photography project is an ongoing research project aimed a studying landscape change as portrayed by photographic mountain surveys, initially those conducted by M. P. Bridgland, and subsequent repeat images. At the time of writing, all 735 images have been repeated from exactly the same locations, extensive archival research has been conducted to find documents, negatives, and equipment, the before-and-after photographs have been digitized and placed on a Web-served database, and techniques are being developed for quantitative analysis of the photographs. The 1915 survey in Jasper was only one of many surveys conducted in the first few decades of the twentieth century. The additional collections will illustrate landscape change throughout the Canadian Rockies. 9. Repeat photographic studies in North America include J. R. Hastings and R. M. Turner, The Changing Mile (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1965); G. F. Rogers, H. E. Malde, and R. M. Turner, Bibliography of Repeat Photography for Evaluating Landscape Change (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984); W. J. McGinnies, H. L. Shantz, and W. G. McGinnies, Changes in Vegetation and Land Use in Eastern Colorado, report no. ARS-85, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1991); T. T. Veblen and D. C. Lorenz, The Colorado Front Range: A Century of Ecological Change (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991); M. Meagher and D. Houston, Yellowstone and the Biology of Time: Photographs across a Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); R. H. Webb, Grand Canyon, a Century of Change: Rephotography of the 1889–1890 Stanton Expedition (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996). An overview of photographic and mapping techniques is available in T. Reithmaier’s “Maps and Photographs,” in D. Egan and E. Howell, eds., The Historical Ecology Handbook: A Restorationist’s Guide to Reference Ecosystems (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001). 10. J. M. Rhemtulla, “Eighty Years of Change: The Montane Vegetation of Jasper National Park,” unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1999. Rhemtulla’s research demonstrated the capacity of the imagery for quantitative analysis by using a straightforward if tedious technique. Photogrammetric analysis of oblique photographs is challenging: perspective distorts the actual spatial extent of particular features, which means that relative comparison is more easily obtained than actual comparison. Computer-assisted analysis will help considerably in the future. 11. We were joined early in our endeavors by Ian MacLaren, a professor of literary history in the Department of English and also in the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Alberta, who has made all the difference in wrestling with historical documents and interpretations. More recently, Sandy Campbell, a librarian at the University of Alberta with a keen interest in the

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Jasper region, and David Cruden, a professor of geology in the Departments of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Civil Engineering, have joined the project as collaborators. 12. F. N. Egerton’s 1973 article, “Changing Concepts of the Balance of Nature,” Quarterly Review of Biology 48 (1973): 322–350, first encouraged me to think of shifting meanings in ecology. J. J. Kay’s “A Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity,” Environmental Management 15, no. 4 (1991): 483–495, helped push my thinking in ecology toward new systems theories emanating from chemistry and physics. J. Wu and O. L. Loucks’s “From Balance of Nature to Hierarchical Patch Dynamics: A Paradigm Shift in Ecology,” Quarterly Review of Biology 70 (1995) 439–466, describes a distinctive paradigm shift in ecology. 13. Quote by Wally Covington, a restoration ecologist who is reconstructing earlier conditions involving ponderosa pine in the Flagstaff, Arizona, area; see his “Flagstaff Searches for its Forests’ Futu”, High Country News, March 1, 1999, 8. 14. M. Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture: Restoring the Land in Two Continents,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 329. 15. This example comes from my article “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?”, Conservation Biology 11, no. 2 (1997): 338–348. In the case of the Old State House restoration in Boston, the challenge was in knowing whether to return it to eighteenth-century provincial condition, or to reflect the sequential changes made under different ideological and historical conditions (the answer, in 1991, was the latter). 16. Juliet Schor’s The Overspent American (New York: Basic Books, 1999) is a persuasive argument for decreasing the pace of life, reducing work hours, and lowering material expectations. After all, many studies indicate that in the United States the maximum aggregate happiness was achieved in the late 1950s. 17. E. O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 18. M. Hall, “American Nature, Italian Culture,” 4. 19. J. O’Neill, “Time, Narrative and Environmental Politics,” in R. Glottlieb, ed., Ecological Community (London: Routledge, 1997), 15. 20. Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of Landscape,” World Archaeology 25, no. 2 (1993): 153. 21. See Barry Lopez, “Story at Anakutuvuk Pass: At the Junction of Landscape and Narrative,” Harper’s, October 1984, 31–39. A distinction between landscape and inscape was explored by the Canadian ecologist Pierre Dansereau in Inscape and Landscape (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1973). Earlier, Gerald Manley Hopkins used the term inscape to refer to “the inward quality of objects and events, as they are perceived by the joined observation and introspection of a poet, who in turn embodies them in unique poetic forms.” C.

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Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, Third Edition, (Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press, 1972). 22. Of course, not everyone is sanguine about what happens when a place develops too much significance. In his book Jungling in Jasper (Ottawa: Graphic Publishers, 1929), L. J. Burpee describes the perspective of one park warden from the 1920s: “ ‘I wouldn’t exchange the peace of this Tonquin Valley for all the luxuries of your noisy cities. As a matter of fact, there are always some people up here in the summer. What I’m afraid of is that it will become too popular, when it becomes known what a gorgeous place it is, and then they’ll be building a motor road up here, and perhaps a hotel’ ” (p. 196). 23. Hugh Brody’s Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981) describes the way landscapes are named and the transformation of oral tradition into mapped representation. 24. This is the gist of the argument made by Frederick Turner in his essay “Cultivating the American Garden: Toward a Secular View of Nature,” Harper’s, August 1986, 45–52. He suggests that we grow to appreciate nature not by turning outward to take in wildness but by seeing wildness in our own places, specifically gardens. 25. J. O’Neill and A. Holland, “Two Approaches to Biodiversity Value,” in D. Posey, ed., Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity (London: UNEP, 1999). 26. Ibid. 27. The problem, of course, is that such value is often trumped by the shortterm gains to be made from resource extraction. The Special Places program in Alberta was largely a failure because of a disagreement over just how much value rare landscapes have in the face of economic development. For a provocative account of these and related environmental debates in Alberta, see Ian Urquhart, Assault on the Rockies (Edmonton: Rowan Books, 1998). 28. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1994). 29. The idea of fakery is important to restorationists, still stung by Australian philosopher Robert Eliot’s original proposal that restoration is not much more than fakery: “Faking Nature,” Inquiry 25 (1982): 81–93. His argument is extended and considerably more conciliatory in his book Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration (London: Routledge, 1997). 30. We return to this theme in chapter 5 of the present book. It is articulated in greater detail in A. Light and E. S. Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration,” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 227–247, as well as in A. Light, “Restoration, the Value of Participation, and the Risks of Professionalization,” in P. H. Gobster and R. B. Hull, eds., Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), 49–70. 31. Briony Penn, “Leeks, Racing Pigeons, and Valley of the Bears,” Alternatives 25, no. 2 (1999): 12–13.

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32. P. S. White and J. L. Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation: Selecting and Using Reference Information in Restoration Ecology,” Restoration Ecology 5, no. 4 (1997): 338–349 (quote on 338). 33. Exclosures are typically fenced areas that prevent certain ecological functions, such as herbivory by ungulates, from taking place. 34. Try as we might, monitoring is just not very rewarding. Of course, regular and reliable monitoring is critical to measuring and understanding the fate of a restoration project, but it is expensive and involves commitments that are often longer range than the institutions responsible for the restoration and follow-up work. Everyone wants good monitoring data, but few stay around to collect it. 35. G. E. Likens and F. H. Bormann, Biogeochemistry of a Forested Ecosystem (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995). 36. For twenty-two years under David Schindler’s direction, and still going strong, colleagues at the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba (the closest major center to the ELA), associates from around the world, and dozens of graduate students continued work on myriad projects. Schindler is referred to affectionately as the “Indiana Jones” of ecology, as much for his science as for his remarkable exploits. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science awarded him the first Stockholm Water Prize in 1991 for his contributions to understanding eutrophication and acidification that led to policy changes in North America and Europe. Since moving to the University of Alberta in 1989, he has shifted most of his ecological research to the Rocky Mountains, in Banff and Jasper National Parks. The mountains of western Alberta gained what the boreal lake district of northwestern Ontario lost (Schindler does maintain long-term projects at the Experimental Lakes Area). 37. D. W. Schindler, K. G. Beaty, E. J. Fee, D. R. Cruikshank, E. D. DeBruyn, D. L. Findlay, G. A. Linsey, J. A. Shearer, M. P. Stainton, and M. A. Turner, “Effects of Climatic Warming on Lakes of the Central Boreal Forest,” Science 250 (1990) 967–970; D. W. Schindler, S. E. Bayley, B. R. Parker, K. G. Beaty, D. R. Cruikshank, E. J. Fee, E. U. Schindler, and M. P. Stainton, “The Effects of Climatic Warming on the Properties of Boreal Lakes and Streams at the Experimental Lakes Area, Northwestern Ontario,” Limnology and Oceanography 41 (1996): 1004–1017. 38. D. W. Schindler, “Eutrophication and Recovery in Experimental Lakes: Implications for Lake Management,” Science 184 (1974): 897–899. 39. D. W. Schindler, K. H. Mills, D. F. Malley, D. L. Findlay, J. A. Shearer, I. J. Davies, M. A. Turner, G. A. Linsey, and D. R. Cruikshank, “Long-Term Ecosystem Stress: The Effects of Years of Experimental Acidification on a Small Lake,” Science 228 (1985): 1395–1401; D. W. Schindler, M. A. Turner, M. P. Stainton, and G. A. Linsey, “Natural Sources of Acid Neutralizing Capacity in Low Alkalinity Lakes of the Precambrian Shield,” Science 232 (1986): 844–847. 40. For several years, the Experimental Lakes Area in Canada—one of the longest-running (thirty years of intensive data collection) and arguably one of the most productive aquatic and ecological research facilities in the world—was

Notes to Pages 162–179

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threatened with closure under severe government cuts. Scientists were marshaled and politicians were lobbied, but the story has had a happy ending, so far. The problem lies in convincing people that collecting long-term information is important to provide an understanding of reference conditions and to furnish data that may or may not be critical to future, as-yet-unknown studies. Once this is accomplished, there is also a need to defend long-term research against the threats of short-term crisis or “hot” research. 41. White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation”; W. R. Jordan III, M. E. Gilpin, and J. D. Aber, Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Research (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); the introduction to Egan and Howell, The Historical Ecology Handbook. 42. White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation,” 338. 43. Egan and Howell agree: “We prefer this term for two reasons: (1) it recognizes that Native Americans influenced ecosystems at various scales in many, although not all, areas where present-day restoration activities take place; and (2) it avoids the use of the word natural, which has been rightly attacked as being too ambiguous” (The Historical Ecology Handbook, 7). 44. C. Crumley, ed., Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes (Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1994). 45. White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation,” 341. 46. Further information is available at ·www.archbold-station.orgÒ. 47. White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation,” 341. 48. Planning for the unexpected is a major theme of Daniel Botkin’s Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 49. The phrase “approximating ecological variation” is interchanged with “Approximating Nature’s Variation,” which is used in the title of White and Walker’s article. 50. White and Walker, “Approximating Nature’s Variation,” 347. 51. It is refreshing that in The Historical Ecology Handbook, Egan and Howell embrace ecological and cultural considerations. Fully half of their collection comprises essays emphasizing social scientific and humanistic methods. 52. M. Wackernagel and W. E. Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 1996). 53. E. S. Higgs, A. Light, and D. Strong, Technology and the Good Life? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

Chapter 5 Portions of this chapter are adapted from E. S. Higgs, “Nature by Design,” in E. S. Higgs, A. Light, and D. Strong, eds., Technology and the Good Life?,

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(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 195–212; and from E. S. Higgs, “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?”, Conservation Biology 11, no. 2 (1997): 338–348. 1. The case for a reassessment of our understanding of wilderness has been made from several sides. See, for example, T. C. Blackburn and K. Anderson, eds., Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena, 1993); W. Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995); M. Soulé, and G. Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995); G. P. Nabhan, Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Washington, DC: Counterpoint Press, 1997). 2. See C. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 3. C. Taylor, Malaise of Modernity: The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 4. L. Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 5. Examples of English language books in philosophy of technology include A. Feenberg, Critical Theory of Technology, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; D. Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990; and C. Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. An overview of recent trends in philosophy of technology as refracted through the writings of Albert Borgmann, is E. S. Higgs, A. Light, and D. Strong, eds., Technology and the Good Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, following a campaign of bombing in the United States and before his arrest, convinced the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the complete text of his millennial screed against technology. It is posted on many Internet sites. The Unabomber has become a symbol of contemporary radical anger against the pace and effects of technology. A sharp contrast in terms of background is Bill Joy, founder and chief scientist at Sun Microsystems. Joy’s recent message is dreary and portends a troubling future: the combination of robotics, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering, all capable of self-replication, may surpass and eliminate humanity. See W. Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired 8 (2000): 238–262. 6. Borgmann is a conservative communitarian, which means that he identifies community as the political and moral locus of society. He finds good philosophical company in Charles Taylor, who has argued that liberalism has produced a fractured, divisive society rooted too much in the satisfaction of individual desires. 7. E. S. Higgs, “The Landscape Evolution Model: A Case for a Paradigmatic View of Technology,” Technology in Society 12 (1990): 479–505.

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8. D. Strong, Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), 86. 9. U. Franklin, The Real World of Technology, rev. ed. (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1999), 2–3. 10. Central to Borgmann’s theory of the device paradigm is the idea that our knowledge systems support the scientific model of induction and deduction at the expense of testimonial (storied) and patterned knowledge. The conundrum introduced is this: if contemporary society is suffused with scientific thinking, but understanding technology requires a different, paradigmatic approach to knowledge, then technology is obscured by dominant knowledge systems. This is coupled with the increasing ubiquitousness of technology: the more pervasive it is, the less likely we are to acknowledge its deeper features. Technology becomes the “air” we breathe. 11. David Strong has introduced the term correlational coexistence to describe the intimate, focal relations that exist between a person and a thing. He writes that “things are rich in their capacity to reciprocate each and every tie to the world. To try to sort out what is ‘in the thing’ and what is ‘from the culture,’ for instance, is to mistake this correspondence between the thing and its world. Rather, things must be equal to that world in order to bear that world” (Crazy Mountains, 69; original emphasis). 12. The issue of what things are focal is a difficult one. Some would argue that a laptop computer, for example, is focal for someone who is attentive to it and relies on it for work-related purposes. This may be the case, although my experience is that bonds seem weak or at least ephemeral between people and computing machinery; each new gadget is greeted eagerly and old ones typically are easily disposed of. There are no categorical judgments separating focal things from nonfocal devices, but certain traits obviously contribute to focality: transparency of operation, robust characteristics, elegance of function, and beauty. 13. L. Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 229. 14. J. R. Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (Toronto: CBC, 1995); N. Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Knopf, 1992). 15. A. Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 51. 16. W. Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in W. Cronon ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995), 69–70. 17. M. Soulé, “The Social Siege of Nature,” in M. Soulé and G. Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995). 18. See J. Rouse, “What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge?” Configurations 1 (1992): 1–22.

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19. For example, see N. J. Turner, M. B. Ignace, and R. Ignace, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia,” Ecological Applications, 10 (2000): 1275–1287; M. M. R. Freeman, “Indigenous Knowledge,” Northern Perspectives 20, no. 1 (1992): 9–12; F. Berkes, Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management (Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis, 1999). 20. Fortunately, this has been corrected by the work of many environmental historians in the last two decades, notably William Cronon, Richard White, and Donald Worster. 21. D. Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 187. 22. K. Hayles, “Search for Common Ground,” in M. Soulé and G. Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 61. 23. Borgmann treats nature and wilderness in several places, notably the chapter “The Challenge of Nature” in his 1984 book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (pp. 182–195), and his 1995 article “The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature,” in M. Soulé and G. Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 31–45. 24. These themes are addressed by Borgmann in Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), and Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 25. J. Cypher and E. S. Higgs, “Colonizing the Imagination: Disney’s Wilderness Lodge,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 8, no. 4 (1997): 107–130. 26. T. Friend, “Please Don’t Oil the Animatronic Warthog,” Outside 23 (1998): 100–108. 27 E. S. Higgs, “A Quantity of Engaging Work to Be Done: Restoration and Morality in a Technological Culture,” Restoration and Management Notes 9 (1991): 97–104. 28. R. Fisher and W. Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). 29 See my discussion of the Kissimmee restoration in chapter 2, as well as a special 1995 issue of Restoration Ecology (vol 3, no. 3) guest edited by C. Dahm. 30. J. Perry, “Greening Corporate Environments: Authorship and Politics in Restoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1994): 145–147. 31. See E. S. Higgs, “The Ethics of Mitigation,” Restoration and Management Notes 11 (1993): 138–143. 32. J. Harris, “Certification for Responsible Restoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 15 (1994): 5.

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33. W. Berry, “The Futility of Global Thinking,” Harper’s, September 1989, 22. 34. A. Light and E. S. Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration,” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 227–247. Our aim in this article was to show the significance of political relationship in restoration as well as to argue how the politics of restoration could work against democratic principles and processes. Light, whose main interest is environmental political philosophy and ethics, has continued to work on these themes. 35. A. Light, “Restoration, the Value of Participation, and the Risks of Professionalization,” in P. H. Gobster and R. B. Hull, eds., Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), 163–184 (quote, on 164). 36. A special section of Restoration and Management Notes (vol. 15, no. 1, 1997), “The Chicago Wilderness and Its Critics,” featured articles by L. Ross, D. Shore, and P. Gobster on the project and backlash from critics. 37. A. Light, “Restoration, the Value of Participation, and the Risks of Professionalization,” 173. 38. W. Jordan, “Loss of Innocence,” Restoration and Management Notes 15 (1997): 3–4; F. Turner, “Bloody Columbus: Restoration and the Transvaluation of Shame into Beauty,” Restoration and Management Notes 10 (1992): 70–74. 39. A. Light and E. S. Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration.” 40. A. Borgmann, “The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature”; N. Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 41. L. Marx, “Does Pastoralism Have a Future?”, in J. Hunt, ed., The Pastoral Landscape (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 212. 42. R. Eliot, “Faking Nature,” Inquiry 25 (1982): 81–93. Eliot has moderated his position: see his Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration (London: Routledge, 1997). 43. Eliot, Faking Nature, 1997. 44. Katz has stirred considerable controversy with several essays. See E. Katz, “The Problem of Ecological Restoration,” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 222–224; “The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature,” Research in Philosophy and Technology 12 (1992): 231–243; “Restoration and Redesign: The Ethical Significance of Human Intervention in Nature,” Restoration and Management Notes 9 (1991): 90–96. 45. Light and Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration.” 46. These arguments have created a minor sensation in environmental philosophy as various commentators have weighed in with opinions on the value of restoration. Philosophers have offered provocative challenges that warrant reflection. However, for the most part Katz and Eliot, in particular, have avoided direct communication with restorationists. Their work remains distant and has scarcely touched the main development of restoration theory and practice. A few

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philosophers, Donald Scherer, William Throop, Alastair Gunn and Andrew Light for example, have made forays into restoration practice, which bodes well for enlivening restoration and environmental philosophy. This is as much a disciplinary matter as a reflection on restoration. There is a divide in contemporary environmental philosophy between those who engage in internal debates largely about attitudes toward nature, and those who advocate a more practical approach. Eliot, who has modified his earlier position, points out that we ought to be worried about restoration becoming an end in itself, distracting us from more significant aims. He feels the instrumental qualities of restoration are troublesome and point toward the commodification of practice. I agree, but is it appropriate to deny the validity of restoration, or to avoid debate about the aims of the field? When we underestimate the diversity of contemporary restoration practices and the power of ecological processes, the possibility of a genuinely liberatory type of restoration is sidelined. 47. B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 48. For an earlier formulation, see my essay “What Is Good Ecological Restoration?”, Conservation Biology 11, no. 2 (1997): 338–348.

Chapter 6 1. There are two species of edible blue camas, Camassia quamash (common camas) and Camassia leichtlinii (great camas) harvested locally. C. quamash was what we harvested on Discovery Island. 2. Chris Arnett, The Terror of the Coast: Land Alienation and Colonial War on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, 1849–1863 (Burnaby, BC: Talonbooks, 1999). The cultural and linguistic diversity of First Nations in the region was and is remarkable. The Songhees First Nation (Lekwungen people) is typically related to Coast Salish peoples of the Georgia Strait region. The Georgia Strait runs between Vancouver Island and the continental mainland, straddling the present national border between Canada and the United States. The Strait comprises an archipelago of islands and complex inlets along Vancouver Island and the continental mainland that together form an extraordinary variety of marine and terrestrial ecological conditions. Maps that show present-day cultural and linguistic subdivisions need to zoom in to the areas around present-day Vancouver, Seattle, and Victoria to show the richness. Versions of such maps can be found in the latest revision, 1997, of Wilson Duff’s now-classic work, The Indian History of British Columbia: The Impact of the White Man (Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 1992). On the southern tip of Vancouver Island reside (from west to east) the T’Sou-ke, Esquimault, Songhees, and Saanich First Nations. The latter three communicate variations of Northern Straits Salish, with the Songhees speaking a dialect known as Lekwungaynung. This diversity persists in the wake of more than a century and a half of intensive colonization,

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and the cultural resurgence in recent decades has given new life to the languages and cultural practices. 3. M. Asch, ed., Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equity, and Respect for Difference (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997). 4. Arnett, The Terror of the Coast, 7. 5. Personal communication from Cheryl Bryce, October 2000. 6. Several other root vegetables were important in the past, including chocolate lily (Fritillaria lanceolata), Hooker’s onion (Allium acuminatum), springbank clover (Trifolium wormskjoldii), bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), and Pacific silverweed (Potentilla pacificum). 7. N. J. Turner, M. B. Ignace, and R. Ignace, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia,” Ecological Applications 10 (2000): 1275–1287. 8. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) boughs are used in pit cooking by Interior First Nations in British Columbia, but not on the coast as far as Nancy Turner was aware. Turner learned how to pit cook coastal style from Mrs. Ida Jones of Pacheedaht First Nation near Port Renfrew. Ida Jones had pit cooked as a young woman. On Discovery Island that day, Turner had looked instead for the more usual plant, salal (Gaultheria shallon), and sword fern (Polystichum munitum), but none could be found nearby. This is perhaps another reason for undertaking restoration of traditional plants. 9. A. W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 10. J. D. Soule and J. K. Piper, Farming in Nature’s Image: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1992); W. Jackson, New Roots for Agriculture (Lincoln; University of Nebraska Press, 1985). 11. J. Cairns, Jr., “Ecosocietal Restoration: Reestablishing Humanity’s Relationship with Natural Systems,” Environment 37 (1995): 4–33; D. H. Janzen, “Tropical Ecological and Biocultural Restoration,” Science 239 (1988): 243–244; W. Jordan III, “ ‘Sunflower Forest’: Ecological Restoration as the Basis for a New Environmental Paradigm,” in A. D. Baldwin, J. de Luce, and C. Pletsch, eds., Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); S. Mills, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); D. Rogers-Martinez, “The Sinkyone Intertribal Park Project,” Restoration and Management Notes 10, no. 1 (1992): 64–69. 12. E. S. Higgs, “Expanding the Scope of Restoration Ecology,” Restoration Ecology 2 (1994): 137–146. 13. H. Hammond, Seeing the Forest among the Trees: The Case for Wholistic Forest Use (Vancouver: Polestar, 1991). 14. W. K. Stevens, Miracle under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America (New York: Pocket Books, 1995).

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15. J. Cypher and E. S. Higgs, “Packaged Tours: Themed Experience and Nature Presentation in Parks and Museums,” Museums Review 23 (1997): 28–32. 16. The surge of environmental history provides us with a rich trove of material from which to understand changing environmental values. I have been influenced especially by William Cronon’s Changes on the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), and by his later, book, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991). Also see C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); M. Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); R. White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980); D. Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977). 17. Among the best scholarly accounts of this, although less accessible than some, is Hans Peter Duerr’s Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary between Wilderness and Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). 18. J. Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); L. Margulis and D. Sagan, What Is Life? (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995). For an excellent review and summary, see M. Midgely, Gaia: The Next Big Idea (London, Demos, 2001). 19. A. Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 3. 20. A. Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, 42. 21. A. Borgmann, “The Nature of Reality and the Reality of Nature,” in M. Soulé and G. Lease, eds., Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995), 37. 22. S. Mills, In Service of the Wild, 207. 23. G. P. Nabhan, Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1997), 87. 24. William Jordan’s forthcoming book, The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), argues for restoration as a form of communion with nature and delves deeply into religious and spiritual metaphors and practices for restoration. 25. S. Christy, “A Local Festival,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1994): 123. 26. K. M. Holland, “Restoration Rituals: Transforming Workday Tasks into Inspirational Rites,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1994): 123. 27. Holland, “Restoration Rituals,” 122. 28. B. Briggs, “Help Wanted: Scientists-Shamans and Eco-Rituals,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1994): 124.

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29. Lisa Meekison’s graduate research focused on the artworks of Barbara Westfall, an environmental artist who lives in Wisconsin and conjoins her efforts with various restoration projects. One project, conducted at the Curtis Prairie, involved the girdling of aspen trees that encroached on a restored prairie. See L. Meekison, “Change on the Land: Ritual and Celebration in Ecological Restoration,” unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, 1995; B. Westfall, “Personal Politics: Ecological Restoration as HumanScale and Community-Based,” Restoration and Management Notes 12 (1994): 148–151. 30. A more thorough statement of this argument is found in L. Meekison and E. S. Higgs, “The Rites of Spring (and Other Seasons): The Ritualizing of Restoration,” Restoration and Management Notes 16 (1998): 73–81. This article incorporates distinctions between ritual, rite, performance, and focal practice, terms that are often confused. 31. Jordan, “ ‘Sunflower Forest’,” 21. 32. Jordan, “ ‘Sunflower Forest’,” 27. 33. J. Kirby, “Gardening with J. Crew: The Political Economy of Restoration Ecology,” in: A. D. Baldwin, J. de Luce, and C. Pletsch, eds., Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 238. 34. Jordan, “ ‘Sunflower Forest’,” 18. 35. We attended a workshop organized by Steve Windhager in Denton, Texas, in June 1994, which brought together two dozen people interested in the philosophy of restoration, including Gene Hargrove, Bill Jordan, Frederick Turner, Max Oelschlaeger, and Gary Varner. 36. A. Light and E. S. Higgs, “The Politics of Ecological Restoration,” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 227–248. 37. A. Light, “Restoration, the Value of Participation, and the Risks of Professionalization,” in P. H. Gobster and R. B. Hull, eds., Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), 49–70. 38. I have chosen to emphasize technology as the decisive malaise of the contemporary era, although many other forces also warrant trenchant criticisms. Most obvious is the rich literature emanating from nineteenth-century social critics of the emerging system of capitalism, notably the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Extensive critical appraisal has resulted in a growing understanding of class inequality, patriarchy, heterosexism, and many other pathologies of domination. All of these are relevant in understanding the domination of nature, a point made clearly by Murray Bookchin in The Ecology of Freedom, and all of them must be invoked if we are to comprehend the totality of the present crisis. However, I find the device paradigm compelling because it is informed by a pragmatism that reaches across a range of ideological positions.

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Notes to Pages 257–275

One need not be a strident politico to make sense of the diagnoses, and the prescriptions are provocative. 39. Borgmann’s quiet politics of technology, especially his associated economic reforms, may prove inadequate against hyperreality. I think that more active resistance to the device paradigm is required. The opening I see is the interest in local and bioregional economies coupled with the development of a critical ecological politics in North America. Is there a theory of political resistance, more radical than what he proposes in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, that would be compatible with Borgmann’s political beliefs? Is there a coherent political economic theory that would protect and elevate personal and communal focal practices and resist more effectively the corrosion of choice through manufactured consent? Can we shield and support focal restoration? 40. G. P. Nabhan, “Cultural Parallax: The Wilderness Concept in Crisis,” in G. P. Nabhan, Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1997), 159–160. 41. E. S. Higgs, “The Landscape Evolution Model: A Case for a Paradigmatic View of Technology,” Technology in Society 12 (1990): 479–505.

Chapter 7 1. R. Cox, Adventures on the Columbia River, Including the Narrative of a Residence of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, among Various Tribes of Indians Hitherto Unknown: Together with a Journey across the American Continent, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831), 202–203. 2. A comprehensive synthesis of ecological principles in design is now available: B. Johnson and K. Hill, Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002). This book includes contributions by leading North American ecologists and designers—Anne Whiston Spirn, Richard Forman, James Karr, Carl Steinitz, and Michael Hough, to name a few. 3. The remarks were made at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center in September 1998. The text of Orr’s speech and other information about the Center are available at Oberlin College’s Web site, ·www.oberlin.eduÒ. 4. An especially compelling article is provided by William McDonough (who was a primary consultant on the Adam Joseph Lewis Center project) and Michael Braungart, founders of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry; see their “The Next Industrial Revolution,” Atlantic Monthly, 1998, 282. 5. R. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” Design Issues 8 (1992): 5–21. 6. Most of Central Park was contrived, including such well-known natural features as The Ramble. The site was cleared in some places to exposed bedrock

Notes to Pages 275–282

319

and then recreated according to detailed plans. See F. L. Olmsted, Civilizing American Cities: A Selection of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Writings on City Landscapes, ed. S. B. Sutton (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). 7. The genius of the restoration plan reflects the original park-design genius: Andropogon Associates of Philadelphia, one of the most revered ecological design firms, undertook the restoration design. Leslie Sauer, a principal of Andropogon, served the Society for Ecological Restoration as a member of the board, and is widely known for her creative design interventions. 8. L. Haworth, “Orwell, the Planning Profession, and Autonomy,” Environments 16 (1984): 10–15. 9. Firms such as Sapient in the United States and Siegelgale in England integrate traditional services of advertising, marketing, and industrial and product design to create a new approach to corporate identification, product innovation, and branding. 10. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 9. 11. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 10. 12. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 13. 13. Richard Buchanan’s work has been heavily influenced by the American pragmatist philosopher, John Dewey, and also by Buchanan’s teacher at the University of Chicago, the noted philosopher Richard McKeon. The Dewey passage is quoted in Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 5. 14. The phrase “wicked designs” is used by Buchanan and adapted from earlier work by Horst Rittel, a designer, and Karl Popper, a philosopher. Wicked problems are a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing” (C. W. Churchman, quoted in Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 14). 15. “If a Building Could Be Like a Tree: An Interview with Architect William McDonnough,” Orion Afield 5 (2001): 21. 16. A. Feenberg, Critical Theory of Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 17. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems,” 20. 18. This scheme and its implications for ecological restoration emerged in a conversation with Richard Buchanan, April 10, 2001. 19. A. Borgmann, “The Depth of Design,” in R. Buchanan and V. Margolin, eds., Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 17. 20. Think also of David Strong’s idea of “correlational coexistence” that I described in chapter 5. 21. A. Borgmann, “The Depth of Design,” 18.

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22. I take a liberal meaning of science to include not only orthodox scientific work conducted by professional scientists, but also the systematic observations and wisdom that come from people who live close to the land, such as naturalists who have intensive knowledge or First Nations people who live at least in part by traditional ecological knowledge. For a good discussion of traditional ecological knowledge, see N. J. Turner, M. B. Ignace, and R. Ignace, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia,” Ecological Applications 10 (2000): 1275–1287; A. Fienup-Riordan, “Yaqulget Quaillun Pilartat (What the Birds Do): Yup’ik Eskimo Understanding of Geese and Those Who Study Them,” Arctic 52 no. 1 (1999): 1–22; M. M. R. Freeman, “Indigenous Knowledge,” Northern Perspectives 20, no. 1 (1992): 9–12.

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Index

Aber, John, 80, 129 Aboriginal peoples Cree, 23 G’itxsan, 200 Iroquois, 23 land management practices, 169–170 Lekwungen (Songhees), 226–236, 254, 262–263 Sinkyone, 109, 237 Snake Indians, 23 Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) First Nation, 230 Stoney, 23 Abrod nature reserve (Slovak Republic), 70 Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies (Oberlin College, Ohio), 272, 279 Adams family, 266 Adbusters, 280 Angermeier, Paul, 122, 124 Apostol, Dean, 102–103, 105 Archbold Biological Station (Lake Placid, Florida), 61, 164 Aronson, James, 123 Assisted recovery, 112–116 Athabasca River and Valley, 16, 22, 24, 29, 45, 136, 149, 152, 167, 170–173, 181–182, 187, 266, 287 Auroville (India), 247 Autogenic restoration, 112–115

Banff National Park, 9, 17, 27–28, 117, 136 Banff-Bow Valley Study, 17, 27 Bayley, Suzanne, 17 Beckwith, Brenda, 231–233 Berger, John, 80 Berry, Wendell, 94, 210 Biophilia, 145 Black River (Ohio), 6 Bodaly, David, 230 Bookchin, Murray, 120, 184 Borgmann, Albert, 180, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 200, 202, 203, 241, 243, 245–246, 257, 258, 259, 281–282 Botkin, Daniel, 40 Boundary definition of ecological restoration, 76, 77 Bradford, Wes, 17 Bradshaw, Tony, 80 Bridgland, Morrison Parsons, 133–135, 140 Bridgland Repeat Photography project, 132–144, 151, 162–163, 177 Bried, Gordon, 26 Brower, David, 2, 217, 218, 219–220 Bruce County (Ontario, Canada), 3 Bryce, Cheryl, 228, 233, 235–236, 262, 263 Buchanan, Richard, 274, 277–278, 281

336

Index

Burns Bog (Delta, British Columbia), 6 Cairns, John, Jr., 80, 108, 237 Calvert, Kathy, 16 Cape Florida Project, 61, 214 Carmanagh Valley (Vancouver Island), 150 Celebration City, 52–54, 60 Certification, 209, 211–214 Chalifoux, Suzette, 23 Chomsky, Noam, 258 Clewell, Andy, 103 Cohen, Abner, 252–253 Colonization of the imagination, 51–52, 203, 241 Commodification, 188–195, 214, 248 of nature, 203–206 of practice, 206–214 of restoration, 208, 219, 222 Communitas, 252 Comparative perspectives on ecological restoration, 87, 88–89 Conservation, 12 Conservation biology, 97 Correlational coexistence, 246 Covington, Wallace, 142 Cox, Ross, 24, 266 Critics of restoration, 2, 11–12, 217–220 Cronon, William, 56, 57 Crumley, Carole, 164 Cultural dimensions of restoration, 8, 72, 76, 86, 88–89, 106, 109, 119–122, 126, 222, 226–263 Culture, Ecology, and Restoration project, 20, 24, 136 Curtis, John, 5, 82, 103 Curtis Prairie (University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum), 13, 78–79, 102–103, 116, 247, 250 Cypher, Jennifer, 45–59, 104, 187, 203

Dahm, Clifford, 67 DAPHNE Foundation (Slovak Republic), 69 Definitions (of ecological restoration), 38, 41, 77, 81, 94–130 Bradshaw and Chadwick, 108, 122 Cairns, 108 dictionary (Oxford English), 96 Janzen, 108 SER 1990, 107 SER 1996, 109, 118, 122 SER 2002, 110 U.S. National Research Council, 108 Design, 4, 5, 13, 14, 95, 270–285 focal design, 282 of human experience, 283–284 human versus ecologically centered, 279–280, 281, 284 risks of, 285 and technological culture, 280–281 wild design, 5, 14, 95, 271, 277–285 Designer ecosystems, 60 Device paradigm, 185–186, 191–193, 206, 222, 223, 241, 243, 248–249, 257–259, 260, 263 availability, 189 and economic reform, 258–259 and manufactured consent, 258–259 Deville, Edward, 133 Dewey, John, 278–279 Discovery Island (British Columbia), 226–236, 254, 262–263 Disney Corporation, 10, 12, 21, 45–54, 60, 187, 195, 203–205, 216, 223, 249. See also Wilderness Lodge Dominion Land Survey, 133, 135–136 Dorney, Robert, 5, 7, 73, 74, 152 Dust Bowl, 78 Ecocultural restoration, 236, 238, 239–240, 243 Ecological health, 115, 123–124

Index Ecological integrity, 4, 10, 95, 101, 110, 122–124, 126, 141, 203, 205, 206, 220, 226 Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (Canada), 159 Ecological restoration versus environmental restoration, 93 versus restoration ecology, 81, 93 Egan, David, 164 Ehrenfeld, Joan, 81 Eisner, Michael, 53 Eliot, Robert, 218, 219–220 Environmental restoration versus ecological restoration, 93, 98–99 Experimental Lakes Area (Ontario, Canada), 159–161 Fassett, Norman, 78 Feenberg, Andrew, 280 Fidelity (ecological), 127–128 Finlay family, 266 Fire, anthropogenic, 24, 39–40, 42, 55, 61, 103, 116, 118, 172, 182, 239 Fisher, R., 207 Fitzhugh, 136 Fleming, Sandford, 25 Focal design, 282 Focal practices and things, 4, 95, 185–186, 190–191, 194–195, 241–245, 248–249, 251, 254–259, 263, 275, 281–284 Focal restoration, 4, 12, 181, 223, 225–259 Foreground and background, 192–193 Franklin, Ursula, 189–190 Freak landscapes, 35–40, 55 Friend, Tad, 205 Frost, Robert, 3 Gaia hypothesis, 240 Gann, George, 61

337

Georgian Bay (Ontario, Canada), 3 Gilpin, Michael, 80 Gourley, Edith, 171 Graber, David, 29 Greene, Henry, 5, 82 Guziova, Zuzana, 69 Hall, Marcus, 83–84, 85–87, 89, 142, 146 Haraway, Donna, 201 Harris, Jim, 106 Hartz Mountain (Secaucus, New Jersey), 7 Harvard Forest (Massachusetts), 159, 160 Haworth, Larry, 185, 276 Hayles, Katherine, 201 Henry House, 167 Herman, Edward, 258 Hiassen, Carl, 62 Historical continuity, 147, 154, 156 Historical fidelity, 4, 10, 95, 101, 124, 126–128, 131–177, 206, 220, 226 Historical range of variability, 119 Historicity, 10–11, 132, 147, 156 History of restoration, 77–92 Hobbs, Richard, 87, 94, 123 Holland, Alan, 153, 154 Holland, K. M., 249 House, Freeman, 121, 123, 209, 247 Howell, Evelyn, 164 Hubbard Brook (New Hampshire), 159, 160 Hudson’s Bay Company, 23 Hyatt, A. E., 134 Icefield Interpretive Center, 51 Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network, 107, 236 Ingold, Tim, 148–149, 158 Institute for Regional Conservation, 61 Intentionality, 4, 14, 104, 271–277 and design, 273–274, 279, 285

338

Index

Jackson, Laura, 104 Janzen, Daniel, 108, 237 Jasper Forest Reserve, 136 Jasper National Park, 7, 9, 10, 16–46, 54, 57, 132–142, 151, 170–173, 181, 197, 201, 238–239, 266–270, 282, 287 and agriculture, subsistence, 36, 170 and bears, 16–18, 35 and beaver, 171–172 and elk populations, 33–35 and fire, 33, 172 and fish stocking, 31, 36 herbivory, 172 and hunting, 31, 33, 269 Jasper Park Lodge, 43, 136 Jasper townsite, 35, 266 and logging, 33 management of, 28–29, 40–41, 54–55 and mining, 35 and predator control, 31 pressures on, 27–31 and trapping, 36, 140, 144, 170 wildlife restoration, 172 Joachim family, 266 Jordan III, William, 79, 80, 84, 99, 123, 129, 186, 209, 215, 237, 248, 250, 251, 253, 254 Karr, James, 122, 124 Katz, Eric, 218–220 Kay, James, 122 Keystone concepts (of ecological restoration), 4, 14. See also Ecological integrity; Focal practices and things; Historical fidelity; Wild design Kirby, Jack, 253 Kissimmee River (Florida Everglades), 10, 11, 63, 64–68, 87, 126, 207 Knowledge, forms of, 196–201, 262 constructivism, 201 cultural contingency, 201 cultural memory, 262 ecological history, 262

paradigmatic, 200 scientific, 196–199 subjective, 199 testimonial, 200 traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom, 200–201 Lake Forest Preserve (Illinois), 249 Lake Huron, 3, 153 Lambert, Marilyn, 231 Landscape, understanding of, 22 and history, 22 Landscape evolution, 259–263, 270 Latour, Bruno, 220 Lease, Gary, 42 Leopold, Aldo, 5, 78, 82, 247 Lewis, Henry, 24 Light, Andrew, 210–213, 218, 255, 256 Liminality, 251–252 Long Term Ecological Research program (U.S.), 159 Lopez, Barry, 149 Lopoukhine, Nik, 68, 104 MacLaren, Ian, 20, 55 Management, ongoing need for, 116–118 Marsh, George Perkins, 88 Martinez, Dennis, 107, 108, 109, 121, 125, 236–238 Marx, Leo, 216 Mattole watershed (California), 247 McDonough, William, 279–280 McHarg, Ian, 13, 90, 271 McKibben, Bill, 113 McMahon, Jim, 60 Meekison, Lisa, 250 Mengotti, Franscesco, 88 Métis peoples, 23, 25, 36, 140, 144, 172, 266 Michalenko, Greg, 75 Mills, Stephanie, 42, 56, 83, 101, 121, 123, 209, 237, 247 Mitigation, 97, 207, 209, 220 no net loss policies, 209, 220

Index Moberly, Edward, 24 Moberly, Walter, 23, 266 Morava River wet meadows (Slovak Republic), 10, 64, 68–73, 87, 126, 239 Morris, Joan, 230 Mowing, 70, 71, 72 Murcia, Carolina, 87 Murphy, Peter, 24 Myerhoff, Barbara, 252–253 Nabhan, Gary, 248, 260 Naturalistic explanation, 148–149 Naveh, Zev, 87 Niering, Bill, 79 Noble, David, 13 North Branch Prairie (Chicago), 13, 90, 213, 239 Norton, D. A., 94, 123 Nostalgia, 143, 145, 156 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 13–14, 83, 90, 275–276 O’Neil, John, 146, 153, 154 Orion Society, 61 Orr, David, 56, 272 Oxford, Mike, 103 Palisade Centre, 16–18, 22, 27, 136, 167, 171, 181, 265 Participation (community involvement and volunteerism), 4, 121, 122, 209–214, 226, 242, 255–259, 260 community focal practice, 258 democratic capacity, inherent, 211, 255–256 Penn, Briony, 157 Perceptions of nature. See also Colonization of the imagination constructivism, 44–45 and Disney, 45–46, 49–52, 203–205 essentialism, 45 hyperreality, 195, 203, 204, 215 respect, 239–240 restorationism, 216, 217

339

and technology, 45, 55–56 and wilderness, 10, 20–21, 25, 41–43, 46, 54, 143–144, 181–182, 196, 215 Perry, Jonathan, 207 Phototopographic surveying, 133–134 Pit cooking, 227, 228, 232, 233–234, 244–245 Place, 148–154 culturalistic representation, 149, 158 and dwelling, 149 and historicity, 156 and landscape, 148–149 and space, 148–149 Portman, Dale, 16 Process and product, 103–104, 110–111, 125, 193 Prospect Park (Brooklyn), 6, 13, 275–277 Railways Canadian National, 22, 25 Canadian Northern, 25, 136 Grand Trunk Pacific, 25, 26, 136 Rarity, 155 Reclamation, 95, 97, 99–100 Recovery, 101, 112, 114 Reference conditions, 11, 95, 119, 136–137, 158–177 approximation, 167 baseline, 162–163 benchmark, 163 and climate change, 174–175 historical ecology, 164 and human activity, 169–170 and incompleteness, 175 reference information (sources and problems with), 158–159, 162–163, 166–168, 173–177 research questions, 169 uncertainty, 175 variability (natural, historical, spatial), 163–165 and whole-ecosystem studies, 161–162

340

Index

Regeneration, 101, 129 Rehabilitation, 95, 99, 100, 105 Reinhabitation, 101 Remediation, 99, 100 Reparation, 12 Repeat photography projects Hastings and Turner (Arizona), 137 Higgs and Rhemtulla (Jasper National Park), 132–144 Meagher, Mary and Houston, Douglas, (Yellowstone), 139 Webb, Robert, et al. (Colorado River), 139 Repeat photography techniques, 137–141 Restauration, 97 Restoration and Management Notes, 79, 83 Restoration as conversation, 285–287 Restoration Ecology, 79, 80 Restorationism, 216 Restoration projects in agroecosystems, 9 Archbold Biological Station (Lake Placid, Florida), 61, 164 Auroville (India), 247 Black River (Ohio), 6 Burns Bog (Delta, British Columbia), 6 Cape Florida Project, 61, 214 Curtis Prairie (University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum), 13, 78–79, 102–103, 116, 247, 250 Discovery Island (British Columbia), 226–236, 254, 262–263 Hartz Mountain (Secaucus, New Jersey), 7 Kissimmee River (Florida Everglades), 10, 11, 63, 64–68, 87, 126, 207 Lake Forest Preserve (Illinois), 249 Mattole watershed (California), 247 Morava River (Slovak Republic), 10, 64, 68–73, 87, 126, 239

North Branch Prairie (Chicago), 13, 90, 213, 239 Prospect Park (Brooklyn), 6, 13, 275–277 Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden (University of Waterloo), 10, 64, 73–77, 90, 152, 248 Sinkyone Intertribal Park (California), 109, 237–238 Swan Creek (Victoria), 148 Woodhorn Colliery Museum (England), 157 Revegetation, 99, 100–101 Reverse adaptation, 193 Rhemtulla, Jeanine, 17, 33, 132, 136–142, 177 Ritual, 226, 249–255 and focal practice, 251, 254–255 and performance, 251 versus rite, 251 Roberts, Edith, 83 Robert Starbird Dorney Ecology Garden (University of Waterloo), 10, 64, 73–77, 90, 152, 248 Rocky Mountains, 4 Rymer, Russ, 52, 54 Saul, John Ralston, 194 Schama, Simon, 22 Schindler, David, 159–161 Seffer, Jan, 71 Sinkyone Intertribal Park (California), 109, 237–238 Snyder, Gary, 58 Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 45, 59, 61, 68, 78, 79, 82, 90, 96, 99, 102, 107, 129, 187, 208, 217, 236 Soulé, Michael, 42, 196 Sperry, Theodore, 5, 78, 82, 103, 116 Stanova, Viera, 71 Stevens, William, 90 Stoltmann, Randy, 150 Straka, Peter, 69 Strong, David, 57, 188–189, 246

Index Sustainable cultural practices, 119–122 Swan Creek (Victoria), 148 Swift, Lewis, 16, 23, 25, 26, 266 Synthetic ecology, 129 Taxonomy (of ecological restoration), 97–101 Taylor, Charles, 184 Technological restoration, 3, 12, 186, 225–226, 241, 242–243 Technology, 182–195 and enrichment, 188–189 and focal practice, 185–186, 190–191, 194–195 and focal things, 190–191 and liberation, 188–189 Thompson, David, 23 Time depth, 154–155, 156 Tonquin Valley (Jasper National Park), 151, 154 Toth, Lou, 66 Traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom, 200–201 Tree of Life native plant nursery, 199 Turner, Edith, 250 Turner, Frederick, 215, 250 Turner, Nancy, 227, 231, 233, 236 Turner, Victor, 250, 251–252 Typologies of restoration, 81–85 University of Waterloo, 5 University of Wisconsin Arboretum, 5, 78, 82–83 Ury, W., 207 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 64–65 Van Gennep, Arnold, 252 Variability (historical and natural range of), 163–165 Vaux, Calvert, 275–276 Walker, Joan, 158, 163, 165, 169, 173 Wallace, Rod, 137 Westervelt, Kelly, 61, 214

341

Westfall, Barbara, 250 Wheeler, A. O., 133 White, Cliff, 36 White, Peter, 158, 163, 165, 169, 173 White, Richard, 41 Wilby, Arnold C., 16, 26 Wild design, 5, 14, 95, 271, 277–285 Wilderness Lodge (Orlando, Florida), 10, 12, 21, 45–52, 54, 60, 156, 187, 195, 204, 223, 249. See also Disney Corporation Wildlands Project, 20, 114 Wildness, 58 Willeke, Gene, 253 Wilson, Alexander, 45, 186, 208 Wilson, E. O., 145 Winner, Langdon, 185, 193 Winterhalder, Keith, 110 Wong, Anne, 276 Woodhorn Colliery Museum (England), 157 Yellowhead highway, 22–23, 25, 181, 266, 269 Yellowstone to Yukon project, 2, 20, 269