Much can change in a century, but can long-disrupted ecosystems ever be truly restored? Just over a hundred years ago, Americans realized that our nation’s extraction economy was wreaking havoc on our ecological capital. Natural resources of all kinds were under assault: hillsides denuded, rivers polluted, and wetlands paved over. More and more wildlife species are faced the threat of extinction.
The movement to stem the destruction began slowly and piecemeal. President Grant established the first National Park, Yellowstone, in 1872. In 1892 the New York State legislature — spurred on by writer and land surveyor Verplanck Colvin — created Adirondack Park, still the nation’s largest publicly protected area in the contiguous U.S.
Today a huge environmental restoration movement seeks not only to preserve America’s natural heritage, but to restore what’s been lost. Such efforts require an understanding an area’s historical ecology.
The failure to maintain viable ecosystems, or to adapt to changing ecosystems, has contributed to the decline of innumerable societies and civilizations, from Mycenaean Greece to the Anasazi of the American southwest.
The challenge today is to reconstruct natural processes wherever possible, from moving a turtle pond to a safe location away from encroaching bulldozers, to renovating an entire watershed. The goal is not just to avoid ecological collapse. It’s to better our lives — and the lives of all species around us — for centuries to come.
References
Jones, C.G., Dajoz, I. and Abbadie, L., “Ecological engineering and the sustainable redesign imperative,” pp. 138-139 in Garnier, L. (ed.), Man and Nature, Making the Relationship Last, UNESCO, Paris, 2008.
Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Viking, 2005.
Mardon, Mark, “Redefining Progress: A Time to Repair the Earth,” National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter, 1990.
New York State Adirondack Park Agency, “History of the Adirondack Park,” http://apa.ny.gov/about_park/history.htm.
National Park Service, “A Brief History of the National Park Service,” http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/kieley/kieley3.htm.
National Park Service, history of Yosemite and John Muir, http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir.htm.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, “History of State Forest Program,” http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/4982.html.
Society for Ecological Restoration, “Mission Statement,” http://www.ser.org/about.asp.
Whipple, A. A. (San Francisco Estuary Institute), R. M. Grossinger (S.F. Estuary Institute), and F. W. Davis (Bren School of Env. Sci. and Mgmt., University of California), “Shifting Baselines in a California Oak Savanna: Nineteenth Century Data to Inform Restoration Scenarios,” Restoration Ecology,” Sept. 23, 2009. http://www.sfei.org/sites/default/files/Whippleetal_ShiftingBaselinesOaks.pdf
Photo, taken on May 8, 2009, courtesy of Pete the Poet via Flickr.