Planting Flowers and Assembling Complex Systems

Abstract

What are restoration ecology and conservation biology? Are they sciences, or are their practitioners just a bunch of naturalists who enjoy flowers and birds? Is ecology a real science? Real science, surely, has men in white lab coats running large, complex machines, or whole teams of scientists running experiments that cost millions of dollars. Real scientists understand differential equations and solve the problems of the universe. But restoration and conservation seem different. Do they merely constitute the unfashionable, applied end of an already soft, descriptive, and intellectually fuzzy discipline? If you have not felt the need to address these questions, then you have led a sheltered life. I give a lot of seminars in response to requests to convince other ecologists that restoration ecology and conservation biology are respectable and--not incidentally--worthy of institutional and financial support. There is more to addressing these concerns than playing psychiatrist to a profession that seems to suffer from deep feelings of insecurity. Some of the most important challenges our society faces fall within the charge of ecology. They include: ̄ the biological consequences of global climate change, ̄ issues involving the inventory, loss, and restoration of biological diversity, ̄ the biological control of plant and animal pests, ̄ the sustainable use of natural resources, ̄ the spread of infectious diseases in humans (HIV is just one example) and other organisms, and the spread of introduced organisms, including invasive weeds and other pests as well as genetically modified organisms. Yet a question nags at us. Are these topics really important to society or are "big science" projects such as the sequencing of the human genome or the construction of the super-collider more important? It is true that projects like these have a certain appeal. One promises insight into the structure of matter, the other the decoding of the blueprint of human life. It seems reasonable to ask, however, whether these issues are really more important--or interesting--than those facing ecologists, who are