work is misguided. I n this paper we raise concerns about the direction of management in natural areas, particularly management strategies whose stated goal is the restoration of savanna communities in northeastern Illinois. Our principal example is The Nature Conservancy’s Palos/Sag Project in Cook County, Illinois, specifically the work occurring in Cap Sauer’s Holding, a dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. We begin with some thoughts about the relationship between nature and humans, for it is against this background that the value of restorations must ultimately be judged. Natural systems are always in a process of becoming. The essence of nature lies not in the organization we perceive, but in the creative act itself. The creativity of nature, however, is not preceded by a plan or idea comparable to a blueprint or design. Instead, in the words of the philosopher Eugene Hargrove (1989), nature creates her works indifferently. What we perceive as organization in nature--species, communities, ecosystems--arises through the interactions of organisms with one another and with their physical environment. These interactions have no overarching purpose, nor do they result in an inevitable pattern. Henry Gleason (1975) recognizes this in his summary of an idea that has influenced several generations of ecologists: "There is the birth of my theory on the plant association. All the glamour has disappeared. Far from being an organism, an association is merely the fortuitous juxtaposition of plants. What plants? Those that can live together under the physical environment and under their interlocking spheres of influence and which are already located within migrating distance." Yet it is these "fortuitous juxtapositions," endlessly varied, never duplicatable, these products of creative indifference, that make the natural world so fascinating. Restorations are inherently different from these products of natural creativity. In a restoration, some set of ideas about how nature should look or how nature should behave precedes and dictates management strategies. The result must inevitably reflect human ideas, perceptions and values. Restorations are forever subject to the limitations of our understanding and to the imposition of our values. We see this increasingly in the destruction of species deemed, for one reason or another, "unsuitable’ to a particular restoration. Subject inevitably to these constraints, all restoration plans and projects should be carefully evaluated against the alternative of letting natural processes continue, whatever their direction, without human interference. This is especially important when human conceptions are imposed on areas where the vast majority of species present are indigenous, and where ecosystem processes are intact. It is in such areas that we have the unique opportunity to watch the panorama of successional change unfold naturally.
{"title":"Carving Up the Woods","authors":"J. Mendelson, Stephen P Aultz, J. D. Mendelson","doi":"10.3368/er.10.2.127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.10.2.127","url":null,"abstract":"work is misguided. I n this paper we raise concerns about the direction of management in natural areas, particularly management strategies whose stated goal is the restoration of savanna communities in northeastern Illinois. Our principal example is The Nature Conservancy’s Palos/Sag Project in Cook County, Illinois, specifically the work occurring in Cap Sauer’s Holding, a dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. We begin with some thoughts about the relationship between nature and humans, for it is against this background that the value of restorations must ultimately be judged. Natural systems are always in a process of becoming. The essence of nature lies not in the organization we perceive, but in the creative act itself. The creativity of nature, however, is not preceded by a plan or idea comparable to a blueprint or design. Instead, in the words of the philosopher Eugene Hargrove (1989), nature creates her works indifferently. What we perceive as organization in nature--species, communities, ecosystems--arises through the interactions of organisms with one another and with their physical environment. These interactions have no overarching purpose, nor do they result in an inevitable pattern. Henry Gleason (1975) recognizes this in his summary of an idea that has influenced several generations of ecologists: \"There is the birth of my theory on the plant association. All the glamour has disappeared. Far from being an organism, an association is merely the fortuitous juxtaposition of plants. What plants? Those that can live together under the physical environment and under their interlocking spheres of influence and which are already located within migrating distance.\" Yet it is these \"fortuitous juxtapositions,\" endlessly varied, never duplicatable, these products of creative indifference, that make the natural world so fascinating. Restorations are inherently different from these products of natural creativity. In a restoration, some set of ideas about how nature should look or how nature should behave precedes and dictates management strategies. The result must inevitably reflect human ideas, perceptions and values. Restorations are forever subject to the limitations of our understanding and to the imposition of our values. We see this increasingly in the destruction of species deemed, for one reason or another, \"unsuitable’ to a particular restoration. Subject inevitably to these constraints, all restoration plans and projects should be carefully evaluated against the alternative of letting natural processes continue, whatever their direction, without human interference. This is especially important when human conceptions are imposed on areas where the vast majority of species present are indigenous, and where ecosystem processes are intact. It is in such areas that we have the unique opportunity to watch the panorama of successional change unfold naturally.","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1992-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114958841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The 20-ha Henry Greene Prairie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum is one of the most successful prairie restorations anywhere, a fine example of "the best we can do so far." It is successful in terms of the usual objective criteria for prairie restorations: dominance by characteristic grasses, diversity of prairie forbs and grasses, little woody invasion, and few troublesome exotics. For many of the visitors following the trails, however, its success is measured in esthetic terms--the beauty of the prairie vistas, the colorful flowers in a background of grass, the remote location with its near-relief from highway noise. The songs of sedge wrens mingle with those of yellowthroats and goldfinches along the brushy edges, and an occasional redtailed hawk calls from above. To complete the sensory impact, mountain mint yields its pungent aroma in response to passing feet, and on a warm day late in summer the air is filled with the tantalizing fragrance of prairie dropseed. The success of this restoration is undoubtedly due in large part to the skill of Dr. Henry Greene, who selected and surveyed the site, and (at his own insistence) planted it almost single-handedly. He did most of the planting between 1945 and 1953, using seeds, seedlings and wild transplants. Greene was a botanist whose professional specialty was mycology, but he was an expert on prairies. Not only was he an excellent prairie taxonomist, but he knew the soil and moisture requirements for each species, and what combinations of species grew together naturally. Because of this he was able to do an unusually good job of placing each species where it would do well on the fledgling prairie. He took his time, kept the transplants watered until established, and meticulously recorded the location of each planting to facilitate later evaluation of its
{"title":"How Well Can We Do?","authors":"V. Kline","doi":"10.3368/er.10.1.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.10.1.36","url":null,"abstract":"The 20-ha Henry Greene Prairie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum is one of the most successful prairie restorations anywhere, a fine example of \"the best we can do so far.\" It is successful in terms of the usual objective criteria for prairie restorations: dominance by characteristic grasses, diversity of prairie forbs and grasses, little woody invasion, and few troublesome exotics. For many of the visitors following the trails, however, its success is measured in esthetic terms--the beauty of the prairie vistas, the colorful flowers in a background of grass, the remote location with its near-relief from highway noise. The songs of sedge wrens mingle with those of yellowthroats and goldfinches along the brushy edges, and an occasional redtailed hawk calls from above. To complete the sensory impact, mountain mint yields its pungent aroma in response to passing feet, and on a warm day late in summer the air is filled with the tantalizing fragrance of prairie dropseed. The success of this restoration is undoubtedly due in large part to the skill of Dr. Henry Greene, who selected and surveyed the site, and (at his own insistence) planted it almost single-handedly. He did most of the planting between 1945 and 1953, using seeds, seedlings and wild transplants. Greene was a botanist whose professional specialty was mycology, but he was an expert on prairies. Not only was he an excellent prairie taxonomist, but he knew the soil and moisture requirements for each species, and what combinations of species grew together naturally. Because of this he was able to do an unusually good job of placing each species where it would do well on the fledgling prairie. He took his time, kept the transplants watered until established, and meticulously recorded the location of each planting to facilitate later evaluation of its","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"118 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1992-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126164185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Tanner, Diana Hernandez, Julie A., P. Mankiewicz
{"title":"The Big Apple","authors":"M. Tanner, Diana Hernandez, Julie A., P. Mankiewicz","doi":"10.3368/ER.10.1.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/ER.10.1.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1992-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114358299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Point of Contact: The West Indies","authors":"G. Ray","doi":"10.3368/er.10.1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.10.1.4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"28 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1992-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123490861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Environmental writers since Thoreau and Marsh have deplored despoliation of nature by humans and enjoined us to find a way of achieving a more harmonious relationship with the natural landscape and with nature generally. In a particularly useful formulation of this idea, Loren Eiseley argued for the necessity of reentering the "sunflower forest," but without abandoning the lessons we have learned on the pathway to the moon. The question is--has always been--exactly what does this mean in practical terms? What does it mean to reenter the sunflower forest by way of our cultural world? It seems to me there are two ways of answering this question, each based on a different conception of the "natural" relationship between humans and nature as expressed in archaic or indigenous cultures. The first is to assume that such peoples really are natural--that is, they live in a gentle, graceful and unselfconscious harmony with the world around them, just like chipmunks or kangaroos. On this assumption reentering the "sunflower forest" means finding a way to live gently in nature, minimizing our "impact" on it. It also means shedding modern knowledge in favor, perhaps, of a deeper wisdom. Out of this comes the kind of environmentalism that urges us to "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints." This view is, of course, incompatible with Eiseley’s injunction. Perhaps ironically, it minimizes the classic role of humans as gatherers, as predators, and as shapers of the landscape. And curiously it denies us real membership in the land community, making us mere visitors at best and at worst trespassers and vandals in the natural landscape. This is the reasoning that leads, for all its idealization of innocence, to the despair of Bill McKibben’s recent book, The End ofNature, with its hopeless and destructive implication that we don’t really belong on this planet. Fortunately, there is an alternative. A second environmental paradigm is built on a radically different conception of the "natural"~or classic--relationship between humans and nature. This is the assumption that humans have always--at least since the invention of language~istinguished nature from culture and have been aware of a deep tension, even a measure of estrangement between themselves and the rest of nature. If they have often managed to achieve a measure of harmony between nature and culture at the ecological and psychological levels, this is not "natural" in the sense of being unselfconscious. Rather it is an achievement--actually a work of art. People have always had to find their way back into the sunflower forest. From this follows an entirely different kind of environmental paradigm, which may be summarized as follows: ̄ That a wholly satisfactory, unambiguous relationship between nature and culture is impossible in purely literal terms, and that human beings have always felt a certain
自梭罗和马什以来，环境作家一直谴责人类对自然的掠夺，并要求我们找到一种与自然景观和自然之间更和谐的关系的方法。洛伦·艾斯利(Loren Eiseley)提出了一个特别有用的观点，他认为有必要重新进入“向日葵森林”，但没有放弃我们在通往月球的道路上学到的教训。问题是——一直是——这在实际中到底意味着什么?通过我们的文化世界重新进入向日葵森林意味着什么?在我看来，回答这个问题有两种方式，每一种方式都基于古代或土著文化中对人与自然之间“自然”关系的不同概念。第一种假设是，这些民族真的是自然的——也就是说，他们与周围的世界生活在一种温柔、优雅、无意识的和谐中，就像花栗鼠或袋鼠一样。在这个假设下，重新进入“向日葵森林”意味着找到一种温和地生活在大自然中的方式，最大限度地减少我们对大自然的“影响”。这也意味着抛弃现代知识，也许是为了更深刻的智慧。由此产生了一种环保主义，敦促我们“除了照片什么也不拍，除了脚印什么也不留下”。当然，这种观点与艾斯利的禁令是不相容的。也许具有讽刺意味的是，它将人类作为采集者、捕食者和景观塑造者的经典角色最小化了。奇怪的是，它否认我们是土地社区的真正成员，使我们充其量只是游客，最坏的情况是自然景观的侵入者和破坏者。正是这种推理导致了比尔·麦基本(Bill McKibben)的新书《自然的终结》(the End of nature)的绝望，尽管它把纯真理想化了，但它的绝望和破坏性暗示了我们并不真正属于这个星球。幸运的是，还有另一种选择。第二种环境范式建立在对人与自然之间的“自然”或“经典”关系的完全不同的概念之上。这是一种假设，即人类总是——至少自从语言发明以来——将自然与文化区分开来，并意识到自己与自然的其他部分之间存在着一种深刻的张力，甚至是某种程度上的隔阂。如果他们经常设法在生态和心理层面上实现自然与文化之间的某种程度的和谐，这就不是无意识意义上的“自然”。相反，它是一项成就——实际上是一件艺术品。人们总是要找到回到向日葵森林的路。由此产生了一种完全不同的环境范式，可以总结如下:从纯粹的字面意义上讲，自然和文化之间不可能存在完全令人满意的、明确的关系，人类总是感到某种
{"title":"A New Paradigm","authors":"","doi":"10.3368/er.9.2.64","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.9.2.64","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental writers since Thoreau and Marsh have deplored despoliation of nature by humans and enjoined us to find a way of achieving a more harmonious relationship with the natural landscape and with nature generally. In a particularly useful formulation of this idea, Loren Eiseley argued for the necessity of reentering the \"sunflower forest,\" but without abandoning the lessons we have learned on the pathway to the moon. The question is--has always been--exactly what does this mean in practical terms? What does it mean to reenter the sunflower forest by way of our cultural world? It seems to me there are two ways of answering this question, each based on a different conception of the \"natural\" relationship between humans and nature as expressed in archaic or indigenous cultures. The first is to assume that such peoples really are natural--that is, they live in a gentle, graceful and unselfconscious harmony with the world around them, just like chipmunks or kangaroos. On this assumption reentering the \"sunflower forest\" means finding a way to live gently in nature, minimizing our \"impact\" on it. It also means shedding modern knowledge in favor, perhaps, of a deeper wisdom. Out of this comes the kind of environmentalism that urges us to \"take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints.\" This view is, of course, incompatible with Eiseley’s injunction. Perhaps ironically, it minimizes the classic role of humans as gatherers, as predators, and as shapers of the landscape. And curiously it denies us real membership in the land community, making us mere visitors at best and at worst trespassers and vandals in the natural landscape. This is the reasoning that leads, for all its idealization of innocence, to the despair of Bill McKibben’s recent book, The End ofNature, with its hopeless and destructive implication that we don’t really belong on this planet. Fortunately, there is an alternative. A second environmental paradigm is built on a radically different conception of the \"natural\"~or classic--relationship between humans and nature. This is the assumption that humans have always--at least since the invention of language~istinguished nature from culture and have been aware of a deep tension, even a measure of estrangement between themselves and the rest of nature. If they have often managed to achieve a measure of harmony between nature and culture at the ecological and psychological levels, this is not \"natural\" in the sense of being unselfconscious. Rather it is an achievement--actually a work of art. People have always had to find their way back into the sunflower forest. From this follows an entirely different kind of environmental paradigm, which may be summarized as follows: ̄ That a wholly satisfactory, unambiguous relationship between nature and culture is impossible in purely literal terms, and that human beings have always felt a certain","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1991-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122230787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nancy M. Jarman, R. A. Dobberteen, B. Windmiller, Paul R. Lelito
Under certain circumstances, the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act and Regulations (310 CMR 10.00) allow the filling of freshwater wetlands when coupled with mitigation strategies involving wetlands creation. Since the regulatory revisions of 1983, approximately 1,000 wetlands creation projects, averaging 3,500 square feet (340 square meters) in size, have been completed in Massachusetts (Dobberteen, 1990). Despite the abundance of these small, created wetlands, there is, unfortunately, little data concerning the performance of these systems. Lelito Environmental Consultants (LEC) has been involved in wetlands creation projects since 1987. LEC has recently undertaken a monitoring program to explore the effectiveness of different wetland creation techniques, and to evaluate the types of wetland communities established through these techniques. "Success" of a created wetlands project is defined under the Massachusetts regulations by establishment of 75 percent cover of indigenous wetland vegetation within two growing seasons. The regulations require that created wetlands must be at least the same size, at the same elevation, and bordering on the same wetland system as the lost wetland areas. Although the regulations presume that the functioning of the created wetlands will be similar to that of the lost areas once vegetation is established, no functional analysis of the created wetlands is required. As a result, when wetlands replacement areas are being created in Massachusetts, primary emphasis is usually given to the rapid establishment of vegetative cover. In addition, since the regulations contain specific limits on the amount of wetland that can be filled [generally 5,000 square feet (490 square meters)], a significant portion of the original wetland typically remains for comparison with the created area. LEC has designed over 35 wetland creation plans, and has been directly involved in the construction of at least 15 of these projects. During the summer of 1990, LEC initiated an ecological monitoring program for six created
{"title":"Authenticity: Evaluation of Created Freshwater Wetlands in Massachusetts","authors":"Nancy M. Jarman, R. A. Dobberteen, B. Windmiller, Paul R. Lelito","doi":"10.3368/er.9.1.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.9.1.26","url":null,"abstract":"Under certain circumstances, the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act and Regulations (310 CMR 10.00) allow the filling of freshwater wetlands when coupled with mitigation strategies involving wetlands creation. Since the regulatory revisions of 1983, approximately 1,000 wetlands creation projects, averaging 3,500 square feet (340 square meters) in size, have been completed in Massachusetts (Dobberteen, 1990). Despite the abundance of these small, created wetlands, there is, unfortunately, little data concerning the performance of these systems. Lelito Environmental Consultants (LEC) has been involved in wetlands creation projects since 1987. LEC has recently undertaken a monitoring program to explore the effectiveness of different wetland creation techniques, and to evaluate the types of wetland communities established through these techniques. \"Success\" of a created wetlands project is defined under the Massachusetts regulations by establishment of 75 percent cover of indigenous wetland vegetation within two growing seasons. The regulations require that created wetlands must be at least the same size, at the same elevation, and bordering on the same wetland system as the lost wetland areas. Although the regulations presume that the functioning of the created wetlands will be similar to that of the lost areas once vegetation is established, no functional analysis of the created wetlands is required. As a result, when wetlands replacement areas are being created in Massachusetts, primary emphasis is usually given to the rapid establishment of vegetative cover. In addition, since the regulations contain specific limits on the amount of wetland that can be filled [generally 5,000 square feet (490 square meters)], a significant portion of the original wetland typically remains for comparison with the created area. LEC has designed over 35 wetland creation plans, and has been directly involved in the construction of at least 15 of these projects. During the summer of 1990, LEC initiated an ecological monitoring program for six created","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1991-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125767811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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
{"title":"Planting Flowers and Assembling Complex Systems","authors":"S. Pimm","doi":"10.3368/er.9.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/er.9.1.5","url":null,"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","PeriodicalId":105419,"journal":{"name":"Restoration & Management Notes","volume":"388 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1991-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129655948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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