Restoration Ecology Grows As The Environment Decays

The American landscape has undergone tremendous alteration and devastation; 90 percent or more of its prairies, wetlands, and virgin forests have been consumed by development. And now many parts of the developing world are feeling the bite of the chain saw and bulldozer. But in counterpoint to this depressing scenario, restoration ecology--the science of rehabilitating degraded ecosystems--is growing. The field is attracting many new scientists, more funding is becoming available, and a new journal devoted exclusively to the topic is forthcoming. It's a scientific endeavor that involves both applied and basic research, and, scientists say, it's one that is becoming essential to the continued survival of the planet. Simply preserving wildlife habitat has not been and will not be enough to save the world from ecological disaster, says Joann Roskoski, ecology program director at the National Science Foundation. "Clearly, restoration is what has to happen when conservation hasn't worked," she says. "We have to come to grips with the fact that we are going to be managing the entire globe, and we're going to have to think of that as a positive and proactive activity, as important as building automobiles." Nature is not just going to take care of itself anymore, she says. Yet despite this recognition of the growing importance of research into rebuilding ecosystems, funds from traditional granting agencies are not lavish, at least not yet. At NSF, for instance, conservation and restoration ecology are lumped together under a single program category, with $3 million in funds available, the majority of which go to conservation-oriented projects. But this is not meant to devalue restoration, according to Roskoski, who says: "While we think this is a critically important area, there are a lot of critically important areas." One of the successful competitors for these NSF funds is Steven Handel, a plant ecologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. As part of a two-year, $277,000 grant, Handel is looking into how to bring woodlands back to closed municipal landfills. Restoring ecological functioning to these landfills is becoming a hot topic as thousands of these sites are scheduled for closing by the end of the decade, leaving cash-starved city officials wondering how they will manage these lands, he says. Handel's interest in natural succession at landfills began about three years ago. During field trips with students, he noticed that farmlands that are abandoned are rapidly taken over by trees. However, landfills that are closed and then covered with dirt and planted with grasses resist such natural succession and can remain vast, weedy plots up to 25 years later (G.R. Robinson, et al., Environmental Management, 16:265, 1992). With most cities unable to spend generous amounts on extensive woodland restoration projects, Handel sees his mission as developing technologies to "jump-start natural succession on the cheap." One way to accelerate natural succession is to plant grasses to stabilize the topsoil as well as to put in clusters of native trees that will grow and reproduce in the disturbed environment. These trees in turn attract the kind of birds that eat and excrete the seeds of other trees and shrubs. And it's this second wave of woody plants that will eventually dominate the woodlands. Restoration research has gained acceptance among ecologists, who are overcoming their traditional reluctance to work in anything but pristine habitats, says Edith Allen, a well-known restoration ecologist at San Diego State University. "There's been a change of heart over the last decade, where we've seen people get interested in severely disturbed communities," she says. "The idea of taking humans out of the ecosystems, I don't think people are thinking in these terms anymore." Evidence of this expanding interest was the standing-room-only--with spill-over into the hallway--attendance at a half-day symposium on restoration ecology Allen chaired at a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in early August in Hawaii. And, to accommodate the increasing numbers of papers in the field, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), which itself was established only five years ago, will begin publishing its own quarterly journal, Restoration Ecology, starting in March 1993 (Blackwell Scientific Publications, Cambridge, Mass.). The size of the NSF funding available for restoration is "small, but it's getting more people interested," says Allen. Besides, restoration is very much an applied discipline within ecology. And that means interest and research money are strongest from state agencies that have a direct need for restoration, such as the California Department of Transportation, which is required to mitigate for wetlands and other rare ecosystems it damages with its works, Allen says. Russ Lea, a forestry scientist at North Carolina State University, says that "there's no shortage of funding opportunities," pointing to the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the United States Forest Service as additional funding agencies. Although the interest in restoration research has been fueled lately by a growing awareness of the extent of ecological devastation, it was the 1977 Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act that gave Allen and many other ecologists entr‚e into the field. This federal act mandated the return of western strip mines to natural conditions. But there have been problems with achieving this goal. Allen's doctoral research in the late 1970s, for instance, showed that even though native grass species were used for replanting the strip mines, these grasses were so aggressive that up to 20 years later few other species had managed to establish themselves. While bringing life back to landfills and strip mines is clearly an essential enterprise, many restoration ecologists have strong moral and philosophical problems with how the public and elected officials view and use their work. "There's a concern that restoration offers a license to kill," says William Jordan, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin who edits another SER publication, Range and Management Notes. "There's a fear that restoration might be used as a substitute for preservation." Evelyn Howell, a UW plant ecologist, shares Jordan's view. "I don't think we can truly restore things. We don't know how," she says. This is not just a theoretical argument. Despite strong government oversight of wetlands, they are still being filled in for airports, roads, and other public works. The solution has been mitigation, which means either rehabilitating a former marsh or creating an "equivalent" wetland here. "I really find that terrible," Howell says. These engineered wetlands never function as well as the natural ecosystems they replace. Allen says the focus should be on vigorously protecting the broken-up remnants of natural ecosystems and using restoration to expand their boundaries into surrounding disturbed lands. One of the largest restoration projects to date is set to begin in 1997 on the Kissimmee River in central Florida, which has been so dammed and channeled that hundreds of square miles of surrounding wetlands have dried up. "Nothing of this magnitude has been attempted. It's an unprecedented project, and I expect it to serve as a model restoration project," says Louis Toth, an aquatic ecologist with the South Florida Water Management District. "We feel we can completely restore roughly 104 square kilometers of [wetland] ecosystem, including 42 miles of river channels," he says. The Kissimmee was once a meandering 103-mile-long waterway that drained a chain of lakes in its upper basin and then flowed through a marshy flood plain up to two miles wide before dumping into Lake Okeechobee. But this being hurricane-prone Florida, the Army Corps of Engineers, starting in the 1960s, installed a series of flood control channels and dams to hold back floods. Restraining these waters, however, dried out the surrounding wetlands. Taming the Kissimmee and other rivers has contributed to the loss of 90 percent of wading birds in the southern part of the state, according to Florida officials. What's particularly encouraging is that the region has not lost any of its native species to extinction, says Toth. In a mid-1980s demonstration project, natural flow conditions were restored to a 1,000-foot stretch of the river--by diverting water from the deep canal back into the original river bed--and consequently reflooding 1,300 acres of wetlands. The results were extremely encouraging, says Toth. Species of plants and animals long gone from the area began to move in from surrounding remnant wetlands. Native species of plants and animals in nearby remnant wetlands are expected to quickly recolonize the flood plain once the waters of the Kissimmee are allowed to flow--and overflow--more freely, he says. The Kissimmee project is devoted not only to restoration but also to basic science. Toth says that $15 million is earmarked for a restoration evaluation program that will include scientists from state agencies, consulting firms, and universities. He says his agency is already gearing up for the study: "One of our principal responsibilities is to make sure we have a really solid database baseline for future comparisons." Another thing the Kissimmee project is showing is that restoration is almost an order of magnitude more costly than preservation. The restoration will replace only about half of the original Kissimmee wetlands for about $370 million, while the original cost of installing the dams and channels was about $22 million. The Kissimmee project is just one example of how aquatic restoration in particular is poised to take off, says John Cairns, a biologist with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. Cairns chaired the National Research Council committee that put together a report entitled Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems: Science, Technology, and Public Policy. While scientists are eagerly boarding the restoration bus, interest is spreading outside of science. For instance, he was surprised by the mob of both reporters and congressional aides who turned out for a news conference announcing the report's release in December 1991. And as an applied ecologist, Cairns says, he has no qualms with something many scientists have a philosophical problem with--crossing the line into public policy. In the report, the NRC committee called for a "national aquatic ecosystem restoration strategy." President Bush has called for no net loss of wetlands, but the report's strategy takes wetland ecology a big step further by calling for restoration of 10 million acres of crop and pasture lands to their original wetland state by the year 2010. "Without an active and ambitious restoration program in the United States, our swelling population and its increasing stress on aquatic ecosystems will certainly reduce the quality of human life for present and future generations," according to the report. "By embarking now on a major national aquatic ecosystem restoration program, the United States can set an example of aquatic resource stewardship that ultimately will also improve the management of other resource types and will set an international example of environmental leadership." Just back from two years in the Brazilian Amazon is Daniel Nepstad, an ecologist now at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. Nepstad is one of the new group of scientists attracted to restoration as something more than an interesting scientific topic--as the right thing to do. His findings, in Ambio (D.C. Nepstad, et al., 20:248-55,1991), give some reason for optimism in an otherwise grim setting of rapid tropical deforestation. "Deforestation is not a terminal event in Amazonia but, rather, sets in motion a complex series of forest-recovery processes," he wrote. "Restoration of agricultural productivity, biotic diversity, and forest function in this and similar landscapes may be facilitated with knowledge of the ecological barriers to tree establishment and growth in abandoned ecosystems that are resistant to forest regrowth." And, similar to Handel's findings with landfills in the U.S., Nepstad has found that tropical forests can encounter obstacles to retaking abandoned pasturelands. His cost-effective solution is to plant tree islands with species that grow rapidly in full sun and produce fleshy fruits soon after planting, which in turn draw in seed-carrying birds and bats. The shade of these trees in turn provides a nursery for other species. But there is a downside, he says. Cattle pastures created from the traditional cut-and-burn techniques quickly become unproductive and begin reverting to forests, but ranchers now have their own new technologies. By bulldozing these lands to remove roots and seeds, then planting with a single grass species and applying high-phosphorus fertilizers, they can create permanent, productive pastures. On top of that, logging is still a thriving industry in Amazonia and continues to seriously degrade large swathes of forest. Add to that political problems that include the anticipated fall of the current Brazilian president as a result of charges of massive corruption. Plus, researchers are paralyzed by an abysmal funding situation. "The whole question of leadership is left begging. Where are the Brazilian visionaries?" asks Nep-stad. While his work has shown tropical forests can be restored, it is clear that technology is not enough. It will take leadership and political will to reverse the tide of environmental destruction, particularly in the Amazon, he says.

Restoration Ecology Grows As The Environment Decays

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