Topic 27:

“In Search of a Land Ethic” – Restoration Ecology

• "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.  Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen.  An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science ore none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."  (Aldo Leopold, The Round River - p. 197 of Sand County Almanac)

• After our discussions r.e. habitat loss, species extinctions, invasive exotics, etc. – it’s easy to just get down-hearted & feel as if there is no hope for anything, & nothing anyone can do to improve the current state of affairs in the ecological world
• What we have lacked, according to Leopold, is a "land ethic."
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• What is the response of the Ecological community (scientists) to the current environmental & extinction crisis?
  • 2 new subfields have grown from our realization of the calamities we face:
  • Restoration Ecology & Conservation Biology
  • What are some things we can do?
  • Preserve existing land areas, habitats, to save native species
  • Restore damaged land in order to re-create habitat & thus save species
• Aldo Leopold can be considered one of the fathers of both of these new fields, but he especially introduced the idea of “caring” for & restoring injured/abused/over-used land
  • Restoration Ecology was really born in Wisconsin (UW), where Leopold worked – on his own land, and on the campus at the UW Arboretum, restoring native prairie

• If RESTORATION is your goal, in preserving native ecological systems, what kinds of things do you need to restore?
  • Remember Leopold's injunction from "Round River" (p 190): "To keep every cog & wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
  • Native species
  • Natural processes – like disturbance, predator-prey interactions, etc.
  • Overall habitat

• Use examples from SW to illustrate how the process might work – where might we be most successful in restoring the natural workings of ecosystems, and where might we run into serious problems, and why?

   

  • EXAMPLES – each group address these questions:
    • Describe the natural system, species, processes
    • Discuss the threats
      • what disturbance has been either added or removed?
    • Describe ways we might remedy problems, approaches that might be taken to restore the system to its original state
    • Are there some problems that we cannot tackle at present?  Do you need to develop some new technologies or new approaches to deal with some of these issues?

• ECOSYSTEM EXAMPLES:
  • Ponderosa pine forest (fire removed)
  • Riparian woodlands (floods removed, exotics introduced)
  • Sagebrush grasslands (more fire added, grazing added, exotics added)
  • Colorado Plateau shrublands (trampling added, exotics added)
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• Which of the above scenarios can we most easily address, or if we had the resources where would we be most successful & why?
• What’s harder – to reintroduce a removed disturbance, or to take away a foreign, introduced disturbance?

• DISTURBANCE - as a feedback system...
  • Self-reinforcing (positive) feedback –
  • Self-correcting (negative) feedback
  • which can we most easily address?