On the need of legal frameworks for assessing restoration projects success: new perspectives from São Paulo state (Brazil)

Despite growing worldwide commitment to large‐scale ecosystem restoration, national public policies on restoration are few, and those that exist tend to be vague. Brazil and especially São Paulo state stand out. In a pioneering attempt to improve restoration projects and their outcomes, the Secretariat for the Environment of the State of São Paulo has enacted a legal instrument to drive planning and to assess whether the goals and targets of mandatory ecological restoration are being achieved. Regardless of the restoration techniques applied, the effectiveness of mandatory or public‐funded projects will henceforth be assessed by using three ecological indicators: (1) ground coverage with native vegetation; (2) density of native plants spontaneously regenerating; and (3) number of spontaneously regenerating native plant species. We analyze how this science‐based legal framework is expected to promote greater restoration success, improve cost‐effectiveness, and help bridge the all‐too‐familiar knowledge‐action gap in environmental policies. Notably, scientists, professionals, public agents, and stakeholders from different institutions have collaborated to advance the refinement and rolling out of this legal instrument. By 2037, it is expected that more than 300,000 restoration projects will be carried out in São Paulo state and monitored using this set of indicators. We also suggest that this approach could be usefully applied to the growing number of ecological restoration programs being carried out worldwide, especially in the context of offset policies intended to achieve serious compensation for environmental degradation or loss of biodiversity.     

Wilderness Restoration: The Paradox of Public Participation

Recent trends in ecological restoration complicate the job of wilderness managers. An emphasis on volunteer participation in restoration designed to foster human/nature relationships often conflicts with the mandate to leave land untrammeled. We frame this conflict as the “participation paradox.” Higgs’ (2003) Nature by Design contains a response to the paradox that includes a strong defense of participatory focal restoration and a related critique of wilderness. After identifying the limitations of Higgs’ arguments, we address the paradox by showing how an appeal to the moral virtues of humility, self‐restraint, and altruism supports a restrictive conception of wilderness and a healing metaphor for wilderness restoration. The virtue‐informed healing metaphor provides an argument for restricting volunteer participation and long‐term restoration projects in wilderness areas. It also identifies the general conditions in which damaged wilderness should be allowed to “heal itself.” The upshot of our approach to the paradox is that some standards for good restoration should be contextualized to land use designations. In particular, the emphasis on participatory restoration is appropriate in humanized landscapes but not in wilderness.     

国土空间生态修复国际经验借鉴与广东省实施路径

开展国土空间生态修复是生态文明和美丽中国建设的要求,是关系国家生态安全和民生福祉的重大国家战略任务。梳理了近100年来以荒野、再野化、基于自然的解决方案、生态修复为核心的国际生态环境治理理念的发展语境,辨析概念之间的关系,阐明国际生态修复基本研究框架,并梳理国外生态修复的典型实践案例,总结国际经验。基于对广东省主要生态问题研判,从摸清家底、确定目标、谋划格局、布置行动、实施保障5个层面构建省域国土空间生态修复科学规划总体框架,并以实际问题和生态修复目标为导向,提出深入开展国土空间生态修复规划九项专题研究、生态修复技术研发、多元组织形式等策略。本文提出的广东省生态修复设计思路及实施路径,将为找准生态环境问题根源、实现靶向修复治理、促进生态文明建设提供决策支持。     

Legal instruments in private land conservation: the nature and role of conservation contracts and conservation covenants

Management of private land for ecological outcomes has emerged as an important facet of biodiversity management and ecological restoration in Australia. Common law conservation contracts and conservation covenants are important tools within this framework of private land conservation. They can provide legal protections to biodiversity and natural assets on private land, as well as legal frameworks, in the form of obligations, to restoration programs. They can provide distinct qualities of binding obligation: fixed term or enduring. Conservation contracts and covenants need to be recognized as possessing both transactional and relational qualities, and these qualities should be considered and reflected in the design of agreements and in practices of conservation management and agreement‐making. Two design questions are considered in this article. Conservation agreements need to contend with dynamism in ecological and social realities and this may be accommodated in mechanisms for adjustment of obligations between or within agreements. Dispute management is a second field of practice and drafting requiring attention. Constructing disputes provisions that are adapted and appropriate to long‐term conservation actions and restoration initiatives is reflective of good faith principles and can include scope for graduated, independent, corrective, and fair arrangements, informed as necessary by expert input.     

A framework for the practical science necessary to restore sustainable,resilient, and biodiverse ecosystems

Demand for restoration of resilient, self‐sustaining, and biodiverse natural ecosystems as a conservation measure is increasing globally; however, restoration efforts frequently fail to meet standards appropriate for this objective. Achieving these standards requires management underpinned by input from diverse scientific disciplines including ecology, biotechnology, engineering, soil science, ecophysiology, and genetics. Despite increasing restoration research activity, a gap between the immediate needs of restoration practitioners and the outputs of restoration science often limits the effectiveness of restoration programs. Regrettably, studies often fail to identify the practical issues most critical for restoration success. We propose that part of this oversight may result from the absence of a considered statement of the necessary practical restoration science questions. Here we develop a comprehensive framework of the research required to bridge this gap and guide effective restoration. We structure questions in five themes: (1) setting targets and planning for success, (2) sourcing biological material, (3) optimizing establishment, (4) facilitating growth and survival, and (5) restoring resilience, sustainability, and landscape integration. This framework will assist restoration practitioners and scientists to identify knowledge gaps and develop strategic research focused on applied outcomes. The breadth of questions highlights the importance of cross‐discipline collaboration among restoration scientists, and while the program is broad, successful restoration projects have typically invested in many or most of these themes. Achieving restoration ecology's goal of averting biodiversity losses is a vast challenge: investment in appropriate science is urgently needed for ecological restoration to fulfill its potential and meet demand as a conservation tool.     

Boundaries of the wolf and the wild: a conceptual examination of the relationship between rewilding and animal reintroduction

Animal reintroduction and rewilding are two widely appealing and frequently connected forms of ecological restoration. However, the critical assumption that animal reintroduction automatically helps to restore formerly wild places is under‐theorized. To fill this void, we identified three common rewilding elements from the literature—ecological functioning, wilderness experience, and natural autonomy—and screened these against a hypothetical wolf reintroduction to Scotland. Each of the rewilding elements was likely to be positively impacted by a wolf reintroduction. Yet, there is a key conceptual difficulty in that the different rewilding elements do not necessarily enforce each other, and at times may even collide. Thus, a reintroduced species like the wolf may obfuscate the clear‐cut, purified nature category to which rewilding often aspires. As a way forward, we suggest that there is merit in actively engaging with the tensions created by rewilding and reintroductions. A reconceptualisation of the nature–culture spectrum as consisting of multiple layers (e.g. ecological functioning, wilderness experience, and natural autonomy) may help to interpret ecological restoration as a tentative, deliberative, and gradual enterprise. This bears some resemblance to the notion of approaching a landscape like a ‘palimpsest’ (i.e. a text built up of different layers written on top of each other), which may support the reconciliation of conflicting views without necessarily making those disappear. When viewed as feeding into a multilayered nature–culture spectrum, animal reintroduction and rewilding can be promoted as inspiring and essentially non‐controlling forms of ecological restoration and human interaction with nature.     

Ecological restoration should be redefined for the twenty‐first century

Forty years ago, ecological restoration was conceptualized through a natural science lens. Today, ecological restoration has evolved into a social and scientific concept. The duality of ecological restoration is acknowledged in guidance documents on the subject but is not apparent in its definition. Current definitions reflect our views about what ecological restoration does but not why we do it. This viewpoint does not give appropriate credit to contributions from social sciences, nor does it provide compelling goals for people with different motivating rationales to engage in or support restoration. In this study, I give a concise history of the conceptualization and definition of ecological restoration, and I propose an alternative definition and corresponding viewpoint on restoration goal‐setting to meet twenty‐first century scientific and public inquiry.     

Wilderness and future conservation priorities in Australia

Aim Most approaches to conservation prioritization are focused on biodiversity features that are already threatened. While this is necessary in the face of accelerating anthropogenic threats, there have been calls to conserve large intact landscapes, often termed ‘wilderness’, to ensure the long‐term persistence of biodiversity. In this study, we examine the consequences of directing conservation expenditure using a threat‐based framework for wilderness conservation. Location The Australian continent. Methods We measured the degree of congruence between the extent of wilderness and the Australian protected area network in 2000 and 2006, which was established using a threat‐based systematic planning framework. We also assessed priority areas for future reserve acquisitions identified by the Australian government under the current framework. Results In 2000, 14% of Australia’s wilderness was under formal protection, while the protected area network covered only 8.5% of the continent, suggesting a historical bias towards wilderness protection. However, the expansion of the reserve system from 2000 to 2006 was biased towards non‐wilderness areas. Moreover, 90% of the wilderness that was protected over this period comprised areas not primarily designated for biodiversity conservation. We found a significant (P < 0.05) negative relationship between bioregions considered to be a priority for future reserve prioritization and the amount of wilderness they contain. Main conclusions While there is an urgent need to overcome past biases in reserve network design so as to better protect poorly represented species and habitats, prioritization approaches should not become so reactive as to ignore the role that large, intact landscapes play in conserving biodiversity, especially in a time of human‐induced climate change. This can be achieved by using current or future threats rather than past threats to prioritize areas, and by incorporating key ecological processes and costs of acquisition and management within the planning framework.     

Manipulating the wild: a survey of restoration and management interventions in U.S. wilderness

Landscape scale restoration is a common management intervention used around the world to combat ecological degradation. For wilderness managers in the United States, the decision to intervene is complicated by the Wilderness Act's legal mandate to preserve wilderness character and demonstrate managerial restraint (16 U.S.C. § 1131–1136). We assessed the frequency and type of management interventions, specifically actions to manage ecosystems, that have occurred in the National Wilderness Preservation System between 2011 and 2015, including the specific type of intervention, the methods used, the project proponent, and the factors that influenced the decision to act. We sent an online survey to staff members at 527 wilderness units from four federal agencies that manage wilderness and found that management interventions occurred in 37% of wildernesses sampled (n = 210). The greatest frequency of interventions occurred in the National Park Service (75%), and the three most common interventions were vegetation treatments (46%), wildfire (35%), and wildlife restoration projects (18%). Our findings point to a need for greater transparency about information on management interventions. We recommend creating an interagency database to track information on management interventions in wilderness to better understand which actions are occurring and why; such a database could help inform wilderness stewardship decisions while demonstrating best practices for ecological restorations implemented within the constraints of the Wilderness Act.     

Science‐Driven Restoration: A Square Grid on a Round Earth?

Is formal science necessarily an effective framework and methodology for designing and implementing ecological restoration programs? My experience as an ecologist in Hawaii suggests that even when scientific research programs are explicitly designed to guide and facilitate restoration, the culture of science, heterogeneity of nature, and real‐world complexities of implementing land management practices often limit the practical relevance of conventional scientific research. Although alternative models such as adaptive management and transdisciplinary science may facilitate research that more robustly models the real world, there is often little professional support or incentive to orient even these nonconventional research approaches toward actually solving on‐the‐ground problems. Thus, if one’s goal is to accomplish ecological restoration as quickly and efficiently as possible, a trial‐and‐error/intelligent tinkering–type approach might often be better than using more rigorous, data‐intensive scientific methodology. However, the sympatric implementation of ecological restoration and scientific research programs can lead to valuable synergies such as mutual logistical and financial support and the exchange of distinct forms of knowledge. The professional activities and mere presence of scientists can also greatly enhance a program’s prestige and visibility, which in turn can indirectly promote more and better ecological restoration. Improving our understanding of when formal science can directly assist restoration projects and when its value will more likely be synergistic and indirect could lead to better science, better ecological restoration, and better relationships between these two cultures.     

Ethical, legal, and social aspects of farm animal cloning in the 6th Framework Programme for Research

Cloned livestock have potential importance in the provision of improved medicine as well as in the development of livestock production. The public is, however, increasingly concerned about the social and ethical consequences of these advances in knowledge and techniques. There is unevenness throughout Europe in different Member States' attitudes to research into livestock cloning. Although there is EU legislation controlling the use of animals for research purposes, there is no legislation specifically governing cloning in livestock production. The main EU reference is the 9th Opinion of the European Group on Ethics, which states "Cloning of farm animals may prove to be of medical and agricultural as well as economic benefit. It is acceptable only when the aims and methods are ethically justified and when carried out under ethical conditions." The ethical justification includes the avoidance of suffering, the use of the 3Rs principle and a lack of better alternatives. The Commission addresses these issues in the 6th Framework Programme by promoting the integration of ethical, legal and social aspects in all proposals where they are relevant, by fostering ethical awareness and foresight in the proposals, by encouraging public dialogue, and by supporting specific actions to promote the debate. Research must respect fundamental ethical principles, including animal welfare requirements.     

Toward a broader notion of community

Both leading scientific journals and the popular press now regularly report the convincing evidence of massive environmental degradation and decline. Yet despite the seriousness of the problems, despite their anthropogenic nature, and despite their profound implications for present and future population health, such topics are rarely discussed in the leading public health journals. When these issues are mentioned, they are examined in the same limited framework as other questions in public health--questions of models and tests of independent causal associations dominate. This approach will not suffice, for both scientific and ethical reasons. If public health scientists wish to sustain human health in the face of such crises, and to retain our integrity as scholars who speak truthfully about public health matters, we will have to broaden the notions of "health" and "community" to include nonhumans. I draw on recent scholarship in moral philosophy and in the philosophy of science to support my argument. Scholars in the health professions must take seriously the words of theologian Andrew Linzey, who states that the attempt to place human well-being in a special and absolute category of its own is perhaps the primary cause of our ecological travail.     

Paying for Restoration

The question of how society is going to pay for restoration has received little open discussion. We review existing literature and examples to explore two questions: How should ecological and economic considerations be balanced in determining expenditures on restoration projects? and How is society going to pay for the substantial costs involved? We discuss a number of different techniques for determining the amount of money to allocate to restoration efforts, including ecosystem replacement costs, quantifying ecosystem services, contingent valuation, and surrogate market price techniques. We then review different strategies for paying for restoration including private funding by the party responsible for the damage, public funding through taxes, voluntary contributions, and various public/private partnerships. We conclude by discussing other considerations in developing strategies to pay for restoration, including uncertainty, time‐scale, evaluating success, and regional planning.     

区域尺度生态修复空间辨识研究进展

区域尺度辨识生态修复空间是进行生态恢复与重建的重要前提,对区域生态文明建设和可持续发展具有重要作用。如何构建科学合理、面向政策和民众需求的生态修复空间辨识指标体系,目前已成为生态学研究的热点问题之一。系统梳理生态空间评价理论,综合构建生态修复空间辨识框架,包括评价对象的选择、评价指标筛选的原则、指标体系构建的主要方法和评价指标权重设定等方面,在区域生态评价的基础上,强调政策目标、民众需求,构建了生态质量、生态系统服务、生态系统健康3个方面18个指标,能够较全面反映区域生态空间主要特征,以期为构建区域尺度生态修复空间辨识指标体系提供参考,为生态恢复和重建提供科学依据。研究还展望了区域尺度下生态修复空间辨识的重点发展方向,即加强复合生态系统理论的应用,统筹社会、经济、自然因子开展综合评价,并推动多尺度评价结果的融合与应用。     

The Wilderness Act and Fish Stocking: An Overview of Legislation, Judicial Interpretation, and Agency Implementation

Many high-elevation lakes in designated wilderness are stocked with native and nonnative fish by state fish and game agencies to provide recreational fishing opportunities. In several areas, this practice has become controversial with state wildlife managers who support historical recreational use of wilderness, federal wilderness managers who assert that stocking compromises some of the ecological and social values of wilderness, and different public groups that support one or the other position. Herein we examine this controversy from the perspective of the 1964 Wilderness Act, its judicial interpretation, the policies of the federal agencies, and formal agreements between federal and state agencies. Although some state stocking programs restore native fish populations, other programs may compromise some of the ecological and social values of wilderness areas. Further, although current federal regulations recognize state authority for fish stocking, judicial interpretation gives federal agencies the authority for direct involvement in decisions regarding fish stocking in wilderness. Where there are differences of opinion between state and federal managers, this judicial interpretation strongly points to the need for improved cooperation, communication, and coordination between state wildlife managers and federal wilderness managers to balance recreational fishing opportunities and other wildlife management activities with wilderness values. Received 28 March 2000; Accepted 16 August 2000.     

Human genetic banking: altruism,benefit and consent

This article considers how we should frame the ethical issues raised by current proposals for large‐scale genebanks with on‐going links to medical and lifestyle data, such as the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council's ‘UK Biobank’. As recent scandals such as Alder Hey have emphasised, there are complex issues concerning the informed consent of donors that need to be carefully considered. However, we believe that a preoccupation with informed consent obscures important questions about the purposes to which such collections are put, not least that they may be only haphazardly used for research (especially that of commercial interest)—an end that would not fairly reflect the original altruistic motivation of donors, and the trust they must invest. We therefore argue that custodians of such databases take on a weighty pro‐active duty, to encourage public debate about the ends of such collections and to sponsor research that reflects publicly agreed priorities and provides public benefits.     

Four approaches to guide ecological restoration in Latin America

There is strong upswing in conservation and restoration efforts in Latin America (LA), particularly in the recent decades after several countries have committed to international agreements such as the Aichi targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Initiative 20×20, and the Bonn Challenge. To fulfill these agreements, the practice of ecological restoration has to be defined based on ecological knowledge, but also on the specific social, economic, and legal aspects of each country in the region. Here, we give some examples about the national understanding of ecological restoration in 10 countries of LA. We identify difficulties and opportunities to define restoration priorities and needs, and discuss some approaches to cope with economic constraints and agreements, including the potential role of restoration networks in this process. On the basis of the socioecological complexity of these countries and the expectations they have in relation to restoration, we proposed four approaches to guide restoration practice and policy in the region: (1) including biodiversity and ecosystem services approach into ecosystem restoration initiatives; (2) promoting restoration in their frequently human‐modified landscapes; (3) accounting for cost–benefit trade‐offs; and (4) assembling “horizontal” communication frameworks. These approaches should be based at national levels, but adapted to local‐regional levels, in a bottom‐up perspective. We consider that national and international restoration networks in the region can help to overcome difficulties, fostering a solid scientific community, helping to develop national approaches that better match the specific conditions of each country and enhancing communication among different groups of stakeholders.     

Are Socioeconomic Benefits of Restoration Adequately Quantified? A Meta‐analysis of Recent Papers (2000–2008) in Restoration Ecology and 12 Other Scientific Journals

Many ecosystems have been transformed, or degraded by human use, and restoration offers an opportunity to recover services and benefits, not to mention intrinsic values. We assessed whether restoration scientists and practitioners use their projects to demonstrate the benefits restoration can provide in their peer‐reviewed publications. We evaluated a sample of the academic literature to determine whether links are made explicit between ecological restoration, society, and public policy related to natural capital. We analyzed 1,582 peer‐reviewed papers dealing with ecological restoration published between 1 January 2000 and 30 September 2008 in 13 leading scientific journals. As selection criterion, we considered papers that contained either “restoration” or “rehabilitation” in their title, abstract, or keywords. Furthermore, as one‐third of the papers were published in Restoration Ecology, we used that journal as a reference for comparison with all the other journals. We readily acknowledge that aquatic ecosystems are under‐represented, and that the largely inaccessible gray literature was ignored. Within these constraints, we found clear evidence that restoration practitioners are failing to signal links between ecological restoration, society, and policy, and are underselling the evidence of benefits of restoration as a worthwhile investment for society. We discuss this assertion and illustrate it with samples of our findings—with regards to (1) the geographical and institutional affiliations of authors; (2) the choice of ecosystems studied, methods employed, monitoring schemes applied, and the spatial scale of studies; and (3) weak links to payments for ecosystem service setups, agriculture, and ramifications for public policy.     

What Role Should Government Regulation Play in Ecological Restoration? Ongoing Debate in São Paulo State,Brazil

Around the world, there is growing desire and momentum for ecological restoration to happen faster, with better quality, and in more extensive areas. The question we ask is how can laws and governmental regulations best contribute to effective, successful, and broad‐scale restoration? In the state of São Paulo, Brazil, there is a legal instrument (SMA 08‐2008) whose aim is to increase the effectiveness of tropical forest restoration projects in particular. It establishes, among other things, requirements regarding the minimum number of native tree species to be reached within a given period of time in restoration projects and the precise proportion of functional groups or threatened species to be included when reforestation with native species is used as a restoration technique. There are, however, two differing perspectives among Brazilian restoration ecologists on the appropriateness of such detailed legal rules. For some, the rules help increase the chances that mandatory projects of ecological restoration will succeed. For the other group, there is no single way to achieve effective ecosystem restoration, and the existing science and know‐how are far from sufficient to establish standardized technical and methodological norms or to justify that such norms be imposed. Both points of view are discussed here, aiming to help those developing new legislation and improving existing laws about ecological restoration. The precedents established in São Paulo, and at the federal level in Brazil, and the ongoing debate about those laws are worth considering and possibly applying elsewhere.     

The Use of Case Studies in Establishing Feasibility for Wetland Restoration

Establishing restoration feasibility is a multifaceted process that requires consideration of the ecological, social, and economic conditions of a given site. Examining completed restoration projects that report successes and failures may enhance this complex decision‐making process. We describe five completed wetland restoration projects and identify commonalities among them to inform the process of establishing feasibility for proposed restoration projects. Most of the case studies identified the need to gather preexisting and historical information, develop scenarios through hydrologic modeling, study the restoration materials, use best professional judgement for unanswered questions, establish multigroup collaboration, gain public support from stakeholders, and monitor postrestoration. We applied these lessons to a study that evaluated the feasibility of restoring Dyke Marsh Preserve, a tidal freshwater marsh in Virginia that the National Park Service is mandated to preserve. We found that the use of case studies substantially increased confidence in the decision‐making process by focusing discussions on the most important ecological, social, and economic aspects of a potential restoration.