‘Restoration is the quintessential nature-based, but human-guided, solution to biodiversity loss’
So what does “nature restoration” really mean? And is it accurate or inaccurate, helpful, or harmful, to conflate it with “rewilding”, as has happened frequently in this debate?Until quite recently, the ecological restoration movement, and the restoration ecology that underpins its successes, were the unproven new kids on the block in biodiversity conservation.
The phrase “assisting the recovery” is telling: depending on the type of ecosystem and the level of degradation involved, the resilience of the system itself should be the main driver of restoration, so that management and intervention, while often essential for restoration, should be kept to the minimum necessary. Restoration is the quintessential nature-based, but human-guided, solution to biodiversity loss.
Members of the European Parliament, some in 'Restore Nature' T-shirts, take part in a voting session on the EU Nature Restoration Law in Strasbourg, France, last month. The law text passed with 336 votes in favour, 300 against and 13 abstentions, setting the scene for the parliament to negotiate a final law with EU member states. Photograph: Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty
Undoubtedly, agribusiness lobbies and many political conservatives, along with some sinister far-right actors, played the major role in creating this caricature of restoration, through their breathtakingly mendacious allegations about the law. In the remoter parts of the US, the rewilding approach can make some sense. Large and relatively intact systems, with little contemporary human presence or immediately obvious human impacts, can indeed regenerate spontaneously fairly well. Even in those open spaces, however, the term is contested. Some indigenous peoples, whose civilisations managed these far from empty landscapes for millenniums, and did not consider them “wild”, find it offensive.
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