The Economics of Restoration

Abstract

Ecological restoration incorporates land management principles and activities aimed at returning a damaged or degraded ecosystem back to a key historic trajectory in order to achieve goals of ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability (Society for Ecological Restoration 2004) . Please consult Chap. 1 (Lamb et al. this volume) for additional perspectives. In the United States, many restorationists look to ecological conditions present before the time of European settlement as the key historic landscape they are seeking to restore, and employ an approach to restoration management that has been called " classical ecological restoration " (Callicott 2002) . Nine attributes of successfully restored ecosystems identi fi ed in the Society for Ecological Restoration International's Primer (2004) conform closely to this classical management approach, and have been summarized by Ruiz-Jaen and Aide (2005) as falling along three major ecological dimensions: (1) diversity measured in terms such as the richness and abundance of native plants and other species; (2) structure measured in terms such as the age, distribution, and density of vegetation; and (3) processes measured in terms such as the presence of natural disturbance regimes such as fi re. While these dimensions and their measures can help guide restoration efforts on a trajectory toward ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability, the ultimate success of classical ecological restoration is judged by how well the measures fall within an historic range of variability found in closely matched reference sites (Ruiz-Jaen and Aide 2005) . Thus in a broader sense, the overarching goal of the classical approach is authenticity or fi delity in how a restored site looks and functions like one before European settlers arrived, minimally in fl uenced by contemporary human impacts and values (Higgs 2003) . While this classical approach to management has led to many successful restoration projects, ecologists and other environmental professionals are increasingly questioning its ef fi cacy in dealing with severely disturbed landscapes (e.g., Martínez and López-Barerra 2008) and unpredictable trajectories (e.g., Choi et al. 2008) . These concerns might be especially apparent in urban areas, where landscape fragmentation, soil and hydrologic alterations, and microclimatic patterns introduce novel and often substantially different effects than what may have occurred historically. Perhaps even more signi fi cant are concerns raised about people's uses, perceptions, and values of the landscape and its restoration, which may pose formidable challenges for managing urban natural areas in socially acceptable ways (Gobster 2010 ; Ingram 2008) . In this paper I examine these issues within the context of urban ecological resto-ration, with an emphasis on incorporating social goals alongside ecological ones in managing natural areas. While the Primer's nine attributes of restored ecosystems strongly imply the classical approach as a dominant model, its mention of additional goals suggests that other approaches could be considered as conditions warrant: For example, one of the goals of restoration might be to provide speci fi ed natural goods and services for social bene fi t in a sustainable manner. In this respect, the restored ecosystem serves as natural capital for the accrual of these goods and services. Another goal might be for the restored ecosystem to provide habitat for rare species or to harbor a diverse genepool for selected species. Other possible goals of restoration might include the provision of aesthetic amenities or the accommodation of activities of social consequence, such as the strengthening of a community through the participation of individuals in a restoration project (Society for Ecological Restoration 2004) .