Resistance and Restoration: A History of Ecological Restoration in the US and Canada

在过去一个世纪的大部分时间里，生态恢复被忽视，在过去的二十年里，生态恢复得到了迅速的发展。现在人们普遍认为，从城市公园到国家森林和公园等大型荒野地区，它在保护自然景观方面发挥着至关重要的作用。与此同时，它作为一种对养护和生活质量具有深远影响的新环境范例的基础而得到承认。然而，在这一点上，很少有关于修复历史的研究，也没有系统地探讨修复在其最近最引人注目的发展时期的发展和作为一种保护策略的接受。本研究的目的是概述恢复的发展，提供这些最近发展的说明，并将它们置于早期发展的背景下，以及土地管理的恢复性形式的历史。由于这是一个广泛的主题，研究将集中在狭义上的恢复发展，即试图恢复历史生态系统或景观的所有属性，而不考虑它们对人类的兴趣或价值。这种形式或模式的恢复——乔丹和霍尔称之为整体恢复——具有特殊的智力价值，因为它为评估其他恢复性的土地管理形式提供了一个概念核心或参考点，因为强调这种形式的恢复是过去几十年恢复运动的显著特征。这项研究在智力上也很重要，因为它的一个显著特征是强调发现修复作为创造价值的背景，包括它对环境的价值和作为一种研究技术的价值，当然，还有它作为一种创造和传播超越价值的方式的价值，如社区、意义和地方感。修复历史的一个重要方面是，从20世纪初它的“发明”到20世纪最后几十年它的价值被发现和自觉实现，其间有相当长的一段时间——大约半个世纪。本研究将探讨四种亚文化——研究人员、实践者、决策者和环境倡导者——相互作用（有时是相互竞争）的利益和观点是如何影响恢复的发展和发现的。由于很明显，从业者在这一过程中发挥了重要作用，而且他们的贡献在同行评议的文献中被严重低估，因此该研究将严重依赖于采访来记录过去几十年的发展。这项研究将有助于填补现有描述和当前对环境史的理解中日益明显的空白，为这一重要领域的关键近期发展提供第一个系统描述。本研究的影响是广泛的，因为它将为修复作为一门学科发展的关键时期提供一个广阔的历史视角。它将有助于澄清对恢复的身份和价值的思考，以及它与其他形式的土地管理的关系。它还将为参与其持续发展的各利益集团之间建立更密切和更富有成效的关系提供基础和历史背景。

Ignored for most of the past century, ecological restoration has developed rapidly during the past two decades. It is now widely understood to have a crucial role to play in the conservation of natural landscapes in settings ranging from urban parks to large wilderness areas such as national forests and parks. At the same time, it is gaining recognition as the basis for a new environmental paradigm with profound implications for conservation and the quality of life. At this point, however, there has been little research on the history of restoration, and no systematic exploration of the development of restoration during the period of its recent, and most dramatic development and acceptance as a conservation strategy. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the development of restoration, providing an account of these recent developments and placing them in the context of earlier developments and the history of restorative forms of land management generally. Since the topic is a wide one, the study will concentrate on the development of restoration in the narrow sense of an attempt to restore all the attributes of an historic ecosystem or landscape, regardless of their interest or value to humans. This form, or mode of restoration--what Jordan and Hall have termed holistic restoration--is of particular intellectual merit because it provides a conceptual core or reference point for the evaluation of other, restorative forms of land management, and because emphasis on restoration in this form has been the distinguishing feature of the restoration movement of the past few decades. This study is also intellectually significant because a distinctive feature is its emphasis on the discovery of restoration as a context for the creation of value, including its value for the environment and its value as a research technique, of course, but also its value as a way of creating and transmitting transcendent values such as community, meaning and sense of place. An important aspect of the history of restoration was the considerable interval--roughly a half- century--between its "invention" early in the twentieth century and the discovery and self-conscious realization of its value during the closing decades of the century. This study will explore the ways in which the interacting and sometimes competing interests and perspectives of four subcultures--researchers, practitioners, decision makers and advocates for the environment--influenced the development and discovery of restoration. Since it is clear that practitioners played an important role in this process, and also that their contribution is seriously under-represented in peer-reviewed literature, the study will rely heavily on interviews to document developments of the past few decades. The study will help fill an increasingly obvious gap in existing accounts and current understanding of environmental history, providing the first systematic account of crucial recent development in this important field. The impacts of this study are broad, for it will provide an expansive historical perspective on restoration at a critical time in its development as a discipline. It will help clarify thinking about the identity and value of restoration and about its relationship with other forms of land management. It will also provide a basis and historical context for closer and more productive relationships among the interest groups involved in its ongoing development.