"Restoration" Diatribe

Sometime in the early or mid 1990’s there began to spring up a new title on business cards--a new species of mushroom. “Restoration Ecologist.”

This did not result from any particular history, as time-hallowed academic discipline. It came, rather, out of need, or, more accurately, opportunity. 

Seeing nature crumbling on every hand, and faced with no end of developers who wished to plant housing tracts and remove the existing flora and fauna to that mysterious location called “somewhere else.” 

People far and wide began to try to remedy “nature” in our own image, to “Plantit Earth,” to “restore.” 

There is a universal natural law that says where there is food, something will come along to eat it. The food being money, a whole new species of “experts” cropped up overnight, hanging out their lucrative new shingle. And of course it wasn’t long before colleges started offering courses in the same, to be taught by…? 

It’s now all the rage among grad students. 

It has its precursors. Barbers at one time in our history were the de facto surgeons--the need was there and they had the tools--sort of. 

At this point in our history we wouldn’t go to the neighborhood barker to take out that pesky brain tumor, but that is still the state of sophistication in “restoration” biz is at. 

Real “restoration” is the level in which nature does the planting and we do the weeding and pruning and thinning… and enjoying and harvesting and thanking. By definition, when we decide what and where to plant, it is called gardening. Don’t be fooled by doubletalk. The only legit exceptions are things like grabbing a handful of seeds or dirt and scattering and scattering it around next door to increase the supply--even the Indians did that much. 

It all sounds warm and fuzzy to the consumer, good to assuage nagging guilt, corporate or otherwise, and make everyone feel good about themselves. Funding is booming. 

This all sounds very cynical--it is. 

Actually, to be fair, there are a few people who are coming to exercise a degree of common sense and at least limit the damage. But these people are just as likely--or more likely--to be those who have no pretense to expertise at all, in other words humble people, who are more inclined to listen to nature than preach to her. 

But in the main, it is just one more assault on poor Ma Nature, this time under the guise of good intention, the most sinister kind of all. 

This diatribe will win me a few friends. I don’t care. What I want is to shake people awake. It is a field rife with false prophets, mountebanks, snake-oil, false prophets… 

“By their fruits you will know them.” A practiced eye can spot pseudo-restoration from the real thing a mile off. 

Some of the clues are things like pin-flags, empty containers, signs, mulch, drip systems, sleeves, gopher baskets--any hardware at all. Assortments of plants that look like an attempt gardening, too lush, “lumpy,” overly diverse, trees too close together, overall “phony,” plants too evenly spaced. These places may as well grow cabbages for all the good they do the “environment.” Real restoration looks clean, “natural,” simple, even though the actual diversity may be quite high.