Is there anything "good" about Everglades restoration?

Will restoration become a practice that turns out ecosystems as

predictable commodities, in perfect order, according to the

principles of technical expertise? Alternatively, will it remain a

heterogeneous ambition, one imbued with community intelligence and

scientific modesty? (Higgs 2003: 187)

Introduction

The current, large-scale attempt at restoring Florida's Everglades ecosystem is complex, multifaceted, and contentious, and is an undertaking that shines a spotlight on the strengths and limits of the ecological restoration concept. At a broad scale, Everglades restoration potentially demonstrates the power of a concept that has emerged as a prominent feature of environmental protection efforts in communities and at various levels of government. At a different scale, it is potentially evidence of an advertised paradigm shift in resource management and other government agencies that impact environments (see Bavington and Slocombe 2002), such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), the lead federal agency in the Everglades effort. As the agency most directly responsible for degradation in the Everglades, the restoration is an opportunity to show that today the Corps lives up to its mandate as the protector of the nation's wetlands.

The Everglades restoration effort, led by the Corps and its state-level partner, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), is designed to repair some of the ecological damage generated by the drainage and diversion of Everglades' water for human ends. As presented in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), Everglades restoration involves projects designed to renew the quality, quantity, timing and distribution of freshwater flow through the Everglades to resemble, though not replicate, an historical state prior to European settlement in the region dating to the late 19th century. Among its numerous goals, CERP aims to improve wildlife habitat quality, restore natural organic soil formation processes, regain lost water storage capacity, and halt or reverse the spread of exotic species, while also ensuring adequate water supply and flood protection and providing water management to support economic diversity and sustainability (SFWMD 2003).

Everglades restoration is emblematic of a trend toward much larger scale restoration attempts, and because of its size and complexity it potentially holds great weight in discussions of ecological restoration. As John Paul Woodley of the Corps put it, Everglades restoration is a "model and inspiration for the world" (2005). In light of this potential, our intention here is to consider the Everglades restoration effort in relation to ongoing discussions of possible meanings of ecological restoration. Through a review of documents related to the Everglades effort, we focus on how closely the effort fits with idealized restoration conceptions as described by key figures in such discussions, drawing most closely from Eric Higgs's conception of "good restoration" (Higgs 1997, 2003).

Defining Ecological Restoration

While ecological restoration practice emerged over many decades (Hall 2005), the popularity of the concept has greatly expanded since the 1980s and it is now a significant feature of environmental efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations alike. Defining ecological restoration is an exercise fraught with difficulty, however, and dialogue has been ongoing regarding appropriate criteria (Jordan 1994, Higgs 1997, 2003, Hobbs and Norton 1996, Geist and Galatowitsch 1999, Ehrenfeld 2000). For instance, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), after adopting and rethinking a number of official definitions since its inception in 1988, settled on a broad definition of ecological restoration as "the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed" (SER 2004). In another example, Hobbs and Norton also broadly state, "restoration aims to return the designated system to some form of cover that is protective, productive, aesthetically pleasing, or valuable in a conservation sense" (1996: 94-95). This expansive conception includes activities that others might call "reclamation," such as restoring abandoned mines (Ehrenfeld 2000, Higgs 2003: 99-100).

Under either of these definitions Everglades restoration may be considered an appropriate ecological restoration effort; its aim is to restore the integrity of the ecosystem by restoring water levels and flow to a hydrological system that is now largely blocked by land barriers, levees, canals, and roads. In doing so, the Everglades effort aims to promote the wildlife abundance and community associations that once flourished, while also seeking to maintain those conditions sustainably into the distant future through resource management practices (NRC 2003). Yet both of these definitions emphasize ecological restoration as an action or process aimed at "natural" systems only. What is missing is a central element, purportedly present from early stages of ecological restoration practice, and particularly since the inception of Aldo Leopold's "land ethic," which enjoins with an explicit aim to restore human connections to the ecosystems in which they live. As Higgs (2003: 209) states of ecological restoration, "it heals landscapes and also the relationship between people and landscapes." From this viewpoint, ecological restoration should embrace its Leopoldian connotations that envision the practice as an opportunity to recognize and pursue a stronger sense of community among humans and their varieties of non-human neighbors (Jordan 2000). This pursuit suggests an emphasis on participatory community engagement in all phases of restoration planning, implementation, and management.

Recently, Higgs (2003) suggested that the ecological restoration concept is at a fork in the road with one path leading toward what he calls "technological restoration," based on an ideology of faith in expert knowledge, which moves restoration away from its roots in community volunteerism and collaborative contributions among academically-trained and lay scientists, and others. Along the other road, "good restoration," as he once called it (Higgs 1997), would emphasize not only a technically adept commitment to ecological integrity and fidelity to some historical version of an ecosystem--common definitional elements of ecological restoration--but would also emphasize what he calls "focal practice" and "wild design" (Higgs 2003).

Focal practice refers to a direct, community engagement in restoration processes, which, beyond establishing a restored ecosystem, is intended to "teach us the lessons of fidelity and commitment" (Higgs 2003: 191). Focal restoration fosters a participatory process, emphasizing the close, interactive involvement of "experts" and "non-experts" alike in the design and implementation of restoration projects to foster an expanded sense of community (Higgs 2003; see also Jordan 1994, 2000). Wild design promotes the intention of a restoration effort as "giving back" to the non-human community--in Jordan's words, to "re-wild," the landscape (Jordan 2000). The wild design concept emphasizes "that restoration is also and always about people working with and within natural processes" (Higgs 2003: 14), and that the intention in restoration is to prioritize the ecosystem. Stated another way, "nature should, as restorationists see it, be restored for nature's sake" (Gross 2003: 52), even while embracing the necessity of human involvement in re-creating and maintaining restored ecosystems (Jordan 1985, 1994).

Both focal practice and wild design emphasize the integration of the natural and social by refusing the preservationist's impulse to "let nature take its course," acknowledging the necessity of assisted recovery, but also denying the anthropocentrism of conservationism. As "a landscape of ambiguity" (Jordan 2000), a restored ecosystem blends natural and cultural values in ways that benefit both. In light of this ambiguity, Higgs (2003) and others (Light and Higgs 1996, Jordan 2000, Gross 2003) suggest that the problem with technological restoration is not excessive management of nature per se. Jordan (1994), for instance, questions the distinction between "restoration" and "management," pointing out that restoration means creating a certain design and setting the process into motion, with the intention of fostering a renewed wildness. The process may even involve technological interventions that appear as "artificial" to some; however, these interventions may be viewed as appropriate given the degraded state of the system (Gross 2003). Perhaps the most significant problem with technological restoration is that under this paradigm restoration risks becoming "an overly controlled, circumscribed professional practice that forecloses on community involvement" (Higgs 2003: 213). Andrew Light (2000) similarly identified ecological restoration as having an inherent democratic potential, but noted that this potential is threatened as restoration planning and implementation are increasingly viewed as the domain of credentialed expertise.