Restoration Overview: THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO Ecological Restoration

1. Restoration Overview:THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TOEcological Restoration Wally Covington School of Forestry and The Ecological Restoration Institute Northern Arizona University

2. The Least You Need to Know(apologies to Alpha Books series) • Greater Ecosystems of the West are “going to hell in a hand basket” • Ecological restoration offers a way to restore ecologic, economic, and social health • It matters what treatments we choose • Collaborative approaches are essential

3. Ecological restoration presents us with an opportunity to convert a liability into an asset for present and future generations.

4. What does the Ecological Restoration Institute do?we are a service organization • Knowledge discovery and synthesis • Not just research in the traditional sense • Collaborative research in service of management • Knowledge transfer • Not just academic publications • Practical documents, both printed and electronic • Not just teaching academic course work • Continuing education, both directed and self-directed • Knowledge application • Work with practitioners on a broad range of projects • Work with local to national policymakers • Work with community based groups, private land owners,

5. Why is ecosystem restoration relevant to national forest management? • The catastrophic fire seasons of ’74, ’77, ’80, 88, ‘94, ‘96, ‘00, and ‘02 have long been predicted. • Unprecedented forest insect and disease were also predicted. • Lengthened fire seasons, increasing drought, increasing urban: wildland interface conflicts long predicted are now a reality. • Predicted loss of critical human and wildlife habitat is occurring at an accelerating rate. • The trend will clearly continue. • There is a strong consensus that restoring forest health is the best way to prevent further degradation and set forest on a path to long term sustainability

6. What is ecosystem restoration? • Ecosystem restoration is not a fixed set of procedures • It is not a recipe for land management • It is a broad intellectual and scientific framework for developing beneficial human: wildland interactions • It consists not only of restoring ecosystems, but also of developing human uses of wildlands compatible with ecological integrity and ecosystem sustainability • But, ecosystem restoration is not a panacea

7. Definitions (SER Primer 2002) • Ecological restoration assists recovery of the (evolutionary/ecological) trajectory of degraded ecosystems • Reference ecosystem (landscape) • Active and passive restoration • Monitoring and evaluation • Restoration planning • Ecological restoration and restoration ecology • Integration of ecological restoration into larger programs

8. Restoration planning • Rationale for why restoration is needed • Ecological description of sites to be restored • Statement of goals and objectives • Description of reference system • How restoration sites will integrate with greater landscape • Explicit plans, schedules, and budgets, including mid-course corrections (adaptive management) • Performance standards, monitoring, and evaluation (include control plot where feasible) • Strategies for long-term maintenance

9. Crownfires are the latest in a long series of symptoms of declining ecosystem health. • Loss of herbaceous cover • Increased erosion • Irruption of tree populations • Decline in water balance • Loss of plant and animal diversity • Loss of esthetic values • Unnatural insect and disease epidemics • Shift to catastrophic crownfires

10. 2000 Pumpkin, Pipe, and Power fires The time for quibbling over size of trees to be thinned, WUI buffer distance, and what to do is over.

11. We should heal the patient, not just treat the symptoms • Ecosystem restoration not only treats crownfire symptoms, but also attacks the underlying causes of ecosystem health decline. • Thinning or burning alone are short-term treatments that only temporarily relieve the symptoms. • The long-term solution is restoration of ecosystem health.

12. This is a big problem--but we can solve it • Restoration based approaches are proven at a small scale (100+ ac) in a variety of ecosystem types • They must be tested and refined as we apply them at large scales (10-50 thousand ac) in an adaptive management approach • Greater ecosystem (1-3 million acre) assessments are essential for assuring that restoration investments are strategic

13. What exactly is a greater ecosystem? Greater ecosystems are a regional complex of ecosystems with common landscape-level characteristics linked by wide ranging wildlife, landscape scale disturbance regimes, and, yes, human communities as keystone citizens among the community of organisms.

14. We must think and act at a scale and pace appropriate to the forest health crisis.

15. Without objective scientific knowledge, treatment decisions are dominated by ill informed speculation, subjective judgment, bias, and ideology. What is needed are treatments based on thorough knowledge, reasoned analysis, and factual evidence.

16. Reference Restoration Treatment • Retain trees which predate settlement • Retain postsettlement trees needed to re-establish presettlement structure • Thin and remove excess trees • Rake heavy fuels from base of trees • Burn to emulate natural disturbance regime • Seed with natives/control exotics

17. Change Basic Prescription for Specific Resource Objectives • Might leave more trees to accommodate specific resource management objectives, e.g., screening cover for human or wildlife habitat goals, future wood harvesting, favoring specific uses • Might leave fewer trees to accommodate other objectives, e.g., to favor viewsheds, wildlife goals, grazing, water balance

23. Alternative Restoration Prescriptions Produce Very Different Outcomes

24. Full Restoration

25. Minimal Thinning

26. Burn Only

27. Predicted Fire Characteristics for Plot 23June 97th-percentile weather, 30 mph

28. Comprehensive ecosystem restoration approaches not only reduce crownfire threat, but also improve forest health and resource use opportunities for present and future generations.

29. There is broad scientific, social and political support for working with natural tendencies in restoring the dry forests of the Southwest

30. Where do we go from here? • We must all become conversant in the principles and terminology of ecosystem health restoration • We must educate stakeholders, including those within our organizations • We must move forward systematically and resolutely to restore ecosystems before they unravel beyond repair • We must do this in the context of the larger social and political natural resource issues

31. The Least You Need to Know • Greater Ecosystems of the West are “going to hell in a hand basket” • Ecological restoration offers a way to restore ecologic, economic, and social health • It matters what treatments we choose • Collaborative approaches are essential