Book

review

Handbook of Ecological Restoration 1: Principles of

restoration

Vol. 1, edited by Martin R. Perrow and Anthony J.Davy. Cambridge University Press. 2002 ISBN 0 52179128 6 (Hardback). 460 pages. Price £70.

Handbook of Ecological Restoration 2: Restoration in

Practice

Vol. 2, edited by Martin R. Perrow and Anthony J.Davy. Cambridge University Press. 2002 ISBN 0 52179129 4 (Hardback). 618 pages. Price £70.

All biological conservation arguably involvesrestoration ecology. Few parts of the earth are unaf-fected by human activities. To the extent that theseeffects are undesired, restoration to some pre-existingcondition is a prime goal of management. That said, theproblems begin. Cultural landscapes are palimpsests,accreted from many different phases of human actionand endeavour. Their conservation involves the pre-servation (in situ) of as much as possible of everythingof value. But biological systems, unlike archaeologicalsites and the built environment, are dynamic and at thehabitat level, what exists is summative of past changes(and often the consequence of the most recent, mostdestructive ones). The definition of ends is critical toeffective application of means. Conservation manage-ment involves restoration, but to what? A supposedideal primeval condition? A ‘frozen’ moment in histor-ical time? Or a semi-natural ecosystem mosaic which isself-sustaining under a given management regime? Andin all of these cases, how do we decide where we want togo, how to get there, and how can we tell when we’vearrived? This collection provides some of the answers.Volume 1 of this two-volume series excavates the

science that underpins and informs restoration manage-ment. The introductory section properly starts withphilosophical issues (and immediately gets itself into asemantic mangle on dictionary definitions) becausethere are no easy answers to any of these questions. Thisis followed by chapters exploring the context ofrestoration at the levels of the landscape, the habitat/population, and the species/gene. The next three sec-tions—the core of this volume—focus on manipulationof the physical (terrestrial, still water and fluvial), andchemical environments (soil, water and atmosphere)

and of biota. This largest section consists of nine chap-ters covering terrestrial and aquatic plant populations,micro-organisms, terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates,fish, reptiles and amphibians, birds, and mammals.Each chapter provides a condensed but expert review ofcurrent understanding and approaches in its field. Thevolume concludes with a brief but apposite exhortationto attend to monitoring and appraisal, which is oftenneglected (because funding agencies prefer to supportprojects with visible ‘outcomes’) but is essential to anylong-term success of restoration projects.Volume 2 provides a review of existing practice in

restoration ecology and falls itself into two parts. Theshorter first section looks at restoration policy andinfrastructure, with contributions on the Americas(mainly the USA), Europe, Africa, Asia (India andChina) and Oceania. Coverage is uneven (Latin Amer-ica is dealt with in under four pages) and there is littleconsistency in focus between chapters. For example, thetable of nation state signatories to international agree-ments impacting on environmental restoration is limitedto the Americas. This is the least satisfactory part of thecollection and would itself merit a third volume. Thesecond section—the bulk of this volume—is headed ‘thebiomes’, and is an impressive assembly of nineteenchapters that range from marine and coastal ecosystemsto polar tundra to temperate rangelands and wood-lands, to tropical forests. Inevitably, such a broad sur-vey is characterised by selection, compression andgeneralisation. There is an excellent chapter on sea-grasses (22 pages), but rocky coasts, mangrove forestand abandoned docks share a single chapter with openseas and oceans. The 17 pages on Atlantic heathlandsfocus on the British experience and provide little roomfor consideration of ‘special cases’ such as the Serpen-tine heaths of the Lizard. The chapter on temperatewoodlands focuses in its 35 pages on reconstruction ofthe original semi-natural forest in modified hardwoodforest (Canada), plantations in evergreen broadleafwoods (Japan) and the expansions of remnant nativepinewoods (Scotland), leaving little room for ‘cultural’woodlands such as coppice.Restoration Ecology is an ambitious undertaking and

these inevitable limitations are far outweighed by itsstrengths. If there is any criticism to be made of thiscollection, it is the trivial one that it is misnamed. It is

doi:10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00157-5

Biological Conservation 115 (2004) 509–510

www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon

much more than a handbook. It is, rather, a compen-dium. Individual chapters and the collection as a wholerepresent a panoramic, if sometimes coarse grained,snapshot of a landscape in rapid change. It is anachievement of the individual contributors that mostmanage to turn even these limitations to their advan-tage, so that specialists, or students familiar with thesubject matter, will find something new even in ‘their’chapter.The real achievement of this collection lies not just in

the quality of the individual contributions but in theeditors’ assembly of so much information in one pub-lication. The outcome is synergism and serendipity, notjust in the interplay between principles (Vol. 1) andapplications (Vol. 2) but in comparisons that may bemade within sections—between biomes, taxa, and geo-graphic regions. It is now widely recognised that bio-diversity must be analysed—and conserved—at a varietyof levels, from the gene to our planet. Inevitably, despiteearly chapters on the need for species, population andlandscape perspectives, the attention of most of thecontributions is focused at the habitat level. Here, oneof the surest indications that conservation biology hascome ‘of age’ is its incorporation in legislation throughconcepts such as ‘favourable conservation status’ (in theEU Habitats Directive). This translates at site level intothe goal of securing ‘favourable condition’ for valued

species and habitats, which is ultimately what restora-tion ecology is all about. We have yet to achieve this atthe whole-landscape level, but this collection will help topush the process along.The conclusion of the first volume is that the science

and philosophy of ecological restoration enables us tobe ‘‘not just tinkerers’’ but craftspeople and engineers—an appropriate but a sobering and salutatory analogy.This overview will help us to avoid the pitfalls and toimprove the practice of restoration ecology and man-agement. The quality of the individual contributionsand of the collection as a whole will make it of equalfascination both to the practising conservation managerand to the armchair ecologist keen to understand moreabout a rapidly evolving field of theory and practicethat is central to conservation. The price of each volumemay put them beyond many individual pockets; how-ever, they are essential to every library. The distilledexpertise in this collection makes it a work of referenceto be mined over time, which is likely to remain a stan-dard text for some years to come.

Richard ClarkeCentre for European Protected Area ResearchUniversity of London, Birkbeck College FCE

Malet Street, London WC1, UKE-mail address: r.clarke@cepar.bbk.ac.uk

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