Presentation Abstract:

Rapid, extensive and ongoing environmental change increasingly demands that humans intervene in ecosystems to maintain or restore ecosystem services and biodiversity.  At the same time the basic principles and tenets of restoration ecology and conservation biology are being debated and reshaped. Escalating global change is resulting in widespread no-analog environments and novel ecosystems that may render traditional goals unachievable. Such systems pose immense challenges scientifically and ethically, and also from a practical and policy perspective. Policy makers and the general public often hold onto traditional conservation approaches and have embraced restoration as a means to achieve static conservation goals, without an understanding of the limitations to restoration.

What concrete advice can be given to managers and policy makers?  I argue that there is a need to focus on meaningful interventions in ecosystems, and in particular deciding on when and how to intervene (or not), and why, in relation to both traditional conservation goals and alternative goals based not only on species and biodiversity but also on function and resilience. Interventions include altering the biotic and abiotic structures and processes within ecosystems and changing social and policy settings. Interventions can be aimed at leverage points, both within ecosystems and in the broader social system, particularly feedback loops that either maintain a particular state or precipitate a rapid change from one state to another.