The parks belong to those who use them.
— John Muir
One of the most important concepts about restoration is that all members of the community have a role to play. Unfortunately, all too often the natural landscape has been left to experts or regulators. In only a few generations we have moved from a culture in which most people knew the names of most plants as well as many of their medicinal uses and other properties to one in which the public has little knowledge of the natural world. We have accepted the idea that wild plants and animals are better left to the concern of someone else, such as a scientist or a lawyer.
The degradation of the environments around us is ultimately due to a breakdown in the relationship between the local community and the landscape. Without real knowledge of the details and patterns of a place observed and monitored over time we will not be able to restore indigenous landscapes that are used and enjoyed by the community. Sustaining the values of the landscape over time will depend upon reestablishing positive interactions with each place within the communities who use them most. Those who use and care for a landscape are responsible for sustaining its value over time, but they cannot do that if they are not involved, informed, and empowered. For restoration to have a chance, we must encourage open, direct communication and a broad level of participation at every opportunity to empower users and managers alike with both responsibility and accountability for the restoration of their local landscapes.
It is interesting that this approach presents new opportunities and at a time when land managers are all too aware of fiscal pressures to downsize or enact hiring freezes. The most difficult item to get in a budget these days is a new full-time employee. In this climate, asking what roles are appropriate for volunteers is important. The use of volunteers to facilitate the loss of jobs is not desirable. Ideally, it is not the role of a volunteer to pick up trash, work that is usually performed by a paid person. Trash removal is important enough to justify paying for it. It may, however, initially take a group of volunteers removing trash from a site to demonstrate the value of the landscape and get agency and media attention. It may also take volunteers to raise public awareness sufficiently to diminish the volume of trash in the first place. The most important role a volunteer can play is to break new ground, to open our eyes to what needs to be done by doing it. If successful, the new management practices and innovations will in time create jobs and contribute greatly to long-term economic and environmental sustainability.
Restoring and sustaining natural systems in the fabric of a developed landscape require us to learn to support many interrelated values, rather than favoring one over the other. Disparate individuals and groups, even when in agreement on larger goals, often have difficulty coming together on policy and implementation, in part because their positions are restricted by a narrow set of interests and experience. The mountain biker and the birdwatcher often can see only conflict despite their mutual affection for and use of the landscape. We must find the shared vision of the landscape that brings the community together.
Determining that shared vision and the means to achieve it is, in the best situations, “planning by consensus.” Consensus planning means that all constituents participate in the decision-making process and in the process sign on to the collective decision making that occurs. Anyone who has worked with groups knows how difficult that can be. All too often each person coming to a project or initiative has a personal agenda. Setting aside preconceived ideas and opinions and learning to work as a group is a real challenge. Achieving real consensus among all constituents in the community means that each person has a say. By necessity it means we must go well beyond conventional planning and implementation procedures. It depends upon ongoing education and participation, and also high levels of communication. Most people are in fact unfamiliar with consensus planning because it rarely happens.
Consensus planning is not the same as majority rule. It is not about win-lose-compromise. In the process of achieving real consensus, each participant must grow and change. Each participant must come to a larger understanding of the site context and an awareness of how other people’s concerns relate to their own goals before they will “buy into” the larger vision and set aside their own more specialized interests. If the process goes well, it will be disconcerting at the outset as preconceived ideas are shaken. However, that period of uneasiness is followed by a time when we recognize new opportunities and new resonances brought to light among different objectives. As Stephanie Mills, ecologist and bioregionalist, has noted:
The guiding assumption is that each member of the group possesses an important piece of the truth, and that the work of the meeting is to elicit these truths and create the best decision possible at that time. It does not proceed by voting but by gathering agreement (1993, 6).
Two essential rules must be followed for the process to be successful:
• Everyone is welcome.
Consensus is an open process. It is desirable to have a broad array of users and managers in the process to help reconcile conflicts. There is often an objection to some group or individual, but the bottom line is that if anyone who has impact on the landscape is left out of the process, vital information will be missing as well as important support for the effort. Site disturbance will continue to increase if all the users are not effectively involved.
• Make no decision and take no action until real consensus is achieved.
Typically, a few individuals will resist early on, testing the commitment. It is at that moment that the group finds out whether consensus is the real goal. Consensus will require that the team acknowledge the lack of a good resolution and get back to work. All objections need to be taken seriously, discussed, and resolved. As tiresome and as difficult as that might seem, the reward is trust in the process. Then decision making and action taking begin to happen with increasing speed and focus.
Decisions based on real consensus tend to get implemented because they meet multiple goals. Agreements are more durable because they are not bad compromises but rather represent real community values. This is the real advantage of this approach for those who seek to effect change in what seems like a bureaucratic or political stalemate. Stepping outside those boundaries and working with an outside group that operates under very different rules can be most effective in situations that seem paralyzed by red tape and misinformation. A consensus-based group can break a deadlock and often is acceptable to those who must give up power because it achieves results.
You can bring together a consensus planning team from the bottom up, with volunteers who seek to influence and work with local land managers, or from the top down, through an agency that wants to confront the problem of a deteriorating landscape. Regardless of how the effort is initiated, an effective team will include all who have a stake in the landscape. There may be some distrust of an agency-initiated participatory planning process at the outset, but trust will begin to build among participants if real communication is established. An institution or agency can play a crucial role by simply providing meeting space or start-up funding for a newsletter, one of the most important ways to build support, gain membership, and coordinate with other organizations.
A common argument against consensus-based planning is that it is very difficult and that few decisions get made. Actually, one of the most important virtues of consensus is just that, since, in hindsight, we see that much of what gets done is wrong anyway. Managers will often admit that if they had done everything they thought at the outset should be done, they perhaps would have done more damage than good. Restraint in landscape management is not always a bad thing. If the focus is on the most important restoration issues and there is widespread commitment to the solution by the community, real progress toward restoration is possible with only a few vital decisions.
Another argument against consensus planning is that dissension can stall community groups just as much as any other group. This is true but not valid. We have all experienced a civic or volunteer setting that was rendered ineffective by a belligerent participant or undermined by entrenched power. The win-lose mentality encourages people to dig in their heels and hold fast to original positions. Consensus actually offers a way out of the conflict by relying on real agreement instead of decision making based on personalities or politics.
Many agencies still perceive community-based planning to be a giveaway of their power. This is emphatically not true. Those agencies are ultimately the decision makers for lands under their jurisdiction by law. If given a chance, consensus-based community planning teams usually make a broader-based decision than the agencies would on their own. If the process fails, the agencies still have final responsibility and can step in. That alone is a powerful incentive for a community group to reach a meaningful consensus.
It is also important for agencies to realize that they have as much power as any community member does in a consensus-based process. That is the whole point: everyone is empowered to be part of a solution. This is a much more satisfying role for each player than being one of two polarized sides of an argument.
Communication and education are needed before participants will be able to grasp the larger community issues. The success of the process depends in large measure on how well the participants know their community and the extent to which information is shared. Innovative solutions that are not merely extensions of existing applications will require a sophisticated understanding of the site’s natural and cultural systems and the ways in which they have changed over time. In order to not settle for the narrow interests that individuals may represent, those who participate will need to appreciate the length of time required to learn and understand a larger vision. Part of the understanding will happen with the sharing of information. Then it will become evident that the site, and the ecosystem it is embedded in, are participants also — as important in the process as any other.
One of the most popular strategies for consensus planning is called “envisioning,” or “revisioning,” which brings together diverse groups of people to craft new visions of the community’s future. Community members participate in workshops that focus on hopes and dreams rather than on immediate crises and past failures. The object is to describe a new reality that is compelling enough and positive enough to entice people to see freshly and change their habits. The process is always open to a great breadth of participation and a lot of visionary thinking.
Professional facilitators are available both to set up and implement consensus-planning processes as well as to teach a group how to do these tasks for themselves. There are also two excellent guides that can assist any group in the shift to consensus planning:
Getting Together: Building Relationships As We Negotiate by Roger Fisher and Scott Brown of the Harvard Negotiation Project, New York, Penguin Books: 1988.
Involving Citizens in Community Decision Making. A Guidebook and Pulling Together: A Planning and Development Consensus Manual, by Program for Community Problem Solving, Urban Land Institute. To obtain copies, contact the institute at 915 Fifteenth Street, Suite 601, Washington, DC, 202-783-2961.
Empowerment is not sufficient in itself for a restoration project to receive community support. Knowledge, too, is an important element in gaining consensus. Often, what seems like apathy among community members masks a simple lack of understanding of the landscape and their role in it. Most people are unlikely to know the difference between a severely degraded woodland of exotic trees and a native oak forest; nor would they be aware of the differences in habitat value for the plants and animals that might inhabit the place. Our lack of familiarity with natural landscapes is compounded by the frequency with which people change their places of residence today, so that noticing what is being lost, and how rapidly loss is occurring, is even harder. Our actions might be very different if we knew our immediate environs well and comprehended the long-term consequences of our actions.
A premise of living sustainably is that those who live in a place should be the ones who know the most about it. While impacts to the landscape may have their roots all over the globe, restoration is fundamentally a local act. Its success depends to a large measure on how well those who live in a place understand the landscape they use. But many people today have learned more about animals on the African savanna than about wildlife in their neighborhood parks. Indeed, we are inclined to assume that only an expert could identify the trees and wildflowers of the local woodland, yet this is knowledge that all of us should come to possess once again. We will not be able to meet the environmental challenges of conserving biodiversity and sustaining viable habitats for ourselves as well as other species if we are not skilled observers of trends in our landscapes. Dramatic change is occurring at faster rates than at any time in recent history, making it increasingly important to record conditions in the local landscape, close at hand and continuously.
Environmental education has been evolving. The focus in the past was often very general, avoiding local issues that actually determine what kind of place we are creating for ourselves. What began as nature study now includes conservation and environmental awareness. Current school curricula typically include local natural and cultural history as well as general environmental topics. There is also a growing trend to study the regional ecosystem in the core curricula of schools and to incorporate real-world experiences and research into academic programming.
Students can be excellent scientists, and, through their schools, can bring a high degree of continuity to a restoration and monitoring program. Across the country, many schools are already carrying out important scientific research and participate actively in restoration. A project in Seaside, Oregon, that began as an effort to develop teacher training programs, has become a major nonprofit institution employing students and teachers alike to do research on local ecosystems. The research is funded by grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. In one high school in Maine, the curriculum is centered on the Kennebec River and watershed as the primary vehicle to integrate the different disciplines of the academic program. In Florida, the Tampa Bay Watch High School Wetland Nursery Program operates five saltmarsh nurseries in area high schools, each of which presently produces over 5,000 planting propagules every six months for marsh restoration.
There is also a growing interest in creating schoolyard habitats that provide a tangible and integrated learning experience that can be easily coordinated with school curricula. Every school is an environment for learning, and every school environment gives us a lesson, whether intended or not. Daily contact with natural landscapes may provide even more important lessons about the way we live our lives than any curriculum can. Studies in England, for example, have demonstrated that violence and fighting in the schoolyard were reduced when the environment became more natural and complexly organized (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989). As E. D. Cheskey states in Habitat Restoration: A Guide for Proactive Schools (1993):
Restoration is perhaps one of the most important actions that we can do as educators to prepare the future decision makers in our society to face the environmental and ecological challenges that await us. Habitat restoration at a manageable scale can contribute to a generation of nurturers and healers that have the knowledge, skills and values to address greater societal issues (3).
The entire community can become an environmental classroom. For example, the state of New Jersey, under past-Governor Tom Kean, developed a model Master Plan for Environmental Education that recognizes the need to address environmental literacy at every level of society. The task force developed recommendations for areas of basic competence at all grades and at every level of government and outlined the role that institutions and agencies could play as well.
In order to conduct restorative efforts that show long-term success, we must ensure that the participants/residents/users/caretakers come to understand the real nature of the landscape and its scientific underpinnings and have available a means to join with their fellow citizens to pursue new patterns of behavior. Studying ourselves and the places in which we live, forming a team of local and regional scientists from many disciplines to make the restoration of the landscape comprehensible to its managers, and involving community participants in monitoring projects through which strategies and policies are refined — all of these elements are essential.
Several researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology undertook a statistical survey to quantify environmental values in American culture, interviewing all kinds of people from all walks of life, from members of Earth First! to operators of dry-cleaning establishments. Perhaps not too surprisingly, all of those they interviewed valued the environment very highly, with little difference between people of different backgrounds. It was in the second half of the survey, which examined perceptions about the actual state of the environment, that the differences between people became apparent. Although all of us support the environment and want clean air and water and unspoiled places, we have very different information sources and perceptions about the environment that relate strongly to factors like politics, occupation, and income. We have little real knowledge or access to it and are exposed to a lot of pseudo-science (Kempton, Boster, and Hartley 1995).
There is much to unlearn. Outdated information, such as promotional material on plants that are invasive, still abounds in the agencies and literature. The media typically reduce environmental issues to pro and con controversies, often without full consideration of scientific data, often devaluing real information by implying that both sides are equally valid and that everyone and everything involved is in one or the other opposing court. By studying the real landscape ourselves, we can escape the landscape of preconceived notions and conflicting truths created by the media and conventional educational curricula.
The best way to convey real information to a community is to have them gather that information themselves, through monitoring both before and during restoration. One of the main reasons that monitoring by staff and community members themselves can be so important is that it gives credibility not only to the information but also to the actions taken in response. We are more likely to believe and understand our first-hand observations. Like students, volunteers in environmental groups and parks departments, if effectively coordinated and adequately trained, can perform accurate and valuable monitoring. John Rieger, a California restorationist, asked if he really thought that volunteers could do monitoring, simply replied, “Can they count?” Not only can community members provide an important, often overlooked, service to a project, but the in-depth knowledge that monitoring brings to those who live and work in the community also builds pride of place, ensuring in a real way that restoration efforts will continue long after the seed is sown.
No one yet knows how to achieve the goal of sustaining ecological health over time. Our potential for success is restricted by the extent of the damage already done as well as our lack of understanding about how landscape systems function. Some information, although at various scales, is generally available on geology, soils, watershed boundaries, climate, extent of tree cover, and general land use and topography. Often, however, there is no systematic information on plant and animal communities and those aspects of the landscape that are most likely to change over time. Restoration must have a scientific basis. We need good science, not simply anecdotal experience, to monitor conditions and the effects of our efforts, and we need good scientists to assist us.
Monitoring could be defined as simply obtaining accurate information and maintaining a long-term accessible record of it. Monitoring entails a purposeful and systematic observation and documentation of the landscape. It is an essential part of restoration and often the most neglected. Without monitoring we are simply making policy decisions and implementing management based on oversimplifications such as “remove exotics.” We do not monitor our landscapes well, and this is a great loss because landscape histories, whenever they can be found, are very informative.
Monitoring is invaluable both before and after beginning restoration. The objective at any stage is usually to describe the ecosystem as fully as possible. Before beginning the project, we need to observe and document the living components of the landscape; we need to know what we have, and we need to know what we are losing. It is also important to document human actions on the landscape, both the causes and effects of misuse and our restorative efforts.
Monitoring is the only way that we can tailor the work we do to the specific conditions of the site. While the broader issues are defined by the larger landscape context, the details and particularities can be discovered only in the real place. The monitoring program serves as the voice of the landscape, telling its story, ensuring that our actions are ultimately justified or invalidated by what happens on the ground. Monitoring, because it also helps to overcome the hurdle of time, compensates for the difficulty of observing the landscape accurately in our own lifespans. When we are able to capture the image of the landscape through time, it is always compelling.
The success of our approach to restoration will depend on our ability to recognize the patterns that are inherent in the landscape rather than imposed by us. The goal is to learn how to recognize and optimize the natural regenerative processes of each place; to emulate nature, and to understand the dangers of trying to improve upon it. By documenting the patterns observable in a landscape we can recognize the patterns by which it designs itself when it is allowed to do so. Implicit in this concept of self-design is the process of continuous assessment of what is happening and continuous adaptation of the management program as trends are observed. At the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune, Mississippi, for example, ongoing vegetation mapping has revealed more subtle site distinctions than the topographic mapping in that very low relief terrain, informing the managers about microhabitats and special opportunities for displays.
Despite efforts to make it so, monitoring is not a truly objective process; our goals and preconceptions shape the outcome from the outset when we decide what to monitor. On actual construction projects, monitoring is often limited to the initial phases and does not continue through the design and construction phases. In reality, successful monitoring does not end with the collection of baseline data. At the same time, monitoring must be accessible so that we can use it and integrate the information.
Accessibility of information is now more possible than in the past. Previous monitoring efforts were hampered by the lack of an infrastructure for record-keeping or an archive for data and reports. Now, however, the ability to keep very large archives of information, usually referred to as “databases,” is easier and cheaper. In the last decade, many county and local planning agencies have acquired computerized geographic information systems (GIS) and other hardware and software that can provide an unparalleled level of shared data and community education. It should be possible for any individual to go to a local planning office or work from a home computer to access up-to-date information on natural and cultural resources, planning and regulatory issues, current proposals and projects (both public and private) for review, and related individuals and organizations.
A necessary step in any restoration or management program is to establish an ongoing site database that continuously records and informs our actions. The database becomes the vehicle by which the site speaks to us. It helps to overcome preconceptions about the landscape and to compensate for the difficulty of observing the landscape accurately. All scales of observation are not only relevant in a database but crucial to our understanding of the ecosystems affecting our small corner of the world. It is quite all right for the site database to record different scales of observations, from effects of climatic and atmospheric changes at the global scale and the watershed to indigenous plant and animal communities at a more local scale. The ecosystem view goes beyond a site or watershed or biome and is related to both larger- and smaller-scale systems than the site in question, but it will also inform the activities you use in your restoration project. The site database is discussed in detail in Chapter 21, “Monitoring and Management”
A key objective is to prioritize management activities to ensure that the participants’ efforts are effective. The most severe problems are readily identifiable, but we have avoided them for years. We must address them now despite how difficult it seems at the outset. If we document the magnitude and rate of deterioration, we can ensure that a chronic problem is recognized amid the daily crises that divert attention and funding in public agencies and institutions.
In many situations, you won’t find detailed background information about your site, but a lack of existing baseline data should not be an excuse for inaction. Not taking action in a landscape in the face of ongoing disturbance is, in fact, a very powerful management decision that supports accelerating landscape decline. At the very least, we can work to reduce the worst and most chronic impacts on a landscape while we gather more detailed data. We can organize user groups and involve them in monitoring. If you engage people in observing how a landscape is used, issues such as trampling and off-trail use of wheeled vehicles will raise themselves. We can also start by controlling excess runoff from adjacent sites or restricting the planting of exotics. There is always somewhere to begin, a set of priority tasks, that a group of concerned individuals can acknowledge as important despite other areas of conflict or inadequate information.
Documentation has been crucial to the effort to restore a 90-acre woodland in Central Park known as the North Woods. The wake-up call came with mapping undertaken in the 1980s revealing that 25 percent of the ground was bare soil while another 25 percent was dominated by Japanese knotweed. This information convinced those who had previously thought the site would restore itself naturally; it underscored the need for active management and stimulated action by park managers. In 1992 the staff updated the tree canopy inventory of the North Woods undertaken in 1988 to evaluate how quickly the landscape was changing. During that four-year interval, more than 100 new exotic maple saplings had attained a size of 4 inches in diameter or greater in the 70-acre woodland, where 30 percent of the more-than-400 canopy trees greater than 6 inches in diameter already consisted of Norway and sycamore maple. The survey also revealed that seedlings of exotics were numerous and that native seedlings were absent altogether over much of the area, presenting a disturbing picture of what this forest would likely be like in the near future.
The Central Park Woodlands Advisory Board clearly recognized the potential threat of invasive tree species with this evidence. Despite their initial reluctance to remove any vegetation at all, they decided to initiate management with exotics control and to get staff and volunteers to monitor the effectiveness of the procedures and any changes in ground-layer vegetation. They began to remove sycamore maples up to 4 inches in diameter in the understory, and a year later young seedlings of native ash, sassafras, and tulip poplar appeared in their place. Alien maple seedlings still showed up, but at least the natives were present as well, which encouraged further intervention.
Even where unity of vision exists, agreeing upon or enforcing a plan maybe impossible at the outset because there is no clear sense of what would result from any proposed action. Reaching agreement on the larger goal while disagreement remains about how to get there is common. Where information is inadequate, designing and implementing a pilot project or field trial that includes monitoring to determine actual impacts is appropriate and commonly employed where issues are controversial.
For example, if your group is disagreeing on trail management, and cyclists contend that their activities can be compatible with sustaining environmental values while others insist that degradation is an inevitable result, a field trial produces tangible evidence to support the decision-making process. A typical pilot project might initially span several years or more to assess trail erosion, use, and abuse, and to complete the “learning curve” of users so they comply with rules of the trail. Signage, trail condition monitoring, and trail repair are key components of any such program. Trail users should also be involved in trail maintenance as well as habitat restoration activities, such as removal of invasive exotic vegetation, closing outlaw trails, stabilizing the ground layer, repairing gullies, and undertaking woodland planting projects. By bringing together all the users and caretakers of the landscape, we can come to agree on performance standards and cultivate and communicate a true stewardship ethic to everyone in the community.
An essential part of any planning process is to take adequate precautions to ensure the safety of project workers on the site. Before a near-miss or accident forces you to take it seriously, devote adequate time and resources to institute safety procedures and make sure everyone adheres to them.
Just as important, be sure to take precautions against Lyme disease, which is very common in the Northeast. Make every effort to avoid infections in the first place. Not everyone gets the telltale bull’s-eye rash or notices a tick bite; other symptoms include fatigue, headache, joint stiffness, irritability, and forgetfulness. The peak months for deer ticks are May and June in the Northeast although ticks can be found at almost any time.
To protect against Lyme disease, make sure that all field workers wear protection whenever working in infested areas and follow these guidelines.
Pyrethrum repellents can be used only on clothing that does not come into contact with the skin. If you use products with DEET, be sure you are aware of health concerns and precautions. Read all labels before using any such product.
Ticks typically must feed on you for several hours before transmitting the Lyme disease bacteria.
Be sure you also address issues of liability before initiating any fieldwork. Consider putting together a team specifically to address issues of risk management and instituting regular safety reviews on the site. Addressing safety in a comprehensive manner reduces risk as well as the likelihood of being held responsible for something that is genuinely accidental, rather than due to carelessness, a lack of knowledge, or inadequate procedures. This effort will not only reduce actual risk but may also reduce your insurance premiums. An attorney can advise you on liability concerns and help you determine if you need to obtain waivers or releases from liability from project participants in case of accident or injury.
As you plan your project, also consider emergency preparedness, determining how you would communicate with emergency services when necessary. It is also advisable to have people on-site who are qualified in first-aid procedures.
The need to keep accurate written records cannot be overemphasized. Be sure you document your periodic safety reviews on-site, your follow-through to correct the condition, and any incidents. Thorough documentation is vital, especially if problems arise.
Some restoration projects that are carried out on private land and do not involve environmentally sensitive areas or wetlands and watercourses can be undertaken without any involvement with regulatory agencies and the permitting process. But most projects will sooner or later involve a regulated activity or place. Even where regulation is not a factor, a great deal of coordination with agencies and landowners is usually necessary except on the smallest sites.
Although the permitting process seems daunting, it is actually an excellent time to better integrate the agencies’ role in regional restoration. The opportunities for shared learning also are important to your future success. Look upon this effort as a vital part of the restoration. Be sure to assess required licenses and construction-type permits as well as environmental policy concerns and compliance requirements. Any project using federal monies must comply with the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Start talking to state and local officials and familiarizing yourself with the overall regulatory requirements in your area. As you learn more about the impacts that are occurring to the site, you may also become involved in addressing gaps in the legislation and areas where the intent of the law could be better met than in current practice.
Get written permission for access to any land you will be using, even incidentally, from any and all landowners, institutions, and agencies. Obviously, clear agreements are all important. Be sure to spell out what is proposed and who is responsible for what, and any restrictions on use and access in as much detail as possible.
If yours is a fledgling organization, consider associating with another, more established one. In Philadelphia, for example, a group that wanted to start trail repairs became the Wissahickon Conservation Committee of the Friends of the Wissahickon, an existing nonprofit associated with the park. The group did not have to acquire separate nonprofit status and was covered under the Friend’s liability policy, which allowed them to devote all their resources to the work on the ground. In return, the partnering organization, the Friends of the Wissahickon, received an infusion of new members and energy, thereby broadening and deepening its scope. One group of high school students solved their liability problems by affiliating with the Boy Scouts of America. They formed a group of Eagle Scouts who received badges for restoration projects.
To learn more about restoration, consider joining the following organizations:
The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). SER is an international organization of professionals and others committed to the repair and ecologically sensitive management of ecosystems. SER facilitates communication among restorationists; encourages research; promotes awareness of the value of restoration; contributes to public policy discussions; develops public support for restoration and restorative management; and recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions in the field of restoration. With your membership you can receive either or both of two journals: Restoration and Management Notes, a forum for the exchange of news, views, and information among ecologists, land reclamationists, managers of parks, preserves, and rights-of-way, naturalists, engineers, landscape architects, and other committed to the restoration and wise stewardship of plant and animal communities,” and Restoration Ecology: The Journal of the Society for Ecological Restoration, in which local chapters focus on regional collaboration in restoration efforts. Contact: The Society for Ecological Restoration, 1207 Seminole Highway, Madison WI 53711; 608-262-9547.
The Natural Areas Association. The Natural Areas Association is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the preservation of natural diversity. The association works to inform, unite, and support persons engaged in identifying, protecting, managing, and studying natural areas and biological diversity. Membership includes the Natural Areas Journal, a quarterly publication offering articles relating to research or management of natural areas, parks, and rare species, land preservation, and theoretical approaches to natural areas work. Contact: The Natural Areas Association, P.O. Box 900, Chesterfield, MO 63006-0900.
The Society for Conservation Biology. The goal of the society is to help develop the scientific and technical means for the protection, maintenance, and restoration of life on this planet — its species, its ecological and evolutionary processes, and its particular and total environment. Conservation Biology is a joint publication of the Society for Conservation Biology and Blackwell Science, Inc. The society’s offices are at the Department of Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, 608-263-9547. For subscription information contact Journals Subscription Department, Blackwell Science, Inc., 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.
The Eastern Native Plant Alliance (ENPA). Membership is open to individuals who promote or demonstrate native plant conservation in the eastern United States or southeastern Canada and to individuals committed to serving as liaisons to an appropriate organization or audience. P.O. Box 6101, McLean, VA 12206.