Introduction

This chapter describes the state of art of ecological restoration and the state of the science of restoration ecology. The most commonly used definition of ecological restoration comes from the Society for Ecological Restoration's Primer on Ecological Restoration: Ecological restoration is the process of sassisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Ecological restoration is an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity, and sustainability. The historical development of the practice of ecological restoration is difficult to trace but certainly the practice began hundreds of years before the definition and also long before the well-documented early prairie restorations initiated at the University of Wisconsin in the 1930s. The notion of 'reconnecting with nature' may sound too idealistic – especially if one focuses on technical aspects of restoration ecology – but the reason why field of restoration ecology began was from a sense of ethics.