ABSTRACT
How do we manage landscapes in an environment of change? Three key terms of human intervention in environmental and cultural heritage management – restoration, preservation and creation – each contain an implied temporal direction. The issues involved in going backwards, maintaining the present and shaping the future are discussed, using examples from both biotic and built landscapes. The value of the long-term record is not that it specifies previous conditions which should be restored, but that it can illustrate the processes and mechanisms of change, and the likely location of irreversible thresholds. The possibilities and context of restoration in recently settled New Zealand and long-occupied parts of the Old World are compared. The cultural heritage
management principle that the restoration process must explicitly draw attention to itself, and label itself as such, provides a good model for ecological restoration. Landscapes of preservation, as exemplified by national parks, need to incorporate a capacity for change, whether at the level of wildlife migration patterns, political variables or climatically induced vegetation shifts. In all these examples, clarification of management goals is crucial to effective intervention.
