With respect to the ESA, how ecological is ecological restoration? Where has ecological restoration been and where might it go?

Background/Question/Methods

People in the ecological restoration community often talk about the academic and scientific study of, and participation in, ecological restoration beginning at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in the 1930s.  However the history of the field is considerably older and more complicated than that story indicates.  We can find examples of projects similar to ecological restoration being conducted as early as the 1300s.  What actions taken in the past would we consider ecological restoration today?  How were those endeavors described when originally conducted and why did people engage in them?  What kinds of challenges did early restorationists face?  How did they meet those challenges?  How did the field gradually evolve into what we think of as ecological restoration today?  

Results/Conclusions

It is clear that early restorationists were focused on repairing damaged environments, often to help improve various aspects of human lives and economies.  Many of the restorationists who began work after the 1930s were also members of the ESA but by the 1980s members of the restoration community felt the need to found their own society, the Society for Ecological Restoration.  Founders of SER felt that it was vital to have their own society in order for the field to grow, develop and become a fully accepted realm of scientific and social endeavor.  Tensions within SER between practitioners and academics in many ways mirror the tensions within ESA about pure vs. applied ecology.  The environmental challenges facing human society today are so great that we cannot afford to maintain divisions within the fields of ecological study.  The future of ecological restoration, and all of ecological science, will almost certainly include increasingly multidisciplinary approaches as we search for solutions to those problems, especially those associated with climate change, invasive species, habitat loss and the rise of novel ecosystems.