Navigating transformations from degraded to functional ecosystems.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Environmental Management
• Conservation Biology

Background:

• Ecosystem degradation presents complex restoration challenges, even when aiming to replicate historical conditions.
• Natural resource management faces similar uncertainties, offering potential adaptive strategies.
• Existing frameworks like resist-accept-direct may need refinement for ecological restoration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an adapted management framework for reversing ecosystem degradation.
• To enhance clarity and transparency in restoration and rewilding planning and execution.
• To address uncertainties in managing poorly understood or novel ecosystems.

Main Methods:

• Adapting the resist-accept-direct framework from natural resource management.
• Differentiating between actions to revert ecosystems to a historical baseline and those to resist current/future changes.
• Applying the proposed framework to restoration and rewilding contexts.

Main Results:

• The proposed resist-accept-direct-revert framework offers distinct pathways for management actions.
• This distinction improves clarity in planning, communication, and management of degraded ecosystems.
• The framework is particularly useful for novel or poorly understood ecosystems.

Conclusions:

• Adapting natural resource management tools, specifically the resist-accept-direct-revert framework, can improve ecosystem restoration outcomes.
• Separating reversionary and resistance actions enhances management transparency and reduces unforeseen consequences.
• The framework provides a structured approach for complex restoration and rewilding projects.