‘“Restoration can then be viewed as an attempt to force transitions towards a desired state, and as requiring knowledge of the variables that need to be manipulated to achieve these transitions” (Hobbs and Norton 1996, emphasis added).’
[as quoted in Long et al., 2003]
In my last article, I explored the role of humans in ecological restoration, primarily from some indigenous perspectives. One of the papers I looked at contained the above quote, which was presented in contrast to a White Mountain Apache view of humans assisting mother nature in her healing process.
For this article, I wanted to get a better, more contemporary understanding of Western scientific perspectives. With Claude’s help, I found a 2015 review paper by Perring and colleagues, “Advances in restoration ecology: rising to the challenges of the coming decades”. This review was commissioned by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of their founding. According to Google Scholar, it has been cited 638 times as of today (April 4, 2026). Given all of this, it seemed like a good next step.
Some observations
As I started going through the paper, I was quickly struck by the difference in vocabulary compared to the Long et al. paper on Apache ecological restoration. Although I didn’t come across a statement about the practitioner’s role in ecological restoration in the Perring paper that is as clear and direct as the quote from the Hobbs and Norton paper presented earlier, these differences in vocabulary did provide some clues:
- Humans as external controllers: I noticed a common theme of humans being external controllers of a mechanical system, making decisions about how the system should be. The authors use phrases like “ecosystems could be allowed to develop,” make repeated references to “desired” ecosystem composition/attributes/functions, and talk about “building” or “reconstruction” of aspects of ecosystems.
- Nature as a mechanical system to be managed: References to things like “delivery of ecosystem services” and the way in which they talk about the “ecosystem” itself suggest the concept of a mechanical assembly of interacting components to be put to use.
Both of these points stand in contrast to what I noticed in the White Mountain Apache restoration paper, which emphasized reciprocity and relationships between land and people, with humans being in an assistive role.
I noticed a few other things related to my question:
- The field of ecological restoration is evolving: Perring et al. point to some evolution in the view presented in the Hobbs and Norton quote. For example, they write about a relaxing of the stance on fixed, predetermined outcomes of restoration projects, which they describe as a result of the increasing pace of environmental changes and in many cases the lack of intact reference ecosystems or local lack of species that would have been present in ecosystems before. To me, this represents a softening of the view presented in the Hobbs and Norton quote.
- Indigenous knowledge notably absent: Despite discussions about increased community involvement and about how understanding context dependency is one of the biggest challenges in ecology, the paper has no mention of indigenous knowledge or people. In my opinion, one of the greatest advantages of indigenous-led restoration efforts is the deep understanding of local contexts that indigenous people bring. And although the authors’ discussion of context dependency is in relation to knowing which kinds of scientific knowledge and methods to apply in what contexts, it stands out to me that they do not mention one of the richest sources of contextual knowledge.
Closing
The Perring et al. paper yielded some interesting clues about how ecological restoration was viewed by some restoration ecologists at the time it was written. Granted, it’s just one paper, and it was written over a decade ago, so it’s not definitive. To be more confident in my conclusions, I would want to read a larger number of more recent papers on restoration ecology and interview several restoration ecologists.
But my goal is not to produce a comparative study on different views of restoration ecology. Instead, a question more practical to my situation is becoming more clear and pressing: What roles are Western-trained scientists (such as myself) best suited to play in indigenous-led restoration efforts? Or more simply, how can I contribute to indigenous-led restoration?
AI RESPONSIBILITY RUBRIC
This rubric shows human vs AI contribution across stages of developing the article.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CONCEPT/PLANNING
Human 90% | AI 10%
[================....]
AI: Claude (Sonnet 4.6)
The core question, the decision to look at Perring et al., and all observations about the paper came from Taylan. Claude helped organize observations into threads and suggested outline structure, but the intellectual direction was entirely human-driven.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RESEARCH
Human 70% | AI 30%
[==============......]
AI: Claude (Sonnet 4.6)
Taylan identified the search need and did the primary reading of both papers. Claude conducted web searches to identify Perring et al. as a candidate paper and helped surface specific passages relevant to the human role question.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WRITING
Human 100% | AI 0%
[====================]
AI: Claude (Sonnet 4.6)
All prose was written by Taylan. Claude produced no draft sentences that appear in the final article.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
EDITING/REFINEMENT
Human 75% | AI 25%
[===============.....]
AI: Claude (Sonnet 4.6)
Taylan made all final decisions on structure and wording. Claude identified typos, flagged the closing seam, suggested header alternatives, and proposed structural improvements to the opening and closing — some of which Taylan accepted and some of which he declined.