Toward a Political Ecology of Ecosystem Restoration
Ever since humans emerged on the grassy plains of Africa, Homo sapiens has demonstrated a special affinity for mixed, open-canopy woodland and savanna landscapes. With their abundance and diversity of game and edible plants, fuel for cooking and warmth, p
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Toward a Political Ecology of Ecosystem Restoration John C. Bliss and A. Paige Fischer
Ever since humans emerged on the grassy plains of Africa, Homo sapiens has demonstrated a special affinity for mixed, open-canopy woodland and savanna landscapes. With their abundance and diversity of game and edible plants, fuel for cooking and warmth, protection from weather and wide-open views of predators, these landscapes provided everything hunter-gatherers needed. It has been hypothesized that humans prefer canopied, open-floored landscapes for these biological reasons (Appleton 1975; Bourassa 1991). Woodland and savanna landscape structures also appear to embody widely shared cultural values for coherence and exploration—the well-spaced trees appear orderly and the open floor can be accessed, while distant areas of trees remain undiscovered (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989). Over the millennia that humans coevolved with these systems, the landscape imprinted on us, compelling us to seek stands of widely spaced trees over prairie grasses in which to live. In turn, we imprinted our will on the landscape through pervasive, deliberate, and sophisticated management to fulfill human needs. A growing body of evidence points to the formative interactions between humans and these landscapes (Penn and Mysterud 2007). In this chapter we explore these interactions, using the Oregon white oak ecosystem as a case study, to provide some considerations for ecosystem restoration. Specifically, we discuss the cultural values, social practices, and tenure arrangements that influence how humans have altered landscapes in the past. We explore the dynamic, interdependent relationship between human communities and landscapes, and draw attention to power relations relevant to restoration. We close with a checklist of questions to guide practitioners in integrating social and ecological considerations.
An illustration from Oregon Oregon’s Willamette Valley is bordered by isolated remnants of the oak savanna and woodlands that once dominated the entire basin from the lower slopes of the Coast Range on the west to the Cascade Mountains on the east. These ecosystems, appealing to the human eye and rich in biodiversity, are among the state’s most endangered, covering only a few percent of the area they occupied at the time of Euro-American D. Egan (eds.), Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration: Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture, 135 The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-039-2_10, © Island Press 2011
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p ow er : p o l i t i c s, g o v e r n a n c e , a nd p la nni ng
settlement in the mid-1800s (Oregon Biodiversity Project 1998; Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife 2006). The story of Willamette Valley oak savannas and woodlands provides dramatic illustration of the complex interplay between ecological dynamics and evolving human values, preferences, needs, and constraints. The history of oak savanna corresponds to the history of human presence in the Pacific Northwest; both date back more than six tho
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