Habitat Restoration—Do We Know What We’re Doing?

The term “habitat restoration” appears frequently in conservation and landscape management documents but is often poorly articulated. There is a need to move to a clearer and more systematic approach to habitat restoration that considers appropriate goals linked to target species or suites of species, as well as the ecological, financial, and social constraints on what is possible. Recommendations for particular courses of action need to be prioritized so that restoration activities can achieve the best result possible within these constraints. There is unlikely to be a generic set of recommendations that is applicable everywhere because actions need to be matched to the particulars of site and situation. However, there is a generic set of questions that can be asked, which can help guide the process of deciding which restoration actions are most important and contribute most to the reestablishment of desirable habitat characteristics within a given project area.

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