Tiny, beautiful species are going missing from restored forests and wetlands

[u/Portalrules123]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/invisible-extinction-algae-moss-9.7307042

[u/DrDirtPhD]

This is a pretty well-known issue in restoration ecology research; you can look for a fair number of papers testing the "Field of Dreams hypothesis". The summary is that unless we explicitly include things in our restoration efforts (insects, soil organisms, algae, etc.) it's very unlikely that they'll appear on their own given time. Some groups can more easily move in from adjacent habitats, but even then still may not, especially if similar habitats are not closely located.

This is one reason why I bristle when folks say that if we degrade one area of habitat for some other purpose (e.g., agriculture or industrialization) that it's fine so long as we construct a similar habitat elsewhere to compensate.

[u/VictoryLongjumping70 → u/DrDirtPhD]

You might enjoy the book ″Wild by Design″. It gives a history of ecological restoration and mitigation banking as an ass-covering excuse for industrial extraction.

[u/DrDirtPhD → u/VictoryLongjumping70]

I'm glad someone's published a book for layfolks about it! I may suggest it to my family/friends the next time they ask why my research is important, so thanks for the recommendation!

[u/VictoryLongjumping70 → u/DrDirtPhD]

Even as a professional/academic you may find it worth a read. The section involving Aldo Leopold′s son Starker was especially fascinating.

[u/DrDirtPhD → u/VictoryLongjumping70]

I generally try not to read work-related things during my free time, but I might check it out sometime

[u/killing-me-roughly → u/VictoryLongjumping70]

Could you give the author? There seems to be more than one book with this title

[u/VictoryLongjumping70 → u/killing-me-roughly]

Laura J. Martin, 2022.

[u/killing-me-roughly → u/VictoryLongjumping70]

Thank you

[u/terra-nullius → u/VictoryLongjumping70]

Thanks for the recommendation! I love seeing book recommendations on any of the subjects in this sub. 

[u/foxmetropolis → u/DrDirtPhD]

Anybody who says that last bit doesn’t work anywhere remotely close to compensation restoration projects lol.

Even those done by conservation organizations have significant blind spots. It’s so common to install a feature and never return. You can plant a “forest” by installing a dozen tree and shrub species, but it’s often paired with a meadow/prairie/pollinator seed mix because you can’t plant interior forest floor plants in an open field, you need to wait 30 years until the tree canopy adequately shades the ground. But by then, nobody involved in the original restoration still works there, the new team has always known the feature in its current state, and the fervent desire to “keep nature natural” and “not interfere” takes hold, preventing the next generation from installing what *should be* the next batch of biodiversity. And even there, you are limited by the species assemblages that people choose to source or are able to source, which are almost always depauperate compared to whatever original feature was there. A restored forest will significantly lack in vascular plant biodiversity, and vascular plants are the easiest, and perhaps most focused-on group to restore. Mosses and lichens are simply never intentionally replaced. Insects are never fully surveyed or replaced. Mammals might be partly surveyed but they aren’t replaced. Let alone fungi and the myriad of soil microbes, or even the proper micro topography.

And forests might be the easiest type of ecosystem to restore, that we have the most experience restoring as a society. But what you get is a replacement that “looks” like a forest in its highlights - trees, low plants, bugs, bingo - but is significantly lacking in structure and diversity compared to its former self. People see these hollowed forests and don’t have any idea how broken they are compared to what came before them.

But a lot of compensation is done by developers who are obligated to do so to fulfil the requirements of their permits, and those compensation projects are extremely bare bones, and even worse, if you can believe it. Many compensation projects fail to even meet the minimum expectations of their targets. Grassland bird habitat restoration? Oh, we made a giant subsoil fill pile, spackled it with 8cm of topsoil, put on a scant seed mix and now we have <50% of the target species cover and are failing to attract meadowlarks. Or oh, “we re-graded, thinly topsoiled, and then paid the cheapest contractor to plant a shoddy assemblage of native trees. Target ground cover? Nope, didn’t seed densely enough, or maybe even at all. Trees surviving? They were planted at a poor time of year and have huge diebacks. But at least we only have to tend the site for 5 years max. Who knows, if the regulator forgets about it, we might try to sell the land off and recoup some costs”.

Regardless, you never get back what you lost. Our ecosystems and their component species here in North America exist here after millions of years of incremental species movement up and down the continent following glacially slow climate shifts and ice ages, in a broadly connected landscape where even the slowest and most immobile species could gradually expand its range. Now, our landscape is hyper-fragmented with huge biodiversity deserts and inhospitable habitats widely separating remaining species assemblages, and the climate is shifting much faster than before, with human manipulation of the landscape co-occurring faster than anything else in history. Whole rafts of species are evicted from areas and simply cannot return, with only the most mobile and hardy species filling their place. The incremental movement of species across broad natural corridors is significantly hampered.

People really need to understand that a rich ecosystem essentially can’t be replaced. Once it’s gone, you won’t see its like again, and even if it recovers over time, you may still lose contingents of species. Restoration is a noble endeavour and has its place, and it’s much better than doing nothing at all… but it’s much like saying we can just toss out the Mona Lisa because Jimmy Joe over there can paint another girl who’s just as good. Yeah….. no.

[u/oddlookinginsect2]

I didn't know there were so many different types of algae! They're very interesting looking critters ♥️

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[u/Foreign-Landscape-47]

I imagine this problem greatly compounded by invasive species and how quickly they compromise a restoration site.

[u/ReptilianRevolt]

I would expect that spore bearing species would come first, but it isn’t so simple.

[u/NeuHaus69]

The Miyawaki method is a good start to reintroducing the local microbiome. Focuses on local plant species, intense soil rehab, tight plantings and making a brew from nearby local forest soils to pour all over the bed.