“In the natural environment, people can find connection with something that is both larger and more timeless than themselves; nature can provide spiritual sustenance for their souls, physical relief for their bodies, and psychological restoration for their minds”.
-Ryan, 2000, p 209
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| UW-REN group photo |
Human involvement in ecological restoration:
Ecological restoration is essentially all about the relationship between people’s actions and the health of ecosystems. The SER International Primer on Ecological Restoration is paving the way for a restoration language oriented towards economically measurable ecosystem services, and that movement is an important part of the bigger picture of the connections between ecological health, human health, and motivations (Society for Ecological Restoration International Science & Policy Working Group, 2004). However, most of ecological research is about ecosystems themselves, and in some cases about the specific impacts of human behaviors, but rarely does it on people. The exception to this is in studies of volunteers. There are many published papers regarding volunteer motivations for participation, and quite a few regarding the perceived benefits of participants directly due to their volunteer experiences.
Multi-disciplinary collaboration
As Stokowski points out in his chapter ‘Community Values in Conservation’, ecologists focus most of their attention on “observable characteristics of local ecosystems”, and those ecologists who want to include volunteers from the community recognize that the “tools of their trade- field identification methods, ecological inventory approaches, and historical review of human landscapes- are generally inadequate for assessing social processes” (2003, p 291). Yet ignoring the influence of social processes on ecosystems is simply ignorance; ecologists know fundamentally that human influences shape ecosystems and that social processes are complexly and irrevocably linked to community realities. Therefore, the better that ecologists and biologists can understand social sciences, or at least work with those who do, the better they can develop sophisticated and complete understandings of the communities in which they are working (Stokowski, 2003, p 292).
A multitude of personal health benefits
Studies of volunteers show that the most common benefits derived from participation in restoration projects are: improved relationships with people (social benefits), sense of citizenship (again, social health), improved sense of self-efficacy (psychological health), having fun (emotional health), increase of physical strength (physical health), gain in job knowledge and skills (occupational health), improved relationship with nature (environmental health), and making deeper connections with self, people and place (spiritual, social and environmental benefits).
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| Greenway Trust invasive removal with Lake Sammamish students |
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| A community-based oyster restoration program |
Experiential ecological education
The experience of restoration as a volunteer is a rich example of experiential education at its finest. According to the renowned American educator Ralph W. Tyler, “education is the process of changing the behavior patterns of people.” (1949). For most people, choosing to participate in ecological restoration is a behavior change, so the terms naturalness, health, and integrity are fair game as fodder for volunteer recruitment. Yet if these terms are to carry great meaning, then they must also be defined, understood, and exemplified as such.
Getting symbiotic
Regardless of the source of their motivation, peoples’ actions in nature influence nature, and reciprocally nature influences people. By participating in restoration projects, people learn the meaning of healthy ecosystems and deepen their understanding of the relationship between healthy ecosystems and their own health. Volunteer recruitment and the entire field of restoration ecology can continue to grow, strengthen, and prosper by continuing to align its interests with those of human health.
