Breaking Barriers Building Bridges: - ERI Library - Northern Arizona ...

16strategy. However, Title IV of the Omnibus Public Land ManagementAct of 2009 does not provide a definition of ecological restoration.For that, one might look to the U.S. Forest Service, which definesecological restoration as: The process of assisting the recovery of resilienceand adaptive capacity of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged, ordestroyed. Restoration focuses on establishing the composition, structure,pattern, and ecological processes necessary to make terrestrial and aquaticecosystems sustainable, resilient, and healthy under current and futureconditions (U.S. Forest Service, 2011, p. 12).This rather broad definition is further defined from a scientificperspective in the Society for Ecological Restoration Primer (Societyfor Ecological Restoration Science and Policy Working Group 2004),which identifies the following attributes of a restored ecosystem:ffffffThe restored ecosystem contains a characteristic assemblage ofthe species that occur in the reference ecosystem and that provideappropriate community structure.The restored ecosystem consists of indigenous species to thegreatest practicable extent. In restored cultural ecosystems, allowancescan be made for exotic domesticated species and for noninvasiveruderal and segetal species that presumably co-evolvedwith them.All functional groups necessary for the continued developmentand/or stability of the restored ecosystem are represented or, ifthey are not, the missing groups have the potential to colonize bynatural means.The physical environment of the restored ecosystem is capable ofsustaining reproducing populations of the species necessary forits continued stability or development along the desired trajectory.The restored ecosystem apparently functions normally for its ecologicalstage of development, and signs of dysfunction are absent.The restored ecosystem is suitably integrated into a larger ecologicalmatrix or landscape, with which it interacts through abioticand biotic flows and exchanges.