BOOK REVIEW

Rehabilitation and Restoration ofDegraded Forests

David Lamb and Don Gilmour. 2003.International Union for Conservationof Nature and Natural Resources,Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge,U.K. and The World Wide Fund forNature, Gland, Switzerland, 110 pages,$24.00, ISBN 28317–066–88 (paperbound).

David Lamb and Don Gilmour,two of the most renowned for-

est ecologists in the field of conser-vation, have studied most of theremaining forest areas of the de-veloping world. For many years,Lamb, a professor at the School ofLife Sciences, Queensland University,Australia, has been working in thefield of tropical and subtropical forestbiology, whereas Gilmour, a forestryconsultant based in Australia and ex-director of World Conservation Unit’sforest conservation program has beena long-term manager and observerof community forestry managementprograms in South Asia. In this book,Lamb and Gilmour present a conciseoverview of the restoration and re-habilitation of degraded forests whileproviding a solid background ofkey issues, terminology, and diversecase studies. The book is thereforea must read for both practitionersand decision-makers in the field offorest rehabilitation.

As the authors point out in thebook, within the next decade, mostof the world’s forests will have beensubjected to harvesting at least once.Because of this harvesting, theworld’s remaining forests, apartfrom those forests located in inac-

cessible sites or in protected areas,will become secondary, fragmented,degraded or simplified forests. Withthis background, the purpose of thebook is to understand the how toof managing vast areas, landscapes,of fragmented, modified, and de-graded forests around the globeand the why of forest reestablish-ment. The authors also do a cred-ible job of presenting the ecologicaland socioeconomic issues that sur-round forest restoration, issues thatrender many regeneration attemptsunsuccessful.In theory, restoration involves the

implementation of activities gearedtoward reversing degradation pro-cesses, with the explicit intention ofrestoring the original ecosystem. Inrestoration projects, intensive inter-ventions are usually required in thefirst few years of the restoration pro-ject to initiate the process. It is ex-pected that once the process hasbegun, natural succession will thencontinue the process. However, for-est succession often takes decades—even centuries—before an originalreplica of the site may be recreated,with a full complement of species.Furthermore, restoration implies thereinstigation of all the original eco-system services of the forest. ‘‘Reha-bilitation,’’ on the other hand, isdefined as reestablishing the pro-ductivity of a site, along with atleast some of the original biodiver-sity. The recreated forest may nowhost a new complement of species,along with some not originallyfound. These may give the new for-est an economic and/or ecologicaladvantage over that of the originalforest. In time, the protective func-tion and ecological services of theoriginal forest may be reestablished.In effect, rehabilitation implies therepair of a degraded forest site withthe primary goal of raising ecosys-tem productivity for use of localpeople, e.g., the establishment ofagroforestry systems or forest treeplantations in degraded sites, which

usually take less than a decade toaccomplish. Rehabilitation returnsmajor ecosystem functions and re-creates social and economic benefits.Some but usually not all the originalbiodiversity may also be regained.Rehabilitation may also be part ofan overall restoration strategy whenapplied over large spatial scales.However, the authors point out thatthe question of whether or not resto-ration is ever really possible is intruth relatively unimportant. Thisis because in most field situations,the challenge of rejuvenating largetracts of degraded land combinedwith limited resources usually meansthat some form of rehabilitation isthe most that can be achieved. Unfor-tunately, this shortcoming impliesthat the goal of conserving nativebiodiversity is not always met.

The book explains the necessity ofwhy the goal of degraded land reha-bilitation should not be to reinsti-gate forestry production alone. Theauthors’ stress that when a forest isrehabilitated in a holistic manner,including nonproductive species,the developed forest fulfills morefunctions, has more values, and ismore resilient than a forest that is,for example, a monoculture planta-tion. Though a plantation may beeffective in sequestering carbon, orhelping restore the hydrologicalcycle, a plantation may not alwaysbe as effective in preventing slopeerosion, protecting riparian strips,or restoring soil fertility. The bookincludes a complete toolkit for as-sessing and accomplishing a rehabil-itation project. With crisp andsimple clarity, the book deals withthe specific timing, setting and im-pacts of interventions, approachesfor situations at specific sites, andmethods for dealing with and devel-oping ecological succession andincorporating disturbance regimes.

The Ecosystem Approach of theConvention of Biological Diversity(CBD) as concerning forest conser-vation states 12 attributes of good

578 Restoration Ecology Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 578–579 SEPTEMBER 2005

Book Review

forest restoration practice. These at-tributes encompass equity and ethi-cal issues as related to variousstakeholders, the balance of ecologi-cal and human needs in ecosystemfunction, knowledge paradigms, andthe recognition of the limits of eco-system resources. The book touchesall aspects of the CBD approachwith a discussion of the increasinglycomplex institutional environmentfaced by ecosystem restoration ef-forts. Thirteen case studies aredescribed from more than 12 coun-tries. The case studies give wideranging examples of forest rehabili-tation and restoration projects,including a natural forest regenera-tion project in the northern UnitedStates and an open cut mine rehabil-itation in Brazil. Case studies arelocation specific and sketch out proj-ects carried out under varying insti-tutional, ecological, and climaticconditions. Not all the projects aresuccessful, including an examplefrom Fiji that showed loweredstream flows in comparison to theprevious condition after afforesta-tion by pines due to increased tran-spiration and a drop in availablesoil moisture.

The case studies bring out thatgood management eventually deliv-ers successful rehabilitation projects.To this end, indicators of success areidentified. Is the new communityself-sustaining or does it continue torequire subsidies from the outside?What are the changes necessary tomake the community self-sustain-ing? Management often follows an‘‘adaptive management’’ approach,which is designed to allow frequentreview and feedback on progresstoward the goals while the project isbeing implemented. This feedbackallows corrective action. Feedback isparticularly important to ecosystemrestoration projects, to help forestmanagers, scientists, and practitionerslearn more about how restorationtreatments change the forest so thatthey can modify the treatments to bet-ter meet project goals. Effective mon-itoring is an essential element ofadaptive management because it pro-vides reliable feedback on the effectsof project actions and gives earlywarning signals of failure.Advances in landscape level res-

toration of forests need to continue,and this book is a large step in theright direction. The authors empha-

size the inclusion of forest landscaperestoration into the policy agenda atall levels and in national, regional,and local land use planning andaction. The emphasis of the bottomline remains; technical solutionsalone can rarely resolve complex nat-ural resource management problems.All land use planning and manage-ment involves people. In many partsof the world, communities livingadjacent to or even within forests areand will remain managers of the for-ests. Any approach that fails to takeinto account their various interests isunlikely to succeed.

This book should be a handy ref-erence book not only for practi-tioners and decision-makers in thefield of rehabilitation but also forstudents and individuals in otherfields. A good addition to the book,however, would have been colorpictures; black and white pictures ofdense vegetation have little defini-tion. An attractive cover would havebeen the icing on a very tasty cake.

Malavika Chauhan, Ecological Econom-

ics Unit, Institution for Social and Eco-nomic Change, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore,

India. Email malavika@isec.ac.in

Book Review

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