a glance at ecological restoration

excerpts from Bill Jordan's book The Sunflower Forest:
"Besides this, in attempting the paradoxical trick of reversing and reliving history in order to escape it, the restorationist creates a context in which to explore, experience, and perhaps even reconcile cyclic and progressive time. In fact, this double experience of time is implicit in the word "restore" itself. The "re-" suggests the cyclic and dynamic, while the "-store" indicates the stable, the stationary, and the unchanging. Combining the two--the circle for return and regeneration, and the line for progress and change-- generates the figure of the rising spiral or helix of evolution, each turn of which marks a return to the old and "original," but at a higher level of self-awareness."

"the idea that the goal of restoration is a "self-sustaining" ecosystem is so misguided--not only because the idea is ecologically untenable, but also because it is precisely the effort of sustaining the ecosystem against the pressure of novel influences that accounts for much of the value of restoration as a way of defining and making us aware of our relationship with it. "

"Properly and reflexively carried out, it generates nothing less than an ecological definition of who we are--that is, a definition of our species, or of a particular human community, expressed in terms of how it has influenced and interacted with other organism and with whole ecological systems over a particular period of time."