160 Andrew Light
public participation (Light 2002b). I do not repeat those arguments here but say only that
restorations can serve as opportunities for the public to become more actively involved in
the environment around them and hence in the potential for work on restoration projects
to encourage environmental responsibility and stewardship. In this way people can form
important relationships with the restorations that they participate in producing.
No doubt some will still demur that the things produced in a restoration are nothing but
artifacts but in this sense at least it doesn’t matter. Assuming that a particular restoration
can be justifi ed for other ecological reasons—that it reproduces an important function of
a previously existing ecosystem, such as protecting native biodiversity in an area or even
simply cleaning up a site so that it is a better habitat for persons and other creatures, the
issue of whether a restoration is really natural is practically moot on this account. Just as
in the case of the special watches from section 9.2, the objects produced by a restoration
can be valuable in and of themselves as special things to us and as place holders of impor-
tant sources of meaning in our lives. This claim does not prohibit us from criticizing those
restorations that are intentionally produced either to justify harm to nature or to try to fool
people that they are the real thing. But such restorations, which I have termed “malevolent
restorations” (Light 2000), can be discounted for the same reasons that we would discount
the attachment that people have to persons or places that are morally tainted in other
ways.
For all the reasons offered in this chapter the moral potential of restoration ecology,
even if the objects produced by this practice are artifacts, is that restorations can foment
relationships between persons and nature as well as simply among persons. What can be
restored in a restoration is the function of prior ecosystems and our connection to places
and to one another.
References
Brennan, A. (1998). Poverty, puritanism and environmental confl ict. Environmental Ethics, 7 : 305–331.
Callicott, J. B. (2002). The pragmatic power and promise of theoretical environmental ethics. Environmental
Values, 11 : 3–26.
Cronon, W. (1995). The trouble with wilderness. In: Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (Cronon,
W., ed.), 69–90. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
Elliot, R. (1982). Faking nature. Inquiry, 25 : 81–93.
Elliot, R. (1997). Faking Nature. London: Routledge.
Gunn, A. (1991). The restoration of species and natural environments. Environmental Ethics, 13 : 291–309.
Gobster, P., and Hull, B. (eds.). (2000). Restoring Nature. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Higgs, E. (2003). Nature by Design. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Houkes, W., and Vermaas, P. E. (2004). Actions versus functions. The Monist, 87 : 52–71.
Katz, E. (1996). The problem of ecological restoration. Environmental Ethics, 18 : 222–224.
Katz, E. (1997). Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefi eld Publishers.