Who we are, what we do and why we care!

“I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul

more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.”

Barry Lopez - ‘Helping Nature Heal’

By Darla Tiernan

Revised and updated by Jennifer Bohn

This discussion course was conceived in a small classroom at Naropa University in a class entitled “Environmental Service Learning: Ecological Restoration,” with Professor Amy Atkins.

In the Fall of 2008, students created a discussion course about ecological restoration with aim to add it to the Northwest Earth Institute’s series of discussion courses. Along with completing relevant readings and research for class, and participating in several hands-on restoration projects, they succeeded in putting together a six chapter dialogue course on the most current restoration theory, techniques and resources. By December they had a solid manuscript, bound and ready for use, however it was not passed on to NWEI due to semester's end.

A year later, in Fall of 2009, Professor Atkins's "Ecological Restoration" students chose to pick up the project and take the steps necessary to make it available to the public in some way. It was discovered that NWEI publish only the courses that their staff creates, so we decided to offer it to Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV) for the purposes of education and community building in the off-season. After reviewing and editing the content and crafting the six chapters into five, the second class reformatted the course book into a blog website that can be accessed through the WRV website. In response to a request from WRV that we look at how they might work with and expand cultural diversity within the organization, an additional commentary on diversity and inclusiveness is attached within the Cultures and Worldviews chapter. There is an opportunity to dialogue around the issues presented with potential to focus the content of those discussions into an official WRV diversity statement.

Both semester's classes worked closely with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV) doing our hands-on restoration projects. Aside from the outstanding before/after results of WRV projects, what keeps so many people coming back is the sense of community that is created at these events. Restoration work is fulfilling in so many ways. Aside from the human satisfaction of feeling great about volunteer work, a sense of healing and forgiveness is felt. There is no doubt that humans are responsible for the degradation of the land in most places. Now humans have a chance to bring back a bit of life where it was once taken away. This work provides a sense of satisfaction to the people, the plants, the animals, the rivers, the oceans, the soil, and the air. Harmonious relationships are re-established. There is only one way to fully experience this, and that is to get out there and try it for yourself. You can rest assured that you will find yourself going back for more. Projects range in various levels of difficulty, making it possible for people of all ages to participate.

Our goal is to provide you with some background of why restoration work is so important. We cover theory and historical content; explain how cultures and world views play an important role in restoration and have a significant impact on ecosystems; show you what is possible in urban restoration; reveal the methods of bioremediation; and expound upon the ecosystems and science techniques involved. We further provide you with an extensive list of national and international restoration groups and give you a brief introduction to some tools used in restoration field work. We hope that you find this course as fascinating in practice as we did as we in putting it together. We envision an environment where people regard themselves as a living part of nature, no matter where they live --where the belief is upheld that when someone harms the earth, they harm themselves. When they heal the earth, they heal themselves.