Ecological Restoration:  Principles, Values, and Practice

Andre Clewell, Ph.D., Instructor

The training took place on Sunday 22 April at 09:00-14:00 at Kempinski Dead Sea hotel (which is the conference location).

©2018 Bruno Locatelli

This one-day training, given in English, addressed the advantages of ecological restoration for recovering environmental services that were lost on account of ecosystem degradation.  The training explained restoration according to the principles and standards developed by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER).  Case histories of projects from around the world were reason to illustrate restoration principles.  The Restoration Recovery Wheel was introduced—a new method adopted by SER for assessing restoration recovery during the course of a restoration project.  Ecological restoration is treated holistically in terms of physical conditions, biodiversity, landscape exchanges, resilience, and sustainability in order to satisfy socioeconomic, cultural, ecological, and personal values.  The training was consist of approximately 6 hours of lectures and participant discussion in a classroom setting.  It was valuable for those offering university courses in restoration and instructing practitioners who wanted to install restoration projects.

Andre Clewell (USA) is a founder and past-president of SER and has given trainings in restoration on 5 continents.  He authored the influential book, Ecological Restoration: Principles, Values, and Structure of an Emerging Profession, now in its 2nd edition and available in 6 languages.  He co-authored the book Management of Ecological Rehabilitation Projects, which was written primarily for an Asian readership and introduced at the ESP9 World Conference in 2017 in Shenzhen, China.  Dr. Clewell served 17 years on the faculty at Florida State University, USA.  For 22 years he owned and operated a firm that specialized in the design and implementation of ecological restoration projects.