Restoration/Reintroduction
I am currently working on the project “The Return of Native Nordic Fauna” funded by FORMAS for 2013-2016. The purpose of this project is to investigate how certain animal species have been identified both culturally and scientifically as belonging in the Nordic region and how that identification has shaped historical conservation measures, particularly decisions to reintroduce the species. Through an environmental history approach, the project will expose the role of ‘nativeness’ in species reintroduction efforts dating from the twentieth century to today in Sweden and Norway, focusing specifically on the beaver and muskox. The project will investigate how species that have become locally extinct and then reintroduced are framed as native, the ways that species intentionally reintroduced versus accidentally reintroduced are treated differently, and the roles a species’ history and interaction with humans play in making a particular species ‘Swedish’ or ‘Norwegian’ or ‘Nordic’.
Read my Research Blog for “The Return of Native Nordic Fauna” project.
I was also the project coordinator and a researcher on the project “Ecosystem restoration in policy and practice: restore, develop, adapt” which is known as RESTORE for short. The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS, Umeå University, and Swedish Agricultural University. My research for RESTORE primarily focused on the development of international restoration policy.
Restoration Ecology 22.1 (2014): 1-4. co-authored with C Nilsson, AR Hof, EM Hasselquist, S Baker, FS Chapin, K Eckerberg, J Hjältén, L Polvi, and LA Meyerson Relating restoration ecology to policy is one of the aims of the Society for Ecological Restoration and its journal Restoration Ecology. As an interdisciplinary team…
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Bioscience 63 (2013): 719–720. This Viewpoint article suggests that reintroduction experience and standards should be a guide for de-extinction projects that attempt to bring back formerly extinct species. Read article online (free) or on journal website (subscription only)
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Biodiversity and Conservation (2013): 2977-2982 Ecological restoration has been incorporated into several Multilateral Environmental Agreements, including the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Target 15 of the Aichi Targets for 2020 sets a numerical goal of restoration of 15 percent of degraded ecosystems; however, the CBD has not established a…
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Ecology and Society 18(1) (2012): 18 co-authored with BM Renöfält Dam removal is an increasingly common practice. Dams are removed for various reasons with safety, economics, and ecosystem restoration being the most common. However, dam removals often cause controversy. Riparian land owners and local communities often have a negative view on…
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Restoration Ecology 19 (Nov 2011): 705-708 A 2010 article in Restoration Ecology by Philip Seddon aims at unraveling the definitions of various types of species translocations—from reintroductions to assisted colonization—and points out the slippery slope of misused words. I argue here that defining reintroduction is not as straightforward as Seddon…
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The Return of Native Nordic Fauna A research blog about reintroduction, restoration, and history
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Bell D., Hjältén J., Nilsson C. Jørgensen D. and Johansson T. 2015. Forest restoration to attract a putative umbrella species, the white-backed woodpecker, benefited saproxylic beetles. Ecosphere 6(12):278. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES14-00551.1 [Open Access] Note: I was one of the supervisor’s for D. Bell’s PhD work. I was involved in the conceptual development and…
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