SER 2.0

Day two. It began slowly, various talks of moderate interest.

At 11:30, that all changed. Jody Bluhm presented a paper titled "Samish traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom." Much of it was a video providing background and a brief description of restoration activities, including estuary restoration, on Cypress Island in Puget Sound.

There is much to be learned from traditional wisdom. I'll share two special moments from that video. An elder spoke of her childhood, spoke of the ocean breathing... so much more eloquent, holding so much more meaning than our comparatively sterile modern technical descriptions.  Then, a tribal leader spoke of her ancestors, seven generations ago at the time of first European contact... and of the importance of thinking seven generations ahead.

This, at an event where most of us are thinking seven minutes ahead to which paper to dash to next, and that's long-term thinking compared to the general population.

Perhaps it's time to once again think seven generations ahead.

SER 2013

I'm at the Society for Ecological Restoration 5th World Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Only halfway through the first morning, I'm of course still forming impressions; what's certain is that there are a lot of people here, reportedly over 1,200 people from 52 countries. There are 13 concurrent sessions and lots of good papers, it's going to be tough to choose.

The plenary kicked off with a diverse and upbeat talk by Paul Hawken, much too diverse to easily summarize here but I think it set a good tone for the event.

Not long after that, someone made the first mention of one of the key tensions in restoration ecology: The role, and the validity (or danger) of the novel ecosystem concept. I suspect more writings on that hot topic will follow.