Today environmental restoration is a global pursuit. Governments, nonprofits, and corporations spend billions of dollars each year to remove invasive species, build wetlands, and reintroduce species driven from their habitats. In Wild by Design, historian Laura J. Martin uncovers the origins of restoration science and policy. She explores how restorationists struggled with the problem of caring for biodiversity without romanticizing nature as an untouched Eden. Could humans intervene in nature for nature’s own sake? What natural baselines should be restored? Was it possible to design nature without destroying wildness? In illuminating restoration’s past, Wild by Design not only provides vital lessons for our future in a changing climate-it makes an urgent call for environmental restoration that is socially just.
