Forest restoration means taking actions to help ecosystems work properly again. These actions help forests recover their structure, how they function, and the variety of plants and animals they support, aiming to reach the final stage of natural forest growth. This final stage, called climax forest, is a stable ecosystem with the highest possible amount of living material, complex structure, and variety of species, limited only by climate and soil conditions. Climax forest is the goal of forest restoration because it represents the most developed natural state of a forest. Since climate strongly influences what types of trees and plants grow in climax forests, changes in global climate may change what forests look like in the future. Scientists must consider how rising temperatures and changing rainfall might affect where climax forests can grow.
Forest restoration is a type of reforestation, but it is different from regular tree plantations. While plantations focus on growing trees for use, forest restoration focuses on helping nature recover by increasing biodiversity and protecting the environment.
Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is a process that helps restore natural functions in areas where forests or land have been damaged. FLR was created to address the loss of forests and land, which has led to fewer plants and animals and less support from nature for people. Good FLR can help achieve goals like improving health, reducing poverty, and protecting the environment. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) is a program that aims to restore millions of hectares of damaged forests and other natural areas. To restore ecosystems successfully, people need to understand the traits of the plants and animals in an area, as well as how these species work together in communities.
Scope
Forest restoration can involve protecting leftover plants by preventing fires or keeping animals like cattle away. It can also include helping nature grow plants faster, planting trees, or spreading seeds of plants that belong to the type of forest being restored. Trees planted are those that naturally live in the forest or help the ecosystem work well. However, when people live near or in areas being restored, projects often include trees that provide food or money, like fruits or wood.
Forest restoration needs help from many groups, such as local people, government workers, scientists, and organizations that give money. Success is measured by more plant and animal life, more plant growth, better soil, and more water held in the ground. It also means rare or important animals and plants return to the forest. However, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says restoring forests is hard because governments may not have enough money, and small farmers may lack tools or knowledge.
Restoration also helps the economy by creating value from forest products and services like clean water or storing carbon, which can help reduce poverty. Paying people for these services or for forest products can encourage them to restore forests. Active restoration can help forests recover up to 50% more carbon in just a few years.
According to FAO’s The State of the World’s Forests 2020, large-scale forest restoration is needed to meet goals for better living conditions and to stop losing animals and plants. So far, 61 countries have promised to restore 170 million hectares of damaged forests under the Bonn Challenge, but progress is slow. When done correctly, forest restoration helps animals and plants return, creates jobs, and fights climate change. It also helps reduce greenhouse gases. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), started in 2019, aims to speed up global efforts to restore ecosystems.
Opportunities for forest restoration
Forest restoration is important in places where bringing back biodiversity is a main goal of reforestation, such as for protecting wildlife, the environment, eco-tourism, or providing forest products to local communities. Forests can be restored in many different situations, but damaged areas inside protected regions are a top priority, especially when some mature forest still exists nearby to provide seeds. Even in protected areas, there are often large areas that have been deforested, such as land that was logged or cleared for farming. If protected areas are to serve as Earth's final homes for wildlife, restoring these areas will be necessary.
Many restoration projects today are part of a larger effort called "forest landscape restoration" (FLR), which is a planned process to improve the health of the environment and support people's well-being in areas that have been deforested or damaged. FLR acknowledges that restoring forests has both environmental and social benefits. It aims to find the best balance between protecting nature and meeting the needs of people who live in rural areas. As more people use land for their needs, forest restoration will often happen alongside other ways of managing forests to help local communities earn a living.
A recent focus for forest restoration is in urban areas, where both people and wildlife can benefit. However, restoring forests in cities has special challenges that need to be addressed.
Natural regeneration
Tree planting is not always needed to restore forest ecosystems. Scientists can study how forests naturally regrow, find what stops this process, and create ways to help it happen. These methods might include removing weeds, adding fertilizer near young trees, stopping fires, and keeping animals like cattle away. This process is called "assisted" or "accelerated" natural regeneration. It is simple and less expensive, but it only works with trees that are already growing, especially those that thrive in sunlight, called pioneer species. These pioneer species are not the same as the tall, mature trees in climax forests. However, they can help shade-loving climax trees return through natural seed spreading from nearby forests. Because this process is slow, planting some climax tree species, especially those with large seeds that are hard to spread, can speed up recovery of biodiversity. It is not always possible or needed to plant every tree species that once lived in the original forest, especially if a method called "framework species" is used.
In some rare cases, like certain forests in Alaska, forests can recover from wildfires over time. If the trees that grow back are strong and become part of a resilient ecosystem, they might absorb as much carbon as was released during the fire.
Forests being restored face many challenges, such as limited seeds and nutrients. They are also at risk from browsing animals, which eat plants. While these animals help keep the forest floor healthy, they can harm young trees in newly planted areas if there are too many. Over-grazing can damage young trees and plants so badly that they cannot recover, which reduces biodiversity. To protect young trees, it is important to use "deer fencing" around the area. If fencing is not affordable, planting trees that grow quickly and are strong can help the forest recover.
Post-fire regeneration
In many areas around the world, forest fires cause great harm to forests. This can happen when people cut down trees to replace forests with farmland, or when wildfires occur naturally or are started on purpose in dry regions. Restoring forest landscapes is closely connected to this issue because the loss of forest ecosystems often leads to serious problems, such as soil erosion and desert-like conditions. These changes harm the quality of habitats and the animals that live there. However, in some cases, wildfires can help increase the number of different plant and animal species in the affected area. When this happens, forest restoration plans may focus on using the land in different ways.
Forest restoration projects
A study shows that about 300 million people live on land in the Global South where tropical forests can be restored. This land makes up a large part of the population in low-income countries. The study suggests that local communities should be included in forest restoration projects. Project Drawdown lists restoring tropical forests as one of the most important ways to reduce climate change because these forests can store a lot of carbon. It says that local communities should have a role in what is planted if restoration is to last. A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that Indigenous Peoples are among those most at risk from climate change effects. Because of this, they must be central to forest restoration and conservation efforts.
The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project (AFR) is a 10-year effort that started in 2010. Its goal is to reduce the risk of severe wildfires, protect water quality, old-growth forests, wildlife, people, homes, and the overall quality of life in the Ashland watershed. The main groups working together on this project are the U.S. Forest Service, the City of Ashland, Lomakatsi Restoration Project, and The Nature Conservancy. The project began with funding from the Economic Recovery stimulus and later received support from the Forest Service Hazardous Fuels program and the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnerships program to continue through 2016.
In southern Oregon’s dry forests, wildfire is a real danger for both land managers and property owners. The city of Ashland borders the surrounding forest in an area called the wildland–urban interface (WUI). In the past, these forests had frequent fires that prevented too much buildup of flammable materials. However, over 100 years of fire suppression on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has made forests denser and increased the amount of flammable materials, raising the risk of dangerous wildfires.
The AFR project uses restoration methods that mimic natural processes in dry, mixed-conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest. These methods include reducing flammable materials, thinning small trees, and using controlled burns. The project focuses on keeping the largest and oldest trees, protecting wildlife habitats, riparian areas, erodible soils, and slope stability to maintain ecological health.
Since starting in 2010, the AFR project has offered educational opportunities to thousands of students and helped the local community by creating jobs and training workers. As of February 2022, about 13,000 acres of land treated by the AFR project were in maintenance mode. Oregon’s Landscape Resiliency Program, created by Senate Bill 762, is now funding brush cutting and low-intensity burns to help restore fire-adapted forests.
In 1998, Costa Rica began efforts to regrow forests on land that had been used for cattle farming. This land had compacted soil and low nutrients, making natural regrowth difficult. Through a partnership with agricultural waste disposal, about 12,000 megagrams of orange peels and pulp were added to a 3-hectare area of former pasture. This added organic material increased woody plant growth by 176%, improved species diversity, tripled tree evenness (measured by the Shannon Index), and raised soil nutrient levels measured at 2 and 16 years after the application (Truer et al., 2018). A significant increase in canopy coverage was also observed, suggesting that using agricultural waste could help future forest restoration efforts.
Forest landscape restoration
Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is a planned effort to help forests and people thrive in areas where forests have been lost or damaged. It uses tools and methods to connect local forest restoration efforts with larger goals for the entire landscape. These goals are decided through discussions involving people who care about the land, such as local communities, governments, and organizations. FLR grew from the work of major international groups, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the World Resources Institute, and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO).
FLR aims to balance the needs of people and wildlife by restoring forest functions across large areas. It helps landscapes stay strong and healthy so future plans can be made. Local communities are essential because they help shape the land and benefit from restored forests. FLR activities involve many people and focus on shared goals.
FLR programs usually aim to achieve several things, depending on local needs:
– Find the reasons forests are damaged and stop more destruction.
– Involve people in planning restoration, solving land-use conflicts, and sharing benefits.
– Make decisions about how land is used that most people agree on.
– Protect plants and animals that are important locally and globally.
– Provide benefits like clean water, protection from soil erosion and floods, and supplies of food, medicine, and firewood. Communities may also earn income from ecotourism, selling carbon credits through REDD+, or receiving payments for environmental services.
FLR uses methods from development, conservation, and natural resource management, such as studying a landscape’s features, involving local people in planning, and adapting strategies as needed. FLR projects may include protecting damaged forests, helping forests regrow naturally, planting trees, or using agroforestry to meet immediate needs.
The IUCN leads the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration, which helps spread FLR ideas worldwide. In 2014, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) created the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism to support countries in achieving the Bonn Challenge (restoring 150 million hectares of land by 2020) and the Convention on Biological Diversity goals.
In 2015, FAO and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification released papers about funding FLR. These papers explain how public policies can support FLR and describe financial tools available for restoration projects.
To fund FLR, FAO suggests using different financial tools suited to each stage of the process. Options include loans, grants, government spending, or policies that encourage investment. Choosing the best strategy for each project is important. Using methods that help local people and investors work together, creating projects that attract funding, and combining different financial tools can make FLR efforts more successful.