Habitat Restoration: The Ultimate Guide

Habitat restoration is the process of reestablishing, protecting or managing a habitat or the ecosystem within it.

In the past 50 years, we have lost approximately 68% of the global wildlife population, and if we keep going at this pace, we will not only eliminate them but ourselves as well, because we are reliant on them for our survival.

In this post, we’ve provided an ultimate guide to habitat restoration, our biggest hope of protecting the wildlife left on the planet. Here’s what we’ll cover:

What are the Threats to Natural Habitats?

The biggest threats to natural habitats are land and sea use changes, overexploitation of natural resources, climate change, pollution, and invasive species.

Land Use and Sea Use Changes

Terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have been the most affected by crop or livestock production. Approximately 33% of the land is now dedicated to these activities giving rise to land-use change and killing thousands of species’ habitats in the process.

Since 1992, the urban areas have doubled, which has led to a massive reduction in wetlands, scrublands, and woodlands, driving species to habitats that aren’t suitable for them, and resulting in their untimely extinction.

In the US Great Plains, known as America’s breadbasket, the cropland expansion has wiped out about 138,000 nesting habitats for North American migratory waterfowl. Imagine the impact of our land expansion throughout the world on the various plants and animal species!

In addition to the terrestrial and freshwater habitats and ecosystems, humans are consistently destroying ocean biodiversity as well. According to IUCN, the most common anthropogenic threats to the ocean are habitat modification and overexploitation.

The most threatened species by human activities in the ocean are corals and sea anemones (anthozoan species).

The main reasons leading to ocean change are:

• Pollution
• Logging
• Dredging
• Draining of wetlands
• Coastal Development

Overexploitation of Natural Resources

Humans exploit natural resources in all forms be it fishing, hunting, logging, oil, gas, water, and the list goes on. All in all, we are destroying our planet to fulfill our insatiable appetite for development and luxury.

In 2017, it was found that over 50 years of freshwater pumping from the Ogallala aquifer has caused a massive dip in the fish population in the area, which covers over eight states in the US Great Plains.

In another research, it was found that by 2050 around 42% to 79% of the groundwater sources would have passed the ecological tipping points. Without the required ecology and habitat, it would be impossible for the various species to survive, let alone thrive!

Climate Change

Climate change is either killing the wildlife due to starvation or driving them away from their natural habitats.

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the current climate change has affected 47% of land-based flightless mammals and 25% of threatened birds.

In 2019, Montpellier in France suffered from an intense heat wave when the temperature reached 43 °C. This led to the death of Great tit chicks in 30 nest boxes when their parents couldn’t feed them due to the intense heat.

The fires in Australia and their impact on the various plant and wildlife species are quite well-known as well.

The migratory birds and animals travel to protect themselves against the changing weather but the climate change is impacting their travel patterns as unpredictable weather conditions are forcing them to either change their patterns or lead to disease and untimely death.

Pollution

Pollution is the fourth largest driver of biodiversity loss.

Almost everyone’s aware of the plastic pollution suffocating the ocean and the biodiversity within it, but few people are aware of how air, land, and soil pollution isn’t far behind.

Nitrogen pollution is one of the biggest threats to the forests and the wildlife thriving in them.

In Scotland, approximately 30,000 hectares of rainforest are threatened by nitrogen pollution.

Invasive Species

Approximately one-fifth of the Earth’s surface is susceptible to non-native plant and animal invasions. This means various species of animals are clashing with each other due to their untimely and unnecessary introduction to areas native to other wildlife.

The biggest consequence of invasive species is observed in the Gough Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, where rodents have brought the Tristan albatross to the brink of extinction. The rodents were introduced accidentally by the sailors in the 19th century.

What is Habitat Restoration?

Given the current situation of the world and the looming climate crisis, the world is realising the impact of its harmful activities on various species and their habitats. Efforts are made around the world for the conservation of wildlife and wild places.

The most essential terms in this regard are habitat restoration and wildlife conservation. Let’s look at what exactly they mean and what’s the difference between them.

Habitat restoration is the process of the rehabilitation of an area to protect, recreate, or manage an ecosystem. This is done by returning the abiotic (e.g. soil moisture, soil pH, water content) and biotic (e.g. species interaction and their composition) characteristics.

Successful restoration of habitats require an intense understanding of the various species’ lifecycles, interactions, food, water, nutrients, and space and shelter requirements to ensure their sustainable populations.

In the cases where exact rehabilitation of the habitat is not possible, wildlife corridors are made.

Wildlife corridors are areas that allow various species to survive and thrive in and around human civilisation.

Now, let’s talk a bit about wildlife conservation.

Wildlife conservation deals with protecting plant and animal species from extinction as humans exploit them and encroach on their resources.

The major difference between habitat restoration and wildlife conservation is that the former deals with returning the habitats back to as they were, whereas, the latter encompasses ways to preserve and improve the existing wildlife.

Why Do We Need Habitat Restoration?

It’s believed that by 2050, 95% of Earth’s land will be degraded.

We need habitat restoration to increase biodiversity and species population, safeguard our health as it depends on the ecosystem health, regenerate soil, improve our relationship with nature, and protect indigenous cultures and knowledge.

Increasing Biodiversity and Species Population

Biodiversity and wildlife can’t survive without the required interaction between organisms, which is non-existent without suitable habitats.

Therefore, if we want to conserve and regenerate the dwindling population of various animals, we need to conserve their natural habitats.

For instance, if we look at rhinos, they are on the verge of extinction. One of the biggest culprits in bringing them to this fate is habitat loss.

Rhinos are suffering from fragmentation and are forced to inbreed. This is all because of their scattered population caused by habitat loss.

You can read more about how and why only five of the rhino species are left and endangered in ‘Endangered Rhinos | What Rhinos are Endangered and Why?’.

Human Health Depends on Ecosystem Health

Restoration of various ecosystems and their habitats is essential for human health. COVID-19, which has so far caused over six million deaths, is a harsh reminder of how habitat and ecosystem degradation could lead to the emergence and spread of novel pathogens.

By restoring the microbial relationships through revegetation, we may improve our immune systems.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer says in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants:

“As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”

Healthy Soils are Essential for Human Life Survival on Earth

Our food systems are reliant on healthy soils. However, the excessive exploitation of this natural resource has resulted in its degradation. We can’t revive the degraded soils without restoring their complex relationships with plants and different microbes, for instance, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.

Therefore, if we want to protect our food systems and achieve the goals of wildlife conservation, we need to restore the microbe communities and re-establish their ecosystems within the soil.

To Improve Our Relationship with Nature

Due to the continuous degradation of the environment and nature, we are suffering from the shifting baseline syndrome.

The Shifting Baseline Syndrome is defined as a psychological and sociological phenomenon in which the people’s expectations or accepted thresholds of environmental conditions and nature are continuously getting lower. As a new generation grows, they see less nature and consider it to be normal.

Due to the shifting baseline syndrome, people are becoming less likely to engage in environmental protection and wildlife conservation practices because they perceive it to be normal.

This is resulting in reducing people’s connection with nature making it more difficult to achieve environmental and ecological conservation goals.

To Protect Indigenous Cultures and Knowledge

Erosion of ecosystems could lead to the erosion of the indigenous culture as it’s reliant on land. The knowledge and language of the indigenous communities are a treasure as it has evolved over thousands of years and could be lost if we keep compromising on ecosystems, which are the main livelihoods of the majority of such cultures.

Ecological and habitat restoration is the key to ensuring versatility and the rich diversity of human culture on the planet. We can’t successfully achieve wildlife conservation and ecological restoration without a healthy relationship with the indigenous cultures as traditional ecological knowledge is very thin without their contribution.

Habitat Restoration in Sustainable Development Goals

Habitat restoration comes under Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. It is devoted to:

“Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”.

You can read more about the targets and indicators of this goal on the sustainable development goals official website.

Let’s have a look at what we’ve achieved so far in terms of wildlife conservation and habitat restoration under Goal 15 of SDGs.

• We haven’t succeeded in halting the forest area loss. In 2000, the forest area was 31.9%; it fell to 31.2% in 2020, which means we lost 100 million hectares of the world’s forests.
• Sustainable forest management saw a positive trend as protected and certified forest areas either increased or remained stable.
• Since 2000, there has been a 13% to 14% increase in terrestrial key biodiversity, freshwater key biodiversity, and mountain key biodiversity area within protected areas.
• Over the past 30 years, there has been a 10% increase in species that are at the risk of extinction.
• Approximately 98% of the countries and territories have adopted national legislation for the prevention or control of invasive alien species.

Habitat Restoration Methods

There are various ways to restore natural habitats but the four most essential ones are reforestation, riparian buffering, prairie restoration, and coral reef restoration.

Reforestation

Reforestation is the process of restoring forest areas through planting native plants, shrubs, grasses, and trees.

Reforestation becomes necessary after excessive anthropogenic activity such as logging. It also becomes essential after a massive natural disaster such as the forest fires in Australia.

In a few cases, when the forest suffers massive degradation, animal species either die or migrate. In such circumstances, reforestation efforts include introducing the native species back, usually from the captive ones.

One of the most effective reforestation strategies is to improve soil moisture, mineral content, aeration, and microorganisms. This is usually done by introducing mycorrhizal fungus into the plants through inoculation. It is essential for plants to absorb nutrients and minerals. Without it, native plants aren’t able to compete against non-native plants, and eventually, the rehabilitation efforts fail.

Riparian Buffering

Riparian buffering is a type of habitat restoration in which a belt of rocks and vegetation is placed alongside the river or stream boundaries to control erosion and protect the water against polluted runoff.

Riparian buffers are usually placed after floods, construction projects, and deforestation to protect the freshwater ecosystems.

Floods are particularly disastrous for small inhabitants in freshwaters as it kills their eggs and young.

Similarly, large-scale deforestation and construction projects result in silt and construction materials runoff into the water bodies leading to either the suffocation of the fish eggs and young or their removal to the mainstream channels, resulting in high predation.

Prairie Restoration

In North America, the most affected habitat is that of prairies, a large grassland with mostly plants and grasses, and a moderate climate.

Prairies extend from the United States to Canada. In Illinois, there once stood 35,000 square miles (91,000 km_²) of prairie land, which now has been reduced to a meager 3 square miles (7.8 km²).

Prairies are essential for the bee populations, who are the backbone of sustainable crops through cross-pollination.

In order to revive the prairies, prairie restoration is done.

Prairie restoration is the process of restoring and reestablishing prairie lands lost to industry, farming, and commerce.

The main aim of prairie restoration is to conserve or restore the Earth’s topsoil by protecting it against erosion from wind and water.

The following steps are taken in prairie restoration:

• Site establishment by land clearing and preparation
• Seeds harvested from nearby restorations and remnant prairies are planted
• Site management by burning, grazing, mowing, and haying invasive species and weed

Coral Reef Restoration

Coral reefs are the biggest source of life and habitat for the thousands of marine plants and fish species. Unfortunately, the intense commercial and recreational activities of humans have brought them to the brink of destruction.

Following are the main anthropogenic threats to coral reefs:

• Pollution
• Overfishing
• Destructive fishing techniques, for instance, the usage of dynamite or cyanide
• Collection of coral reefs for the aquarium industry
• Destruction of coral reefs to build recreational centers
• Dredging and mining
• Acidity change in the oceans due to polluted runoffs
• Temperature change due to the warming climate

There are two main forms of coral reef restoration: active and passive coral reef restoration.

Passive coral reef restoration is the creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Active coral reef restoration involves efforts to improve coral reef health, abundance, or biodiversity.

Coral reefs reproduce asexually, which means even a single one, if kept healthy and safe, could form a whole community. There are three main objectives in coral reef restoration:

• Structural Restoration – Structural restoration is the process of creating artificial reefs and reef structures to promote the damaged or dwindling corals’ restoration and growth.
• Biological Restoration – Biological restoration is the process of increasing the living corals on the reefs by fixing broken coral fragments, culturing coral larvae, and transplanting and propagating coral colonies.
• Physical Restoration – Physical restoration involves improving the physical conditions in which the coral reefs are present to enhance their growth, reproduction ability, and health. Examples include mid-water coral nurseries and mineral accretion devices.

We hope by now you would have understood the impact and reasons for habitat loss, what is habitat restoration, why we need it, and what are the different ways in which we can achieve it. Even though it might seem difficult to play a part in habitat restoration or habitat conservation, you can do it by adopting a sustainable lifestyle. Head over to this link to find out how.