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The effectiveness of offsets and mitigation in restorating degraded ecosystems is questioned in an article published in BioScience.

According to the lead author, an internationally renowned ecosystem restoration expert at The University of Western Australia, the belief that complex ecosystems are fully restorable opens the door to trade-off schemes between development and restoration and may lead to loss of high-value conservation areas.

Australian Laureate Fellow Winthrop Professor Richard Hobbs writes:  "The expectation that systems can be restored underlies much policy on offsets and mitigation.  For instance, it has been found that only 21 per cent of wetland mitigation sites met tests of ecological equivalency to lost wetlands."

He argues that to ensure the future of the planet, there is a strong need for the development of a more effective ecology - intervention ecology - to enable the analysis and management of ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.  We have gone beyond being able to return ecosystems to the states in which they may have been before the industrial age.

Professor Hobbs believes that while "humanity has a moral responsibility to try to restore damaged areas, there is also a moral hazard in promising to do the impossible."

In his article, co-written with researchers from the University of California and Stanford University, Professor Hobbs cites the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and explains the levels of intervention required to return the Gulf ecosystems to health.

He also gives examples of different levels of intervention - reactive, active and proactive - at local, regional and global scales focussed on problems such as toxic site remediation, regional reduction of nitrogen inputs from agriculture and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Quoting from Associate Professor Paul Wapner's book Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism Professor Hobbs writes, "The end of nature" may be here, but humankind can "take hold of the steering wheel of life and become intelligent, compassionate and ... mindful managers of the planet."

Media references

Winthrop Professor Richard Hobbs (+61 8)  6488 4691
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716