Ecological Restoration in Context: Ethics and the Naturalization of Former Military Lands

Abstract

The philosophy of ecological restoration has focused primarily on three issues: the question of what to restore, whether and why restoration “fakes” nature, and how restoration shapes human-nature relationships. Using “M2W conversion sites” – former military lands recently redesignated as U.S. national wildlife refuges – as a case study, we examine how the restoration of these lands challenges existing philosophical frameworks for restoration. We argue that a contextual, case-based analysis best reveals the key ethical and philosophical questions related to restoration at M2W sites, and that such an approach may be useful in developing more nuanced philosophical analyses of ecological restoration more generally.