NOVEL ECOSYSTEMS - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Natures Salvation - page 104

as many again showed partial recovery, and only the remaining 67 showed no recovery. And recovery
did not take the “centuries and millennia speculated previously”; it usually took about forty to fifty years
for forests, where trees have to regrow, and less for other ecosystems. 29
That time frame may not bring back the full range of species. Often, newcomers will move in. But
the authors said their evidence “does not support gloomy predictions,” among which they included the
bleak assessments of the prestigious Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The MEA, headed by Bob
Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank, and others, declared in 2005—without, Jones and Schmitz
noted, providing a reference—that “once an ecosystem has undergone a nonlinear change, recovery to
the original state may take decades or centuries and may sometimes be impossible.” 30 Of course, the
MEA was right about the “original state.” Nothing ever goes back to its original state. But rich ecosys-
tems would usually reappear. There was, Jones and Schmitz concluded, “much hope that humankind can
transition to more sustainable use of ecosystems.”
This story of ecological recovery is hugely good news from a major analysis of hundreds of studies.
Yet when I checked Google Scholar four years after publication, Jones and Schmitz had received a paltry
fifty-nine citations. Do scientists simply not want to know the good news? Jones thought not. “In gen-
eral, there is a tendency to be pessimistic about ecosystems' likelihood of recovery, even when most of
the data show it is possible,” she said. “When we find recovery, we may first think, 'Did I measure the
right thing? Am I missing something?' rather than saying, 'Right, this is an example of a success.'”
Some fear that accepting the value of novel ecosystems and the alien species within them suggests
an “anything goes” approach—“tantamount to giving up the good fight for conservation,” as Andrew
Light of George Mason University puts it. 31 Logging? Why not? Toxic waste? Some species will like
it. Farming? No worries, when the plows are put away, nature will always come back. But it is not a
call to let rip. It simply offers hope and realism. It is surely folly to ignore the conservation potential
of degraded and logged-over forests or of abandoned farmland simply because they don't match our
idealized expectations of the pristine. Conservation in the twenty-first century requires an open-minded
assessment of what might work. Not a sullen retreat into blinkered orthodoxy.