What excites you about the SER’s Restoration Fellowship program? How does the SER fellowship fit with your career path? How can the fellowship support your overall goals?

Pursuing a research-focused graduate degree, one of my greatest concerns is making sure that my work is applicable and useful in informing restoration in practice. As a SER Restoration Fellow, I am most excited about having the opportunity to engage with work taking place in the “real world” not only to help inform my own research but also to have the opportunity to support impactful projects aimed at bridging the gap between science and practice.

My ideal career path would allow for me to continue engaging in research while also actively supporting the design and implementation of restoration projects. I often find myself feeling the need to choose one or the other, however, I think this is the sort of thinking that has kept the science-practice gap intact. As a fellow with SER— an organization focused on advancing the science, practice and policy of restoration— I am looking forward to learning more about what opportunities exist in this field that would allow me to participate across all of these aspects.

Zoe putting down e-mat for a stream restoration project. Her boot had gotten lost in the mud so she had to use a bucket as a substitute for the latter half of the day.

Tell us more about the project you will be working on?

As a Restoration Fellow, I will primarily be working on SER's International Principles & Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, 3rd Edition. Because the Standards are a living document, stakeholder input has been collected since the release of the second edition. Part of my role involves synthesizing feedback that has been received to date and helping to determine where content needs to be added or changed in the document. I’ll also be supporting the coordination of the author team to ensure the timely delivery of the third edition. 

What does ecological restoration mean to you?

I often find myself in awe of the array of ecosystems present in this world and the organisms that comprise them. To me, ecological restoration is the most direct way for us to support the continued existence of such a range of biodiversity in the face of human-driven climate and environmental change.

I often think of ecological restoration as a challenge of optimization. There are a wide range of factors that go into restoration planning, including a range of stakeholder values, ecological targets, future climate projections, and how a project fits into larger-scale conservation planning, and in my eyes, the goal is to minimize tradeoffs to deliver the best possible outcomes.

Tree planting in a banana plantation in the Ecuadorian Amazon as part of an initiative to diversity agricultural landscapes in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture.

What inspired you to pursue a career in ecological restoration? Tell us about your path to the ecological restoration field?

I’ve had an interest in ecology, ecosystems and how they’re organized, and the organisms within them for as long as I can remember. In an “autobiography” that I made for a school project in 1st grade, I wrote that I wanted to be a naturalist when I grew up. I went on to start “Nature Club” at my school in second grade, and spent a period of time in elementary school carrying around a used botany textbook and attempting to read it from cover to cover. My interest came with an intense sense of responsibility for protecting the environment, which led me to spend multiple recesses patrolling two cherry trees next to the playground to prevent my peers from breaking off their branches, as well as several weekends picking up trash in the creek behind the building where I grew up.

My first job was with the Student Conservation Association as an ecosystem restoration field crew member, which really set the trajectory for my career to date.  I feel lucky to have been exposed to this field of work at such a young age. I have a deep interest in the complexity of ecosystems and how drivers across spatiotemporal scales shape biodiversity and plant community development, but I have always been concerned with the “so what?” of my work. To me, a career in the field of restoration allows me to study my interests while also applying them in practice to deliver a positive impact.

Surveying a mixed cacao agroforestry system in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin.

Are there any particular areas or topics within the field ecological restoration that you are most passionate about or interested in?

I am most interested in how abiotic and biotic factors interact with one another across spatial and temporal scales to influence ecosystem development and function. More specifically, I am interested in how theories of biodiversity maintenance and successional theory can be applied to support restoration, specifically in the context of forest landscape management and spatial conservation planning.

How has your past experience prepared you for this fellowship position?

My past experience is relatively wide-ranging. Having pursued research in a wide range of sub disciplines, I hope to bring a multi-informed perspective to restoration science. I’ve also had the opportunity to implement restoration projects on the ground, support capacity-building efforts, and work within multi stakeholder groups for restoration planning. With experience in multiple facets of restoration, I have also had firsthand experience with the barriers and challenges in implementing restoration projects.

More specifically, my fellowship with SER will be focused on developing the International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, 3rd Edition. Before starting my graduate program, I worked at the US Forest Service developing national-level science syntheses on a range of topics related to forest management. This work involved developing long-term work plans, managing large author teams, and organizing and editing text provided by authors to deliver cohesive books and reports. I’m looking forward to applying what I learned during my time with USFS to support the preparation of the 3rd Edition of the Standards.

Nursery for restoration plantings in degraded wetlands and abandoned pasture fields in Tamil Nadu, India

What do you hope to gain from your fellowship experience with SER?

During my fellowship, I hope to gain a more in-depth understanding of the current work that is taking place in the field of restoration, ranging from different initiatives that currently exist to methods of practice that are being developed to effectively address drivers of ecological restoration. Additionally, I hope to come out on the other side with a better understanding of what is currently working in the field of restoration, what isn’t, and what could be improved.

I am also looking forward to having the opportunity to interact with a wide range of stakeholders and professionals working in this field. Because the study and practice of restoration is informed by multiple disciplines, I’m looking forward to engaging in conversations with people working on different aspects of restoration to better inform my own idea of what it means to effectively implement ecological restoration.

As someone living in the United States, I am hoping my fellowship experience will provide me with a sense of agency. While I have found myself struggling with a sense of powerlessness as a product of the current administration, I am grateful to have the opportunity to drive positive change by supporting SER’s ongoing projects.

What are you most excited to learn about during your time at SER?

The magnitude of resources that have been developed in recent years in response to the explosion of interest in ecological restoration is astonishing. As part of my work supporting the development of the third edition of the Standards, I’m excited to take stock of what frameworks, resources, and capacity-building tools currently exist to support the practice of restoration and how to interact with one another. By extension, I’m also looking forward to learning more about what knowledge and capacity-building gaps still exist and how they might be remedied.