SETTING OBJECTIVES AND DEFINING OUTPUTS FOR ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION AND HABITAT CREATION

The past 40 years have seen the legal and policy framework for nature conservation in Britain extend from protection and preservation to inc lude enhancement through techniques such as ecological restoration and habitat creation. Clear objectives need to be set for ecological rest oration and habitat creation schemes because the processes involve hum an intervention in combination with natural factors operating over tim e. Objectives are required for both management and monitoring in order to enable measurement of success or failure. The most effective way t o achieve high-quality restoration and creation schemes is to define t he output of the process-a habitat, vegetation type, or biological com munity. The better the definition of the output, the greater the need to define the inputs and the nature of the intervening processes. Ecol ogists and environmental managers have a key role to play in establish ing the degree of definition necessary in order to achieve a particula r objective.