Will We Reconnect with Nature?

This story about ecosystem recovery is part of The Solutions Effect, a monthly newsletter covering the best of solutions journalism in the sustainability and social impact space. If you aren’t already getting this newsletter, you can sign up here.

TriplePundit turns 20 this year, in the middle of what the United Nations dubbed the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Ironically, researchers just learned the average person uses fewer nature-related words than ever before, a clear sign that the disconnect between humans and nature is growing. Where we once meandered through meadows cut by babbling brooks and listened to leaves crunch under our feet in the forest, we now commute on concrete amongst cars and buildings.

For better or worse, we are inspired by the world around us. Shifts in that environment change the way we write and speak about nature, or whether we mention it at all. Organizations like the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services cite diminishing interactions with nature as a causal factor in biodiversity loss and climate change. How can we steward an environment we’re so disconnected from?

We can start by talking about it (and maybe taking a stroll wherever we can find nature). To mark TriplePundit’s 20th year as a newsroom, we’re reflecting on how the global sustainability space has evolved and changed, and I tracked more progress in ecosystem restoration than I expected. As our disconnect with nature grows, we yearn for it back.

Still, a long, asphalt road lies ahead. Researchers expect the gap between humans and nature to continue growing until at least 2050, when the groundwork we’re laying now might finally bring it closer to our daily lives. That future depends on continuing to protect and restore ecosystems, an objective that frequently finds itself in the crosshairs of policy and development.

Even so, people everywhere are finding ways to reforge that connection for themselves and those around them — and many have successfully brought ecosystems back from collapse with conservation projects. Their work could fill the future with beautiful descriptions of nature once again. Here’s how solutions journalists covered some of them.

Filtering the grime out of New York Harbor

New York City was once known for the abundance of oyster beds in its harbors and canals. Then came decades of overharvesting, shoreline development and pouring raw sewage into the water. When the city’s last commercial oyster operation closed in 1927, New York Harbor was already long-associated with pollution, filth and disease. Oysters became a rare sight.

In their search for algae to eat, oysters act as natural water filters — cleaning up to 50 gallons of water every day by removing organic particles and nitrogen. New Yorkers eventually realized bringing the mollusks back could help the harbor recover. By 2000, almost three decades after the Clean Water Act prohibited waste and sewage dumping, the water quality improved enough for oysters to stand a chance. A decade later, the dream of a biodiverse harbor led to the creation of the Billion Oyster Project.

As the name suggests, the nonprofit plans to bring 1 billion oysters back to New York Harbor. It’s already restored 19 acres of reefs, now home to 140 million oysters, as 3p previously reported. The project relies on tens of thousands of students, volunteers, and citizen scientists to help with water testing, oyster restoration and monitoring. Project organizers hope that engagement and education will inspire New Yorkers to be stewards of their harbors.

“It’s hard to care about something that is only abstract, something you don’t have experience with,” Pete Malinowski, executive director of the Billion Oyster Project, told The BBC in late 2024. “Ultimately, people have a much greater ability to improve water quality than the oysters ever will.”

At the 1 billion mark, the oyster population should be self-sustaining, allowing the mollusks to reclaim their position as the backbone of the underwater ecosystem, filtering water, providing a habitat for other creatures and bolstering shorelines from erosion. There’s still a long way to go, and it will take more than oyster reefs to restore the health of the harbor. But thanks to many different efforts, particularly in the world of wastewater, New York Harbor is the cleanest it’s been in a century.

Greenery holds back the desert in Nigeria

The land around Makoda, a village in Nigeria’s Kano State, was left barren and dry by the encroaching Sahara Desert 20 years ago. It’s a problem communities across Africa face, threatening livelihoods and harvests in its wake, as 3p previously reported. Over the last two decades, a grassroots initiative called Wall of Trees has successfully reversed desertification on 15 hectares of farmland around Makoda, lighting the way for others to follow.

Launched by Nigerian civil engineer Newton Jibunoh in 2004, the initiative planted four tree lines of defense: 1,300 windbreak trees to protect the soil from erosion, 100 orchard trees to help with soil health, water retention and food security, and hundreds of woodlot trees the community could use for fuel, oils and food.

Within two years, farmers noticed significant improvements in their crop yields. Now, two decades later, the fields are yielding three times what they once did, and community members are pursuing farming full-time.

Organizers say successful reforestation depends on listening to and meeting local needs so the community can take ownership of the project. “If the farmer knows that when he plants a tree, he can get oil from the seeds, or harvest oranges or guava and sell it for money, he will look after them very well,” Abdulazeez Abba, Wall of Trees project manager, told 3p. Lacking local leadership and input is a frequent criticism of larger initiatives that aim to implement similar practices.

The decades-long return of the United Kingdom’s wetland engineers

Catching a glimpse of a Eurasian beaver scampering across a wetland en route to fell a tree or bolster a dam was once a common occurrence in the United Kingdom. By the 16th century, they were overhunted and believed to be extinct in Britain. Eventually, lakes, mires, bogs and the creatures that depend on them began to disappear, too.

Beavers are nature’s engineers. As the busy little builders go about their daily lives, they reconstruct the environment around them in beneficial ways. Just as human engineers build bridges and reservoirs to support our communities, beavers create wetland systems that reduce downstream flooding, increase water retention, filter water, and house species like otters, fish, birds and dragonflies. Losing them means slowly losing that ecosystem.

By the 1990s, conservationists in Scotland made this connection and began extensively studying how to reintroduce beavers, leading to the first official attempts in England in the early 2000s.

Efforts to bring back beavers have slowly picked up steam since then. Two decades after the first trials, Scotland released a 10-year beaver restoration plan, and England officially recognized the mammals as a legally protected native species. Small groups of beavers now call several areas of Britain home, most living in large enclosures. Early this year, the U.K. announced it would allow releases into the wild without enclosures for the first time. The first official wild beaver release took place in March in Purbeck, Dorset, where two pairs will roam free, put their building skills to work, and expand the wetlands that rare species in the area rely on.

Enclosures where beavers were introduced years ago are already reaping those benefits, including a nature reserve in Kent. “Our site was getting dry and the peat was drying out, but the beavers dammed it and now it’s wet, it’s boggy and we’ve had kingfisher return, water vole and turtledoves, which are a national rarity,” Paul Hadaway, director of conservation at Kent Wildlife Trust, told The BBC. Beavers at a London park are also credited with significantly reducing storm flooding, Reasons to be Cheerful reports.

Though beavers have garnered strong public support, not everyone is a fan. Some farmers and landowners experienced flooded fields as a result of beaver reintroduction. On the other hand, some supporters who think the government acts too slowly illegally release beavers into the wild. Experts say the slow transition is essential to prevent human-beaver conflict by allowing both parties to get used to coexisting again.

Replanting a tsunami barrier in Thailand

In December 2004, a powerful underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami that affected millions of people in 15 Indian Ocean countries. The tragedy reshaped the way the world looks at disaster preparedness and resilience, leading to improved tsunami warning systems, an international program for education and evacuation drills, and a push for mangrove restoration.

Researchers found that mangroves served as a buffer against damage along coasts during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and areas with dense mangrove forests faced much less damage. The coastal trees are also an important ecosystem, acting as water filters and supporting over 1,500 plants and animals like fish, birds, sloths and tigers. Unfortunately, mangroves had already been in decline for decades, often chopped down for their wood or to make room for aquaculture.

Mangrove restoration became a topic of global discussion after the tsunami. A year after the storm, the Mangroves for the Future initiative launched to support coastal ecosystem restoration projects in the Indian Ocean region, and countries and communities launched their own efforts.

A new partnership in Thailand, one of the countries affected by the tsunami, is studying mangrove DNA to learn which species are at risk and how to protect them, as 3p previously reported. Global gene sequencing company MGI Tech and the Thailand National Omics Center are harvesting and analyzing leaves from hundreds of mangroves to identify which ones are more susceptible to disease and environmental changes. So far, the scientists have found 15 species and their potential weaknesses, logging that information for the very first time.

Despite efforts like this, more mangroves are still lost than maintained. Over 50 percent of mangrove ecosystems across the globe are at risk of collapsing, according to a recent assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. But as more and more people recognize the benefits of these trees, more restoration projects are popping up all over the world to help turn that tide.

Ecosystem stewardship isn’t going to look like this for everyone. It could be picking up your trash when you leave the park, finding ways to reduce and reuse waste, volunteering for a local one-day restoration effort, or simply spending more time in nature. How do you reconnect with Mother Earth? Tell us at [email protected].

Featured image credit: Satu Katja/Wikimedia Commons