Ecological Restoration
The practice of assisting the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged or destroyed, so they regain health, function and resilience.
What is ecological restoration?
Ecological restoration is the practice of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed. Its aim is not to build a garden or a plantation but to help a living system regain its own health, biodiversity, structure and capacity to function and adapt. In many European languages the same idea is carried by the word renaturation — literally, returning something to nature.
Restoration covers a wide range of work: stabilising and rebuilding soils, restoring the natural movement and retention of water, removing invasive species, replanting native vegetation, and re-establishing the relationships between plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms that make an ecosystem whole. The Society for Ecological Restoration sets out internationally recognised principles and standards for this practice, emphasising native reference ecosystems, local knowledge and long-term commitment.
The field has moved to the centre of global environmental policy. The United Nations declared 2021–2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and in 2024 the European Union adopted its Nature Restoration Law, setting binding targets to restore degraded habitats across member states. Restoration is now understood not as an optional extra to conservation but as essential to reversing biodiversity loss and building resilience to a changing climate.
How Terra Humana understands ecological restoration
Ecological restoration is not one activity among many for Terra Humana — it is written into our name and our purpose. The foundation's Italian title speaks of rinaturazione, renaturation, and it is the ground on which everything else stands. We understand restoration as the repair of relationships: between soil and water, between plants and the creatures that depend on them, and ultimately between people and the living world.
We also understand it as slow, humble work. Restoration cannot be rushed or declared complete on a timetable; it is judged over decades by whether a system can increasingly sustain itself. For us this ecological patience is inseparable from the human side of our mission — the two are the same movement, which is why restoration and rehumanization belong together.
Ecological restoration in practice
At Sa Medada, near Jerzu in the Ogliastra region of Sardinia, restoration is the underlying task of Project Eden. Much of the Mediterranean interior has been worn down by centuries of grazing, fire and erosion, leaving thin soils and stripped hillsides. The foundation's work begins there: rebuilding soil and its organic life, slowing and storing water in the landscape so it soaks in rather than runs off, and re-establishing both native vegetation and productive tree systems.
Restoration at Sa Medada draws on several methods documented elsewhere in this knowledge base — natural succession, soil regeneration and syntropic cultivation — combined according to what each part of the land needs. This is early, long-horizon work, and we describe it as a direction and a commitment rather than a finished achievement, documenting honestly what recovers, how fast, and what does not.
Frequently asked
What is ecological restoration?
Ecological restoration, sometimes called renaturation, is the practice of helping ecosystems that have been degraded or destroyed to recover their health, biodiversity and natural functions. It ranges from replanting native vegetation and reviving soils to reconnecting rivers and reintroducing lost species.
How does Terra Humana apply ecological restoration?
Ecological restoration is the core purpose named in Terra Humana's own founding charter. At Sa Medada in Sardinia the foundation repairs soil, restores water retention and re-establishes native and productive vegetation, working to bring degraded Mediterranean land back to life.
Related terms
Rewilding
A restoration approach that returns ecosystems to self-sustaining states by reducing human control and letting natural processes and native species lead.
Ecological Succession
The gradual process by which the mix of species in an ecosystem changes over time, from pioneers toward a mature community.
Syntropic Agriculture
A regenerative farming method that grows food by accelerating natural forest succession, developed by Ernst Götsch in Brazil.
Rehumanization
Restoring the human being as a conscious, caring participant in the living world — the human counterpart to ecological restoration.
Assisted Migration
Deliberately moving tree species or their seed to areas better suited to the future climate, when they cannot spread there fast enough on their own.
Biochar
A stable, charcoal-like material made by heating plant matter with little oxygen, mixed into soil to improve its structure, water-holding and living activity.
Climate-Adapted Trees
Tree species and varieties chosen for their ability to thrive in hotter, drier future conditions rather than the climate of the recent past.
Keyline Design
A land-planning method that reads a slope's natural shape to spread rainwater across it, storing moisture in the soil instead of losing it to runoff.
Millennial Olive Trees
Olive trees over a thousand years old, including Sardinia's ancient wild olives (olivastro), among the oldest living trees in the Mediterranean.
Monumental Trees
Trees officially recognised for their great age, size, rarity or cultural value, and protected as living natural monuments — in Italy under Law 10/2013.
Mycorrhiza
The underground partnership between plant roots and fungi: the fungi extend the roots' reach for water and nutrients in exchange for the plant's sugars.
Rainwater Harvesting & Swales
Shaping the land with shallow, level ditches and basins so that rain soaks into the ground where it falls, instead of running off and being lost.
Regreening & Reversing Desertification
The process of bringing living vegetation and fertility back to land that has dried out or degraded, halting and reversing the slide toward desert.
Tree Sponsorship
A donation to the foundation with a symbolic dedication of a real tree — never a purchase or ownership, and made without carbon-offset claims.
See this in practice
Sources
- Society for Ecological Restoration — International Principles and Standards (2019)
- UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030
- EU Nature Restoration Law (Regulation 2024/1991)
Last updated: 2026-07-15