ABSTRACT
One of the greatest challenges facing the practice of ecological restoration in the twenty-first century is the rapid pace and global scale of current and projected environmental change. There are many sources for these changes to the environment – conversion of ecosystems to other types and uses, habitat fragmentation, declines in species populations, extinctions of species, the human assisted movement of species from their original ecosystem to new ecosystems on a global scale, pollution, and global climate change. Almost all of these changes are either directly or indirectly related to continuing growth and movement of the human population – a population which is projected to continue growing until at least the middle of the twenty-first century.
