Restored landscapes tend to be areas of land which are then accessible to their communities, think restored wetland nature reserves or coal tips in the UK or restored community forests in Tanzania or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Restored areas never achieve their original unspoilt state, for example, we hardly ever see the return of apex predator, such as wolves, to community forests. This can lead to particular species becoming dominant, creating an imbalance and a heightened risk of the spread of diseases from wildlife to humans. Restoration needs to be accomplished without increasing risks to the community, but little is currently understood about the processes involved.
A new 16-partner European-funded research programme is set to work with communities from Sweden and Finland to the DRC and Tanzania. It will not only investigate how restoration may impact disease spillover risk, but also enable local communities to take part in restoration and set their own restoration priorities. The work will lead to clearer policies and guidelines for restoration which can be followed in any temperate or tropical landscape.
Bangor University joined the European Horizon Research funded programme with the appointment of Dr Lucinda Kirkpatrick, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, who was instrumental in developing the research project while at the University of Antwerp.
“We need to be working to improve our landscapes and restore degraded areas, as these often provide important community resources, but we also need to understand what negative effects might happen as a result of restoration and be able to provide the tools and guidelines so that people can avoid any inadvertent negative effects, such as increased incidence of rats or Lyme’s Disease,” explained Lucinda.
This large project will also include some innovative technology. Partners in the consortium will be developing new monitoring tools that communities can use to assess the biodiversity of their environments.
Five academics in the University of Stirling’s Faculty of Sciences will partner in the project, including Dr Brad Duthie, a Lecturer in Environmental Modelling in Biological and Environmental Sciences, who said,
“Part of this work will focus on engaging stakeholders using an online game which will simulate the decision-making involved in landscape restoration under different restoration scenarios.
“Game play will be underpinned by realistic models of ecological and environmental processes, and player decision-making will be recorded to collect data and learn about how people prioritise different decisions in restoration. This work will educate game players on restoration while also giving us a better understanding of how social and economic factors might drive the restoration process.
We will also be surveying the biodiversity in restored sites and investigating disease prevalence.”
"In degraded ecosystems, certain species that carry infectious pathogens can proliferate, and this can have serious consequences for human wellbeing. While biodiversity restoration is hailed as a remedy for this, the introduction of new species via ecosystem restoration could unwittingly usher in fresh health risks. To ensure that restoration processes result in healthier landscapes, an understanding of these intricate processes is paramount. That is what we aim to do with RESTOREID," added Prof. Dr. Herwig Leirs, Professor, Department of Biology, Evolutionary Ecology Group, at the University of Antwerp.
