Currently, based out of the University of Waterloo Dr. Stephen Murphy leads the Conservation and Restoration Ecology research group (CaRE). Dr. Murphy, or Steve as he prefers to be called, is also editor in chief of Restoration Ecology, a journal central to the field of Ecology published by Wiley. The journal is “at the forefront of a vital new direction in science and ecology.” I chatted with Steve for this profile in May 2022 as a part of Living Observatory’s ongoing series of profiles on notable and important figures in restoration ecology. Steve has quite an astounding history, one that apart from his achievements in ecology includes a brief career as a studio musician, and stage hand at Queen’s concert at Live Aid. He has been involved with restoration ecology in a range of guises and degrees for many years nonetheless. I believe Steve’s propensity to fluidly incorporate big picture ideas, and specificity in his conceptual toolbox may help those of us - restoration practitioners, environmental stewards, and the like – who are new to restoration ecology gain our footing as we explore this new field. Steve’s insights may also serve as a reminder, especially for those more ‘weathered’ environmentalists who feel bemused and uninspired of the value in revisiting the simple, profound, and equally burgeoning questions of why we do what we do, and who we do it for.
Heather Cray (left) and Jonas Hamberg (right) are two memebers of the CaRE (Conservation and Restoration Ecololgy) research group headed by Dr. Murphy.
For a fair share of his life, Steve researched domains of physiology and biochemistry. Of course, not all things last and sometimes, as was this case, for good reason. As his career progressed, Steve found himself attending early meetings alongside established ecologists who at the time were working on the cusp of a new branch of ecology centered around “restoration” interventions rooted in ecological principles and processes. It was these meetings - compounded with volunteer opportunities, a curious predisposition, and an underlying motivation to take a love of gardening to ‘another level’ - which gradually began to shift Steve’s north star toward the unfamiliar, emerging field of restoration ecology. Since this redirection in the 80’s, Dr. Murphy has stayed true to this direction and continues to explore questions around restoration of abandoned agricultural fields and landscapes in urban and rural settings. Much of his research is more generally housed in the praxis of “translational ecology”, an approach that explores methods which encourage communication between ecologists, the public, stakeholders, and other decision makers. Steve adapts his eclectic mix of knowledge to help weave solutions at the intersection of sociological, ecological, and political contexts that shape the problems at hand.
Dr. Stephen Murphy doing work on the field
Although Steve has been engaged with restoration for many years, he shows no signs of slowing down. During our sit down he was quick to highlight broader questions that inspire him today. Namely, tensions around uncertainty and how restoration ecology approaches the reality that as restoration practitioners we can never be exactly certain of our context dependent interventions since we can never be sure of the climactic ‘future’ on the horizon 6] [7]. As we confront socio-environmental degradation at multiple scales and devise practices moving forward, we must recognize that restoration interventions must be adaptable, and flexible if they intend to be successful. Forecasting is hard, doubly so when dealing with complex systems composed of multiple actors (a topic Superforecasting written by Dan Gardner and Phillip E. Tetlock covers in depth). In a sort-of pragmatic fashion though Dr. Murphy outlines that when facing uncertainty one of the best things restoration practitioners can do is to combine anticipation with intervention. In short, it is best to approach to the application of restoration ecology with a contextually sensitive, growth mindset that looks to the future rather than to the
past. In the face of environmental uncertainty, Steve urges that we balance the commitment to action that is core to ecology's applied nature with the ability to step back and assess the field's assumptions and predictions. As Steve says, nature does not conform to rulebooks, and while to a certain degree we need guiding principles, we cannot convince ourselves of the false premise that we can “codify the uncodifiable”. In the long-term practitioners should understand that we are not, as Steve puts it, trying to “control everything.. or nature”.
To provide clarity on this conversation around adaptability and uncertainty, I find it helpful to utilize an analogy where we see the restoration practitioner as a chef. As our chef crafts a menu or an intervention,they understand that they cannot control everything that makes up the final meal. A chef cannot control the reliability of supply chains, or the available produce and ingredients, or the behavior of the staff from night to night, or the taste of the hungirly awaiting diners. The same goes for restoration practitioners who face uncertainties and complexity at multiple scales. Under complex, challenging circumstances the best chefs (or restoration practitioners) adapt their expectations, approaches, and methods to create extraordinary results. I believe this analogy hits quite close to home as restoration ecology moves into a post-covid era. In the face of a new normal restoration practitioners must address a host of challenges and vulnerabilities. The far reaching impact of COVID has sent public and private actors scrambling to redraw maps and reset their compasses for sustainable development (Bratton, revenge of the real, 2021). More than ever discussions around the importance of restoring and conserving urban greenspaces are taking the public stage front and center as it became increasingly clear that lower-income communities were often left in hostile, cramped, challenging urban jungles for months with little or no access to green space during the lockdowns of 2020 (see: Withrow 2021, Kirabuno, 2022 and SEI 2020). In a post Covid world, our image of truly just sustainable development and civil life is incomplete without restoring urban deserts and insuring access to clean, and healthy environments for all peoples. Considering this realization, we have been served a demanding night of service and a combined effort between restoration practitioners and policy makers could prove invaluable to a successful outcome
As our conversation progressed Steve highlighted that although rules should not be treated as sacrosanct, there are definitive pitfalls, and lapses in guidance within the praxis that hold severe consequences and should be heeded with consistency . For example, Steve emphasized that restoration ecology and Ecology writ large needs to direct more attention and resources toward developing criteria, and principles which recognize and address the legacy of environmental racism, discrimination, and lack of meaningful consultation toward BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities and individuals(see, Waldron 2018). In short, restoration ecology cannot push interventions that stand on biological assumptions alone. The field’s practitioners need to confront how policy and politics are intertwined with interventions. We must consider how political ideology and influence shape funding of programs, preliminary research, and formulation of questions all the way down the pipeline to publishing and intervention. How to go about doing so is up for debate, but for a list of conventions we could build from are the Ten people-centered rules for socially sustainable ecosystem restoration (Elias, Marlène, et al., 2021).
As our conversation came to an end, Steve made it clear that while there is a lot at hand for restoration ecology, one need not look far for an idea of future directions. For instance, he was quick to highlight the potential impact of advances in technology, particularly in regard to remote sensing. Innovations in sensing technologies - such as those actively used and developed in the collaborations between LO and the Responsive Environments Group[11] at the MIT Media Lab – suggest that researchers, and others engaged in restoration can use data from these technologies to strengthen restoration methods and monitoring, and there by begin to tease out some of the inner workings of complex ecosystems. On the more social side, in a recent paper [12] [13] Steve mentioned that moving forward there ought to be, and already is in some respects, a resurgence of storytelling and art tied to restoration ecology. A central tenet of Living Observatory is exactly that. Using multiple technologies, LO researchers have consistently illustrated the process of becoming through documenting the “arc of change” as the landscapes transition from the retired cranberry farm landscape, to an active intervention, to a restored wetland. Progress in both the social and technological arms of restoration ecology may help make restoration ecology’s interventions function more effectively within complex social systems. Wrapping up, Steve illustrated that restoration ecology is resilient no matter the challenge because it is animated by a unique premise: a pan-generational promise of care for both living and nonliving beings of our planet, Earth, and beyond. It is this premise that drives Steve and other restoration practitioners to get out of bed and into the field on cold early mornings; and gives them the patience to collect data and the stamina to parse through copious amounts of information while they navigate challenges and pressures of the ecosystems they are working in.