Oral History Interview, William R. Jordan III (2208)

Abstract

In his interview with Dave Egan on September 3, 2022, Bill Jordan detailed how he ended up at the UW Arboretum, home to restoration projects dating as far back as the 1930s. He then discussed his launch of a journal, then titled Restoration & Management Notes, (since changed to Ecological Restoration), in 1981 with colleague Keith Wendt, and how that led to the organization of the first symposium focused specifically on restoration in 1984. He detailed the founding and development of the Society for Ecological Restoration, as well as several successful publications that followed. He also discussed in-depth his definition of ecological restoration and how that has shifted throughout his career in response to technological improvements and changing worldviews. Last, he recounted rising awareness over the years that "preservation" of a living thing like an ecosystem is impossible, that its actual perpetuation will always depend on an ongoing program of management to compensate for novel influences on it---that is, on restoration---and also that this actually has additional value as a context for an active relationship with an historic, or "natural" ecosystem. This interview was conducted for the Ecological Restoration Project and is housed in the Oral History Collection at the UW-Madison Archives.