what is a good addition to this summary? (the difference between restoring over protection of biodiversity) Restoration over Protection I think the articles presented exemplary reasons as to why when it comes to matters of conservation, restoration goes hand in hand with protection, and even ventures beyond these two approaches. When comparing the two, I think it’s a first nature response of humans to want to protect something that is in danger; to preserve, or to provide some type of stability to an area that is facing detriment. Humans, however, are also capable of building and creating something larger than what is constantly being destroyed or damaged, usually as a consequence of human actions. In the world today the rate of detriment of wildlife landscapes by human factors is far exceeding the rate conservationists can work against the damage. While protection has largely been the first response in the methods of conservation efforts, I think restoration proves to be more effective in the long term. Ideally, areas that seek protection should be those that have seen little to no major infringement by human factors. I say ideally, because as we have discussed in class before the impact of humans is expansive and still further reaching (the exception perhaps being the depths of the ocean and even then, we may still be causing some lasting effects). Other areas that may benefit more from protection would be those that possess a high level of biodiversity, or species not commonly found in the world – the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar come to mind in these cases. Protection can even extend to one particular species in one concentrated piece of land. On the other hands, restoration would be best applied to areas that have already seen damage and would benefit from the efforts of various scientific fields and a little TLC. River clean ups and coral restoration come to mind as benefactors of restoration. Each of these approaches face a very omnipresent beast: money. Both paths stand to lose if there is either not enough capital to support their endeavors, or more capital is put in place to change political and public opinion in a different direction than conservation. In terms of restoration, projects can be expensive and extensive, but the end result is something that restores an ecosystem that can be gained upon for a multitude of reasons, depending on the project; cleaning up lakes, for example, can bring back fish populations and with maintenance can bring back fisherman which would mean money for whomever decides to outsource the lake through a conservation channel. Protection projects can be expensive as well, and may face larger opposition for various reasons: where protected area is and what species it maintains, whether the land or the species present have economic value that exceeds conservation value, if humans have to be moved for the sake of a species or land mass, etc. To put it short, I favor the approach of restoration over protection because to me protection feels like applying a band aid to a very large wound. The goals of restoration projects as of late are being clearly written out so that nothing like the 1994 discussion of semantics amongst an IUCN definition are overrun, and with today’s rapid technological development, it would be easier to restore a piece of land if not to its former glory, to a level where it can once again become sustainable and advantageous to any species that thrived there once before. As well, acts of restoration, while being a mostly reactive mechanism in terms of conservation, have the potential to instill protection clauses once applied, and continue the efforts of both approaches as they continue on.