Are restored ecosystems wild or cultivated?

[tallastro]

I think the primary practices were burning and regulation of nut harvesting.

This seems to support the idea. https://nature.berkeley.edu/huntsingerlab-wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/huntsinger-mccaffrey-yurok-good-copy.pdf

[brnhn]

I’m not sure I understand your question, I didn’t say anything about indigenous people or redwoods. Did you reply to the wrong post? Or are you disagreeing with my statement about mature trees in the PNW?

[tonyrebelo]

IUCN standards of restoration of extinct species, requires that after re-introduction 3 generations of natural recruitment must occur before a species as delisted as “extinct in the wild”. So in Fynbos we require 45 years (3 fire cycles) before we regard a restored population as ‘natural’.
However, individual plants (vs populations) are surely wild if they self recruit.
However, ecosystems are an entirely different kettle of fish. To decide if they are wild or cultivated, there needs to be an external measure of what comprises a natural community, and if most the the restored members are recruiting naturally. Establishing a fraction of species in an ecosystem is surely not restoration?
But the solution (#3) and what iNat thinks are not relevant here. The question is “are restored ecosystems wild or cultivated” - and iNat does not deal with ecosystems, so iNat considerations do not apply.
The question is “loaded” though. The use of the term “restored” precludes “rehabilitation” which is the creation of a community that is not natural to the area. The issue becomes one of how strict one is with the term “restoration” and how one decides that the original community has been restored, rather than replaced by some man-made community. Hence it is essential to have a reference to decide on restoration vs some other planting (pasture, meadow, artificial assemblage).