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Restoration ecology is the study of renewing a degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystem through active human intervention. Restoration ecology specifically refers to the scientific study that has evolved as recently as the 1980s. Land managers, laypeople, and stewards have been practicing restoration for many hundreds, if not thousands of years (Anderson 2005), yet the scientific field of "restoration ecology" was first identified and coined in the late 1980s by John Aber and William Jordan. The study of restoration ecology has only become a robust and independent scientific discipline over the last two decades (Young et. al 2005).

The Society for Ecological Restoration defines ecological restoration as an "intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity and sustainability" (SER 2004). The practice of ecological restoration includes wide scope of projects including, but not limited to: erosion control, reforestation, removal of non-native species and weeds, revegetation of disturbed areas, daylighting streams, reintroduction of native species, as well as habitat and range improvement for targeted species. The term "ecological restoration" refers to the practice of the discipline of "restoration ecology".

In the view of biologist E. O. Wilson, "Here is the means to end the great extinction spasm. The next century will, I believe, be the era of restoration in ecology.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_ecology