SER will send a delegation to CBD SBSTTA15 meeting in Montreal, Canada November 7-11. Read the SER2011 Call to Action in English, Spanish and French

Missouri: Chesterfield is seeking volunteers to help Oct. 29 with habitat restoration in Central Park
The restoration will be done in cooperation with Operation Wild Lands (OWLs), which prepares volunteers of all ages to restore and maintain public lands throughout the region.

 Canada: You can build a forest!
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is seeking volunteers for two events focusing on forest restoration efforts. Taking place on Friday, November 18th on Pelee Island, these events provide volunteers with a chance to visit a globally rare habitat while helping to build a healthy and lasting forest community.

 The 8th Conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration - Europe (SER) will be held in Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic from 9th - 14th September, 2012. This offers an outstanding opportunity to exchange knowledge, create contacts and build new potential cooperation.

SER Members receive 25% off Island Press purchases. Contact Caroline Bronaugh at caroline@ser.org for details!

National Park Service Awards Biohabitats Contract
Through this $20 million contract, Biohabitats will perform work throughout the Eastern United States for units of the Department of the Interior, United States Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Biohabitats' elite team consists of the leading restoration contractors, native plant nurseries, and invasive species specialists in the country.

Seeds for New York: The Lawn Guy
A seed, to most people, is an inscrutable thing, a closed box waiting to be unpacked. But for Ed Toth, the director of New York City's native plant center on Staten Island, it is a wide-open window, with a view stretching back to the last Ice Age and forward into the future.

India: A Peoples' Forest
A teacher, a postman, a grocery store owner and an ayurvedic healer: This is the team that inspired the reforestation of 700 hectares in Uttarakhand.

Environmental protection -- down and dirty
The Harford Soil Conservation District has named Dave Davis, of C.D. Davis Excavating, its Conservationist of the Year for his work with wetlands and stream banks, pond restoration, wildlife habitat restoration and erosion and containment control.

Indonesia's New Environment Minister Vows to Take Action
In July, Gusti said his office had successfully taken two black-rated companies to court and won damages amounting to Rp 120 billion ($13.6 million). He said the money would be given to the affected communities in the form of funding for environmental restoration projects.

Malaysia: Forest loggers join world's biggest ecology experiment 
Yayasan Sabah - the Sabah Foundation, a Malaysian state-owned company - is felling 75,000 hectares of rainforest on the island of Borneo and converting it to lucrative palm oil plantation. A team led by Rob Ewers at Imperial College London is working with the loggers to make sure that the deforestation has a silver lining for ecological research. For them, some of the tree felling will be an experiment into the ecological effect of habitat fragmentation, and they hope it will give them clues on how to design landscapes to support multiple demands - ecological and commercial - at a minimal cost to the ecosystem.

Philippines showcases sustainable management of forest resources
A three-day audio-visual/photo exhibit dubbed "The Philippine Forests: The Before and What Now?" was conducted on October 14 to 16 at the La Plaza, Tiendesitas Frontera Verde, Pasig City. The exhibit showcased how to manage forest resources in a sustainable way that would both benefit people and the environment. This event highlighted visually the co-benefits of REDD-Plus to the people through means of employment in forestry activities, plantation harvest and value-adding. REDD-Plus also benefits restoration of biodiversity and ecological services from the environment such as water and climate regulation.

Ghana: Adopts measures to restore degraded lands
The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, in conjunction with its sector agencies has adopted measures to restore degraded lands and forests. Mr Mike Hammah, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, announced this at the Celebration of the International year of Forests at Awutu Bewuenum in the Awutu Senya District of the Central Region.

Ecological Restoration is key priority for Central California forests
California's landscapes are under siege from a host of threats. Catastrophic wildfire, climate change, invasive species and increasing human population put these delicate ecosystems at risk. The U.S. Forest Service has recognized and battled these threats for decades, but recently the agency recognized the need for a more focused approach on Ecological Restoration as the primary goal for all land management actions.

Indonesia: 7.4 million ha for ecosystem restoration
The Ministry of Forestry offered a land area of 7.4 million hectares of former forest management rights (HPH/Hak Pengelolaan Hutan) for Ecosystem Restoration Conservation Indonesia or Reki. The offer was closely associated with the potential for carbon trading. An area of 7.4 million from 35.41 million ha was obtained from the area of forest concessions (HPH), which involved legal issues, such as logging outside concession blocks or no replanting.

The latest news in IUFRO
At the IUFRO restoration conference held from 27-29 September 2011 in Madrid, Spain, scientists and practitioners addressed the new challenges associated with forest restoration under stressful site conditions. The necessity to appraise benefits of new techniques in relation to the entire restoration process was emphasized. They identified, among other things, a need for increased specificity of the research focus toward the challenges faced in complex restoration environments.

Michigan: Project to return farmland to wetlands
'Progress' once meant wrestling farmable land from the 40,000-acre wetlands expanse known as the Shiawassee Flats in Saginaw County. Today, 'progress' means turning some of agricultural lands back into wetlands. That's the basis of a project dedicated Friday within the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, on the edge of the city of Saginaw. The wetland restoration project is the first of its kind completed under President Barack Obama's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a five-year plan to return Great Lakes ecosystems to health. The Shiawassee project, which began about one year ago, involved breaking the underground tiles installed long ago to drain the land and make it suitable for farming.

"The Man Who Stopped the Desert" 
Yacouba Sawadogo, a peasant farmer from Burkina Faso, is known as the "man who stopped the desert." But when he first tried to save his arid land from desertification by planting the trees that have since grown into a 15-hectare forest, people in his village thought he was mad.

China: Hyundai's Green Thumb
As part of its global commitment to help preserve the environment, Hyundai Motor Company has turned 30 square kilometres of infertile desert into grassland in China.. Since 2008, under the banner 'Hyundai Green Zone project', Hyundai has been assisting to halt the desertification and protect the ecosystem in Chakanor, an area within the Kunshantag desert of Inner Mongolia, China.

Delaware: Fowler Beach Dune Restoration Does Not Hold
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spent seven days repairing the four dunes north of Prime Hook Beach at Fowler Beach. The repairs did not last.

Innovating policy for Chesapeake Bay restoration
The history of efforts to restore the ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay is emblematic of the failure to solve the agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) problem. The Bay has been a focal point of federal and state initiatives to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution from agriculture and other sources for more than thirty years.

Ohio: Wabash work a fine example
I was very impressed by the corporate citizenship shown by Alcoa when it recently partnered with The Nature Conservancy on an environmental restoration project along the Wabash River. In addition to Alcoa employees volunteering to work to help restore this ecosystem, damaged by spring flooding, Alcoa also donated funds to the project.

UK: Restoration and Biodiversity Awards 2011
Seven Mineral Products Association Restoration Award winners were announced at the Association's recent awards event, including this year's winner of the top prize, the Cooper-Heyman Cup. A further 15 winners were announced in the inaugural Natural England Biodiversity Awards.