February 2025

We are excited to share the highlights of 2024 and offer a preview of what’s on the horizon for the Ecological Health Network in 2025.

Green-tailed trainbearer (Lesbia nuna) in Utcubamba Valley, northern Peru.

Credit: Thibaud Aronson.

EHN as a bridge builder 

The Ecological Health Network serves as a bridging entity, forging connections and fostering relationships to advance ecological restoration. Guided by the value of collaboration over competition, we engage in global initiatives that collectively work to elevate the science and practice of restoration—enhancing its quality, quantity, and effectiveness worldwide. While our efforts may appear broad in scope, we believe that by filling this niche role—helping to bridge different sectors, disciplines, professions, and ways of knowing—we are creating lasting impact where it is needed most.

The EHN global action and research network is growing! 

EHN’s global network of sites, hubs, and regional networks is growing, which will help us advance the science and practice of ecological restoration. We are excited to welcome the following sites and hubs:

Acción Serrana, a conservation initiative in Argentina focused on restoring high-altitude Polylepis australis ("tabaquillo") forests in the Sierras Grandes of Córdoba, play an essential role in maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem functionality, and ecosystem services for all forms of life. As part of the Acción Andina network, the project collaborates with local communities to plant hundreds of thousands of trees annually, protecting watersheds and supporting biocultural restoration efforts.



Preserved forests in the highest water sources in Córdoba province. Credit: Acción Serrana archives.

Fundación Global Nature, a Spanish non-profit focused on biodiversity conservation, working on habitat protection, species recovery, and sustainable agriculture practices. Since its founding in 1993, the organization has combined technical strategies with fieldwork, collaborating with various sectors to generate positive environmental impact, particularly in wetland conservation. The foundation aims to protect ecosystems, with a focus on restoring more than 14,000 hectares of wetlands and promoting agricultural practices that support biodiversity.

Spanish dehesa, that is a human-made and maintained mixed-oak savanna with open canopies dominated by Holm oak (Quercus ilex). Credit: Fundación Global Nature.

We have also worked with several outstanding interns over the past year. Evan Horne, Thomas Nuhfer, and Veronica Magner, thank you for all your help. 

U.S. Northeast Bioregional Restoration Program

Since 2021, the Ecological Health Network (EHN), through the US Northeast Bioregional Restoration Program, has worked to improve access to native seed and plant materials for ecological restoration, conservation, and regenerative agriculture across the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

In 2023, EHN and partners—including the Native Plant Trust, Ecotype Project, and Highstead Foundation—launched the Northeast Seed Network, a regional alliance of seed partnerships and hubs working to advance the availability of source-identified, ecologically appropriate seeds and plants essential for biodiversity and climate resilience. Read more about this network in our Barn Raiser essay and Natural History of Ecological Restoration blog post. See our growing network of collaborators on the Ecotype Project’s Network Map.



In 2024, EHN continued to play a key role in strengthening the Northeast Seed Network by co-facilitating working groups to prioritize species, assess regional seed demand, and develop shared protocols, standards, and best practices for seed collection, amplification, and storage. We also launched the Restorative Landscape Coalition to build stronger partnerships between botanic gardens, arboreta, seed banks, and restoration initiatives. The RLC seeks to harness the experience, expertise, and educational resources of the region’s botanic gardens to enhance the capacity and impact of the Northeast Seed Network and other emerging conservation and restoration-minded partnerships in the Eastern US. Read more about the launch of the RLC at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation on the Natural History of Ecological Restoration blog.

Northeast Seed Network Spring Field Day 2024 at the Hickories Organic Farm, home of the Northeast Seed Collective, in Ridgefield, Ct.

Founding members of the Restorative Landscape Coalition at our second in-person workshop held at the Mt. Cuba Center in November 2024.

EHN leadership, members, and allies published several articles last year, including: 

Interview with James Aronson, Bulletin of the Ecological Restoration Network of Argentina (BREA) 42(8) October, 2024. pp 42-45 (in Spanish).

Allen, E. B., Cross, A. T., Berger, A. M., & Aronson, J. (2024). Restoration seed and plant material supply chains are complex social networks. Restoration Ecology, 32(8), e14279. 

Several articles by EHN team members and allies have been published in the Natural History of Ecological Restoration. This publication is a joint project of EHN, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Restoration Ecology Lab at Virginia Tech.

Call for Papers: Conservation & Restoration for Health Environments and People

We are excited to announce a special issue of the prestigious journal Environmental Conservation focused on Conservation and Restoration for Healthy Environments and People.

Staff, Board Members, and Colleagues at EHN will serve as invited editors for this special issue (James Aronson, Phil Weinstein, Adam Cross, Jessica Stanhope and Eve Allen), along with Prof. Nicholas Polunin, Editor in Chief of the Journal, and Prof. Shua Wang). We warmly invite submissions from all EHN members and allies! This is a fantastic opportunity to share your research and expertise on a global platform. Furthermore, we plan to submit a series of articles on our HEHP Initiative (see below) to this special issue over the next few years, exploring the intersection of ecological restoration and human well-being in practice and research. We encourage all EHN partners and allies to consider submitting manuscripts. Feel free to reach out for more information!



Manuscript submission deadline: January 31, 2026. For a full description of the theme and submission guidelines, please visit: Cambridge University Press.

In early 2025, EHN launched the Healthy Ecosystems, Healthy People Initiative to help establish a robust evidence-base demonstrating how ecological restoration positively affects human health outcomes. This initiative will support the development of actionable recommendations to position ecological restoration as a vital and recognized public health intervention.

To kick off the initiative, James Aronson and Eve Allen traveled to Monteverde, Costa Rica, to meet with local organizations—including the Monteverde Institute, the Monteverde Conservation League, and Fundación Conservacionista Costarricense—to learn about forest restoration efforts in the Bellbird Biological Corridor, a designated conservation area that connects Monteverde’s cloud forests with the coastal mangroves of the Gulf of Nicoya. We are discussing the possibility of this dynamic coalition, working in one of the most biologically and culturally diverse parts of a remarkable country, joining the EHN global action and research network. Later this year, EHN will return to Monteverde to co-host a convening meeting with these new allies and partners to consider what an HEHP research project in the Bellbird corridor might look like and how it would function.

Sign from the nursery operated by the Fundación Conservacionista Costarricense that provides native trees for forest ecosystem recovery in the Bellbird Biological Corridor.

Cloud Forest at the Bajo el Tigre Reserve part of Children’s Eternal Reserve in Monteverde, Costa Rica. 

In March, James and Eve will travel to Australia to meet with Phil Weinstein, Jess Stanhope, and Adam Cross to advance a five-year planning process for the initiative and visit candidate sites for additional HEHP long-term research projects. 

The EHN global action network will support the Healthy Ecosystems, Healthy People Initiative by providing a platform for member organizations, institutions, and restoration sites to collaborate, secure funding, and exchange knowledge to activate pilot projects that contribute to the growing evidence base by demonstrating measurable health benefits from ecological restoration. Through targeted communication and capacity-building efforts, the initiative will also work to actively drive the integration of ecological restoration into public health practices and policy frameworks.

Read more about this new initiative and how you can get involved!

New Research Project: Understanding Holistic Restoration Practices



In partnership with Dr. Kate Lawless at the University of Calgary, we are launching a new research project to assess the global state of restoration projects across six continents. Our focus will be on the rapid growth in the number and scale of programs, activities, practices, and projects aimed at mitigating ecological degradation and supporting ecosystem recovery while explicitly and concurrently prioritizing improvements in human health and well-being. To present a broad picture of ecological restoration today—one that, in the best cases, integrates both ecocentric and anthropocentric values, objectives, and goals—we plan to widely distribute a survey to leaders and participants engaged in restoration activities. Through this effort, we aim to enhance knowledge, know-how, and best practices for advancing more holistic approaches to ecological restoration. If you are a restoration leader or know of restoration sites we should include in our study, please reach out to us!  

U.S. Northeast Bioregional Restoration Program

We are working with our co-leads to strengthen the capacity of the Northeast Seed Network. As part of this effort, we are drafting a Network Charter to define the network’s core elements and operational framework, providing a shared reference for current and prospective partners. 

At the National Native Seed Conference in Tucson, Arizona, this month, we will co-lead a symposium with members and partners of the Northeast Seed Network, providing an update on the network's growth since its launch at the same conference in 2023.

Additionally, we are collaborating with partners—including the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia Tech, Virginia Natural Areas Preserves, the Clifton Institute, and the University of Maryland—to establish a new hub serving Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. 

We will also co-host the third meeting of the Restorative Landscape Coalition at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through these initiatives, we aim to strengthen regional collaboration, expand native seed availability, and support restoration efforts across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.

Beyond these key milestones, we will continue to engage in a wide range of activities throughout the year, including fostering new partnerships and building the capacity of our global research and action network. We look forward to another year of working towards our mission of accelerating understanding and awareness among scientists, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public, of the feasibility and potentially enormous long-term benefits of ecological restoration for human health and the ecosystems on which we depend. 

Native milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) with monarch larvae on the leaves. 

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