Conservation: Coming Back From the Brink; Environmentalists look to restore as well as preserve.(Cover story)

Byline: Stefan Theil

A decade ago, the open-strip lignite pits of East Germany were an environmental disaster zone: hundreds of square kilometers of degraded land, toxic residues and acid lakes. Since then, a [euro][euro]7.8 billion renaturalization project has brought back clean lakes, verdant meadows and restored "wilderness." With a little help from biologists--such as importing seeds from species-rich regions--biodiversity has skyrocketed. Rare species have taken over the once-dead land, including wild orchids, hoopoe birds and wolves.

As ever-fewer pockets of true wilderness remain in many parts of the world, scientists and activists are beginning to shift their attention from conserving "real" nature to restoring or improving degraded ecosystems. Scientists have gotten better at artificially balancing the needs of different flora and fauna. And activists are less ideologically pure about preserving nature in the wild. Some environmentalists fear that a focus on restoration will distract from efforts to stave off the destruction of wilderness and species. "But in some countries there's so little left to protect that you first have to restore something so you can protect it," says Norbert Holzel, a restoration biologist at Germany's Giessen University.

The approach allows environmentalists to address badly damaged areas. On the island of Borneo, the Worldwide Fund for Nature has partnered with Malaysia's Boh Plantations to restore an orangutan ...