Keith Bowers

Q. You founded Biohabitats and ERM in the year you graduated from West Virginia University. What experience as a student led you to the world of ecological restoration and multi-disciplinary entrepreneurship?

A. Fortunately, while in my senior year of the Landscape Architecture program, I came across a firm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that was pioneering the science…and art of tidal wetland restoration. Except for the work that Aldo Leopold and others that followed him did on the restoration of prairies in the mid-West, only a handful of people at the time were engaged in what we now know as ecological restoration. Up until this time, the primary means in which people participated in the environmental movement was to give money to a conservation organization that bought and protected land. Now, here was firm called Environmental Concern, lead by the late Dr. Edgar Garbicsh, that was researching, experimenting, and most importantly actively restoring tidal marshes – in the mud, propagating and planting smooth cordgrass with a variety of other species, learning about the tidal cycles and their affect on nutrient cycling, energy flows and plant succession. How cool was this! Someone was getting paid to play in the marsh, be outside on the water, learn about nature and restore the earth, all at the same time.

I was sold, and more importantly I had a mentor. I started looking into this field called ecological restoration. As I did, I discovered that while it was in its infancy, I had absolutely no training in ecology or for that matter, the life sciences. As I was about to graduate, it was too late for me to begin taking electives in biology and ecology. I finished out my undergraduate with a capstone project that focused on restoring a peninsula and two adjacent tidal creeks for the Baltimore County Department of Recreation and Parks.

I soon discovered that there were many scientific studies and research being conducted on the state of the Bay's ecology, but little was being done to take this information and actually apply it in a practical way to help restore the Bay. And, to make matters worse, many of the land use practices that landscape architects and other design professions were engaged in (and in many respects still are) were actually contributing to the degradation of the Bay’s ecosystem. I began thinking about how I could apply my newly minted landscape architecture skills in a way that took the science and applied to the landscape to restore ecosystems that were on the decline - the idea of 'applied ecology'.

Needless to say my professors did not know how to technically evaluate my project. In fact one of them brought me into his office, suggested that I refocus my efforts on ‘design’ and not waste my time on ecology. One of the first lessons I learned was that in order to follow your dream… your passion, you have to ignore what others think you ought to do and trust within yourself that you are on the right path.

Q. Could you describe the early days of your practice? How did you start working with other experts? What was the breakthrough moment that established your firm in the field of restoration and conservation?

A. I graduated and immediately started a landscape design and construction firm. Within two years I bought out my partner’s shares of the company, split up the design and construction arms into two separate companies; Biohabitats and Ecological Restoration and Management, Inc. Biohabitats would be the design and consulting firm focused on conservation planning, ecological restoration and regenerative design, while ERM would be the contracting and management company that built and managed these ecological projects.

I looked around for other landscape architecture firms integrating ecology into their practice. What I very quickly realized is that while there were some firms that incorporated basic ecological principles into their work (Andropogon being a leading example and a firm I greatly admire), none of these firms were practicing ecological restoration and none of them employed people with earth and life sciences backgrounds.

This led me to begin hiring ecologists, biologists, fluvial geomorphologists, soil scientists, natural resource planners, civil engineers, project managers, equipment operators, restoration foremen and crew, accountants, office managers, marketing and proposal folks, etc.

With little to no business background, I quickly learned about finance, cash-flow, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, hiring, firing, marketing, sales, computers, customer satisfaction and…well the list goes on and on. One of the smartest things I learned early on was to surround myself with people who knew what I didn’t know and who had a passion for what they did. You can teach skills; you can’t teach passion and drive!

What I have also come to learn about my landscape architecture education is that it taught me how to take ideas, thoughts, and concepts…and apply them to the landscape. Scientists are trained to develop a hypothesis, conduct research, evaluate their findings and publish their results. The trick, I soon learned, was how to take their work and apply it to the landscape in a way that benefits both the ecosystem and the people who interact with the land.

Quickly winning commissions to prepare over two dozen Chesapeake Bay Critical Area plans and winning a contract to restore 11 acres of tidal marsh overtop the Fort McHenry interstate highway tunnel under Baltimore’s inner harbor, Biohabitats was rapidly underway as a firm grounded in solid land use planning and site design but built on a foundation of sound ecological science, theory and research. I also recognized very quickly that my first hires needed to be biologists, ecologists and geomorphologists in order to undertake the work we were winning. To my surprise, there were very few, if any firms in the U.S. that had a multidisciplinary approach and were led by a landscape architect.

My initial goals with ERM were to focus exclusively on native landscape planting, wetland mitigation and restoration, soil bioengineering and water quality best management practices. Recognizing that there were no firms like this in the US, I had to build ERM from the ground up, establishing the necessary skills, specialized equipment and knowledge to implement these types of projects. An advantage of establishing both Biohabitats and ERM was the opportunity to offer clients a turnkey package for designing, implementing, and managing restoration projects. Like restoration, the idea of employing design-build services was a new and evolving procurement method, however given the inexact science of applied ecology, I saw the utility of combining design and construction services to better serve clients and more importantly, learn firsthand what was working and what wasn't.

Looking back, being at the right place during the right time really helped. In the early to mid 1980's the state of Maryland passed legislation regulating all jurisdictions that governed land around within one thousand feet of the Chesapeake Bay to develop a Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Plan. Concurrently, the U.S government began enforcing laws protecting tidal and non-tidal wetlands throughout the country, requiring impacts to these wetlands to be mitigated by restoring degraded wetlands. There were very few firms that had the expertise or resources to take this type of work. This work helped launch Biohabitats and ERM.

Biohabitats is now working with New York City to design and install oyster reefs, mussel beds and submerged aquatic plant demonstration projects in Jamaica Bay; collaborating with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in southern Colorado to design and implement community projects to restore the morphology and aquatic ecology of Ignacio Creek; removing invasive exotic Chinese tallow trees and restoring tidal flow to thousands of acres of marsh for the National Park Service at Jean Lafitte National Park, partnering with coastal communities to identify and map changes in plant community ecology and species migrations due to sea level rise associated with climate change, to exploring the ways in which the attributes of landscape architecture are embed in ecosystem restoration. Biohabitats has participated in over 1000 projects throughout the United States and abroad to restore biodiversity while bettering the livelihoods of people and the communities they live and work in.

Q. What are the advantages and difficulties of running both design and build companies?

A. When I established Biohabitats and ERM, I gave much thought about whether I wanted a firm that included both design and construction services or whether to establish two separate but related firms. I came to the conclusion that from a business development perspective, having two separate firms that could market their respective expertise and pursue work that may be associated with other design or construction firms made the most business sense. And at the same time we could still pursue design-build work and learn from each other's strengths, experience and knowledge. At first it was very challenging. Establishing one business is hard enough but two is very challenging. So I decided after about six years to hire two people to lead and operate ERM. Shortly after I also decided to hire anchief operations officer for Biohabitats. These were two of the best business moves I have made. I now spend about 90% of my time with Biohabitats, while my two partners in ERM operate that company. I now have far more time to provide overall strategic leadership, mentoring and business development. It also lets me spend more time working on projects, the really fun work.

I would say that the primary advantage of operating design and build companies is the opportunity to learn from one another. In Biohabitats, designers and scientists get direct and real-time feedback on what works and what doesn't in the field. Conversely, ERM has access to the latest theories and applications in restoration ecology and natural lands management, which they can incorporate into their work. The difficulty always lies in finding enough time to stay fully engaged with both firms simultaneously. Luckily we have built a good business core within each organization that allows both firms to prosper.

Q. What would be the critical role of landscape architects in the projects of ecological restoration and conservation planning?

A. I believe landscape architects are well trained in how to apply a diversity of information, perspectives and perceptions to a landscape, in a collaborative and inclusive way. Landscape architects play a vital role in conservation planning, ecological restoration and regenerative design in bridging the science of these two disciplines with their on-the-ground applications. We see many landscape architects designate open space as habitat for native flora and fauna, without having any scientific underpinning in terms of what species it is targeting, what are their life requisites, or whether it might even serve as a genetic sink that would lead to the ultimate extinction of a suite of species within that area. I believe landscape architects are in a perfect position to work collaborative with restoration ecologists, conservation biologists and landscape ecologists in taking the scientific research that support good conservation practices and finding ways to creatively apply them to the landscape in a truly sustainable manner. Trade-offs are not an option. We need landscape architects that find win-win solutions for both people and biodiversity.

Q. In 30 years of practice since 1982, how have you challenged the conventional way of thinking in landscape architecture?

A. Through the late 1980’s, 90’s, we took on a variety of ecological restoration projects throughout the country, gaining a national reputation for restoring tidal marshes, freshwater wetlands, bogs, streams, rivers, deciduous forests, and coastal dunes, among others. Throughout our 7 bioregion offices, our work now spans North America the Caribbean, and internationally. Between both companies we employ well over 100 people providing conservation planning, ecological restoration and regenerative design services to more than 250 projects a year.

About 12 years ago I began to sense a change…a convergence really. convergence that shook my understanding of what we were doing and how it fits within the context of the current environmental movement. A convergence that made me think that maybe Shellenberger and Nordhaus have it right with the Death of Environmentalism.

First, there is, what I call, the Blurring of the Boundaries. I mean this both figuratively and quite literally. If you pick up one of The Nature Conservancy’s brochures, what you notice now is that they are not just about conserving the last great places on the planet; they are also now about restoring and managing them. We have no choice - we have to. Mainstream conservation organizations have come to the conclusion that we can’t just protect land, we need to actively restore and manage this land. With both regional and planetary changes to our ecosystems, conservation, or setting land aside, is not good enough anymore. We must take an active role, even when sites ‘look’ pristine. I have also noticed this same trend taking over the land planning, civil engineering, architecture and landscape architecture professions. Clearly, if we are going to be truly sustainable, that is letting ecosystem function dictate our consumption patterns, then both restoration and conservation and what we term, ‘regenerative design’, have a major role to play. Whether it is corporate management, psychology, quantum physics or community health, the evidence is mounting that everything is connected…in profound and sometimes startling ways.

Rarely does our work anymore focus exclusively on restoration or conservation. To the contrary, our work now is as much about revitalizing a community’s town center as it is about restoring a riparian corridor along its riverfront. Blurring the boundaries is happening at an accelerating rate.

Secondly, it’s about relationships, not stuff. Throughout my career I have come to notice that ‘things’ take precedent over processes. Perhaps this is a legacy of our education system and our consumer-based societies. Perhaps because things, or ‘stuff’ are easier to see, easier to touch and easier to comprehend, than processes or relationships, which are at times invisible, temporal and infinitely complex. In our practice we are often asked to develop best management practices to treat stormwater, or restore habitat for an endangered species, but very rarely were we ever asked to explore how hydrologic and nutrient cycles interact with urban street design and automotive engineering, or how species life-cycles are influenced by regional land use patterns and geochemical processes. It is even more rare that we were asked to explore how socio-political systems may be responsible for the precipitous decline of an endangered species and how that decline has physically manifested itself in terms of ‘habitat degradation’. This is really evident in the current sustainability movement. Many architects, landscape architects, engineers, and planners view sustainability in terms of ‘things’ we can do, or do less of, to reduce the burden we place on the environment. As if sustainability is about consuming less instead of about restoring our relationship with nature and the myriad of ecological processes that support life on this planet.

No, it is not about stuff, it’s about relationships. It’s about participating in a partnership with other life systems, awareness that all things are connected and that we are co-participants in the evolution of life. That is why we practice ‘regenerative’ design, regenerating ecological processes and human relationships.

When I first started practicing ecological restoration, I came to recognize it as a way of restoring the ‘past’. That is, restoring some relic landscape that existed at some point in the past, perhaps a generation ago, perhaps a century ago, perhaps prior to European settlement, or maybe at the dawn of the Holocene era 12,000 years ago. But unlike restoring a vintage automobile or a masterpiece painting, restoring an ecosystem requires us to think not only about the past, but far into the future. Ecosystems are in a continuous state of evolution, responding to planetary events, adjusting to their inputs and outputs, and remaking themselves over and over again. Yes, we need to look back in time to make sure we understand the processes that got us to this point, but more importantly we need to look forward. We need to figure out how to restore ecosystems so that they will persist…and more importantly evolve, with all of their diversity, complexity and splendor; while at the same time sustaining us in mutually beneficial ways with all of the world’s species.

Q. From your experience, could you explain for design students and professionals the urgent need for restoration and conservation? Have you encountered the effects of climate change and sea-level rise in the course of your career?

A. All around us we are laying witness to the collapse of major ecosystems throughout the globe including coastal mangroves, arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands, and now oceans, to name only a few. Human actions are depleting Earth’s natural capital, putting such strain on the environment that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted warns the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year study sponsored by the United Nations and published about three years ago with the help of over 1,300 scientists.

Bit by bit we are extracting, exploiting, consuming and discarding earth’s natural diversity at an alarming rate.

Stephen M. Meyer, in The End of the Wild, has reminded us that for billions of years evolution on earth has been driven by small-scale incremental forces (Darwin’s survival of the fittest), punctuated by cosmic scale disruptions (like plate tectonics, planetary geochemistry, global climate shifts, perhaps asteroids). Sometime in the last century, all of that changed. Humans are now the driving force behind evolutionary change. Think about that… through some fairly sizable acts, but mostly through billions of small every-day actions, we are now unknowingly controlling the fates of most of the world’s plants and animals. In fact, since the 1980’s humans have been consuming more resources than the earth can naturally replenish. That means we are in an ever-increasing deficit with the very systems that supports life, our life, on this planet.

Consider species extinction. Over geologic time, the earth has gone through what paleoecologists call 5 great extinctions. Now, many scientists are warning us that we are experiencing the 6th Great Extinction- the Holocene Extinction.

Meyer reminds us that the fossil records and current studies suggest that the average extinction rate of the past 100 million years has averaged about several species per year. Today, the extinction rate exceeds 3,000 species per year…and is accelerating. In contrast, new species are appearing at the rate of about 1 per year. Given our current course, one-half of all plant and animal species will go extinct by 2100.

Some might argue that climate change is actually the ‘convenient truth’ compared to the unimaginable and permanent loss of 1/2 of the earth’s species within the next 90+ years.

Over the past 100 years the US has led the world in conservation. We were the first nation to establish a National Park System; we gave rise to the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt, along with John Muir and Aldo Leopold who are considered by many to be the fathers of our current conservation ethic. We have some of the most stringent environmental protection laws in the history of the world, yet we are failing. Our natural capital – those ecosystem processes that we take for granted like clean air, fresh water, healthy productive soils, climate regulation, species diversity, are all in precipitous decline.

Climate change, scarcity of fresh water, and loss of biodiversity play critical roles in all of the projects we work on. We have seen first hand sea level rise effects on much of the tidal salt marsh restoration and oyster reef restoration projects we are involved with. Restoring for the future is a must for us.

Q. Could you explain how a restoration project enhanced the performance and resilience of an ecosystem and the quality of the landscape?

A. Ecological restoration projects inherently enhance the performance and resilience of an ecosystem and the quality of the landscape. Ecological restoration is not about restoring an ecosystem to a condition that existed in the past. Rather it is about restoring an ecosystem to future conditions. I call this ‘restoring the future’. All ecosystems vacillate within biotic and abiotic threshold boundaries. When an ecosystem begins to cross over one of these threshold conditions, it becomes inherently unstable. A good example is the loss of keystone species (e.g. wolves) on the landscape. In the wolf example, without predation we are witnessing an extraordinary increase in deer populations, which in turn are devastating forests by grazing on all of the understory and young-of-year trees. This cascading effect (called trophic cascades) is completely changing the eastern deciduous forest in North America, creating a very unstable landscape. Through conservation initiatives and ecological restoration we can begin to reverse these affects and restore the landscape to robust, healthy and resilient forest. Inherently all restoration should work toward restoring the resiliency to ecosystems.

Q. What do you think of the term sustainability? Would you describe the concept of regenerative systems as an alternative?

A. The term sustainability has become watered down and in many cases misused and abused. First off, I do not support the way sustainability is characterized as a balance between planet, people and profit, the ubiquitous Venn diagram. Rather for us, it is first and foremost about not exceeding the ecological limits, or ‘footprint’ of the earth’s ability to naturally regenerate resources. Scientists have concluded that since the 1980’s we are living beyond the capacity for the earth to regenerate the stock of resources that we are consuming. In other words, sustaining what we have left, or sustaining our current rate of consumption will not make us truly sustainable. Do we really want to sustain what we have left? From generation to generation we tend to slowly forget the rich diversity of life that we had during the previous generation- ecological amnesia. Sustaining what is left is a good start, but we must do more. We must begin regenerating ecological processes that have been damaged, degraded and destroyed. And we need to regenerate our relationship with the land and with each other. We purposively practice regenerative design because we believe we need to reestablish our relationship with nature and to regenerate ecological processes in everything we do. It’s just not enough to sustain what we have. The real trick, and challenge, is to practice regenerative design that is truly meaningful. We are still learning.

Q. What are some lessons to be learned from the multi-disciplinary practice?

A. It’s hard, it takes practice, and it’s remarkably rewarding. I would say we practice a multi-intra-disciplinary practice. It both encompasses many disciplines centered on the disciplines of conservation planning, ecological restoration and regenerative design. I would say there are two keys to making a multi-intra-disciplinary approach work; true dialogue and a learning culture. True dialogue is hard to come by in today’s world of sound bites, impassioned rants and a winner-take-all attitude. It requires listening, empathy and informed perspectives, which brings us to a learning culture. We don’t know all of the answers, in fact very few. So we have purposively established a learning organization, where we are transparent about our successes, failures and unknowns. In essence, this leads us to practice adaptive management, where we actively test and seek out the best ways of applying science to the landscape. Most of all it is fun interacting with people that bring different perspectives, skill sets and impassioned energy to a project.

Q. You visited North Korea as an expert of landscape restoration early last year and wrote an article in New Scientist magazine depicting the extreme conditions of poverty and a repressive regime. What are the priorities for the restoration of the severely degraded North Korean landscape?

A. Putting aside the repressive regime of the DPRK government, the people of North Korea need help. They are living in absolute poverty, the worst kind. Their landscape has been scraped and laid barren. This is not only an ecological crises, it is also a food security crises, an environmental justice crises and a biodiversity crises. Restoring North Korea’s landscape will take time, resources and money, but it can – and should – be done. To address these interrelated challenges, two types of restoration should be given priority; revegetation based on an agro-forestry program balanced with revegetation to support a variety of ecosystem functions including biodiversity, soil stabilization, carbon sequestration, flood attenuation, and water quality improvement, to name a few.

This will take considerable effort. In addition to the technical and financial capital required to undertake such a program, North Korea also lacks in the basic infrastructure to propagate, grow and transport large numbers of seedlings. While North Korea is deficient in many of the resources needed to fully restore their landscape, they do have the human capital to make it happen. If the international community would begin redirecting a portion of their foreign aid to North Korea toward a comprehensive place-based initiative for reforestation and restoration the county and it’s people would benefit for generations to come. I would suspect that $20-30 billion dollars could reforest the entire country. The US is spending $30 billon on restoring the Florida everglades and we know that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $100s of billions of dollars. Reforesting the country would not only provide food security but also benefit the planet in terms of carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity. In order to ‘open’ up this society, and to have any hope that the political regime will collapse, people's livelihoods need to be improved, and restoration can make that happen.

Q. What is good design?

A. Good design for me first and foremost is life giving, not life taking. It respects native biodiversity while providing for the needs of healthy and robust communities. It is regenerative. It’s also engaging, fun and inspiring. We will be well served to heed the advice of my friend and colleague, Tim Murphy, a permaculturalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who, when asked what makes good design, he is fond to reply, ‘engage in a riot of reciprocity”