Review: Restoring Nature: The Evolution of Channel Islands National Park, by Larry M. Dilsaver and Timothy J. Babalis

Larry M. Dilsaver and Timothy J. Babalis offer up the history of natural resource management in the Channel Islands as a lesson on restoration ecology and public land management. Dilsaver, professor emeritus of geography at the University of South Alabama, and Babalis, a historian and cultural resources program manager for the National Park Service (NPS), composed this book after developing a larger administrative history report on Channel Islands National Park for the NPS in 2021. The authors’ stated purpose for the book “is to educate students, scholars, and the public about the complexities and controversies that accompany efforts to protect natural resources and restore ecological integrity to both the land and the sea” (xv). They posit that Channel Islands National Park has had “extraordinary, in some cases groundbreaking,” experiences with acquiring and preserving land and sea in the ongoing attempt to achieve ecological integrity in those habitats (309). The book...