William R. Jordan III

Bill Jordan (born 1944), more formally William R. Jordan III, is an American botanist and journalist who has played a leading role in the development and critique of ecological restoration as a means of developing an environmentalism that is philosophically more coherent, psychologically more productive, politically more robust, and ecologically more effective. His critique has had a significant influence on environmentalism in the United States and abroad.

Jordan worked for 24 years at the University of Wisconsin's Arboretum in Madison. This was the site of early attempts to recreate historic ecological communities, such as tallgrass prairies and maple forests, an effort led by the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. In 1981 Jordan founded and served as editor of the journal Restoration & Management Notes (now Ecological Restoration), and he was a founding member of the Society of Ecological Restoration.

He has been called the first person to write consistently about the interplay between humans and nature within the context of ecological restoration, the most influential writer on restoration, and a world leader in the field.

Early life and education

Jordan was born in Denver. His mother was an English teacher and his father a forester who advised clients on land-management projects, including various forms of environmental rehabilitation.

He earned a B.S. in biology from Marquette University in 1966, a PhD in botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971, and an MA in journalism in 1975, also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Career In 1981, working at the University of Wisconsin arboretum, Jordan founded and edited the journal Restoration & Management Notes (now Ecological Restoration), recognized as the first journal to deal exclusively with the subject of restoration ecology. He was senior editor of the resulting book, Restoration Ecology: A Synthetic Approach to Ecological Research.

He was a founding member of the Society of Ecological Restoration (1989) and served as SER’s supervisor of administration for its first five years (1989-1993). Philosophy Jordan’s critique of environmental thinking stems from his reflections on the pioneering ecological restoration project initiated by Aldo Leopold and a handful of colleagues at the UW-Madison Arboretum in the mid-1930s, and on Leopold’s reflections on land management in "The Land Ethic," the concluding essay in his book A Sand County Almanac. Jordan saw this project, with its commitment to restoration of historic ecosystems, as an early contribution to the development of a form of land management that offers a way for people to achieve what Leopold had called "membership in the land community."

However, drawing on the work of literary critic and poet Frederick Turner, Jordan developed a critical perspective on Leopold's idea of community, which Jordan feels is limited by its exclusion of negative emotions, specifically shame.

Jordan defines shame, which he distinguishes from guilt, as the emotional response to the self’s awareness of its dependence on others, including animals and plants—in having, for example, to kill and eat them to survive. This shame, he argues, is “not the response of conscience to what we do, but of consciousness of what we are."

Our shameful feelings, as Jordan understands them, are not a condemnation of human existence but rather the raw material for the creation of the values that make human life worthwhile. Frederick Turner argues that ritual and the fine arts (which Jordan terms the “technologies of the imagination”

In Jordan's recasting, ritual and the arts offer a way to foster values such as community and beauty that Leopold made the foundation of his land ethic. Jordan argues that they have played this role throughout human history, sometimes citing the anthropologist E.N. Anderson, who wrote that "All traditional societies that have succeeded in managing resources well over time, have done it in part through religious or ritual representation of resource management."

Jordan argues that the lack of such shared rituals, typical of modern societies, is the crucial factor limiting progress toward realization of a sound ethic of relationship between humans and the rest of nature.

Considering ecological restoration from this perspective, Jordan proposes its development as a modern version of the "world renewal" rituals characteristic of many traditional societies. Acknowledging the difficulty, uncertainty, and ultimately even the impossibility of restoration, he sees these qualities as essential to the value of restoration as an encounter with human limitations, and so with shame and the experience of transcendent values.

Examples of restoration, not yet fully ritualized, but clearly being developed as spectacle or performing art include: the conversion of tree girdling to a work of art by Wisconsin artist Barbara Westfall; nighttime prairie burns to which the public are invited in northern Illinois; and classes in reflective restoration offered at Eckerd College in Florida.