In Wild by Design, Laura J. Martin offers a history of ecological restoration in the United States that is both critical of its past and hopeful about its future. Ecological restoration refers to efforts to restore past biotic relationships among species. We tend to think of it as saving species from extinction, restoring their habitats, and helping them to thrive again. But since the nineteenth century, it has entailed a range of interventions, including selective killing, reintroduction, filling and draining wetlands, burning fields, and saturating the landscape with herbicides. Because ecological restoration compels us “to make decisions about where and how to heal,” it is deeply embedded in social values and political priorities (10).