Editor's Note: Is it possible to restore an impoverished landscape? What if the landscape is insular, the vegetation has been the victim of goats and other insults compounded with introductions of exotics, including disease, to the point where species have been lost? Is there a possibility of rebuilding a stable community that will have the resilience and vigor of the original? The answer has implications for a globe now wracked regionally by waves of impoverishment without obvious end.

David B. Wingate is one of the few ecologists who has addressed this challenge. He has been successful because he is an extraordinary naturalist with the knowledge, energy, interest, will, and the opportunity to divine the details of the structure, function, and successional relationships of the original vegetation of Bermuda. He tells here the story of how he has reconstructed it on Nonsuch Island. To the extent possible, he has also reestablished the animal community as well, although extinctions and introductions make the reconstruction partial.

The story is unique and delightful. Told here in flowing prose, it is as rich in lessons in ecology as any lifetime could be. And yet, the history of Bermuda is short. It was inundated during the interglacial periods and its biota prior to human settlement in the seventeenth century was limited, even for an oceanic island.