Matthew Albrecht is Vice President of Conservation and Restoration at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development (CCSD). He is also an Honorary Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biology at Washington University. Dr. Albrecht’s studies the conservation of at-risk plant species and understanding the barriers to restoring native plant populations in degraded ecosystems. His current research focuses on grasslands and oak woodland ecosystems at the Garden’s Shaw Nature Reserve and throughout the Southeastern United States. Matthew joined the NHER editorial team in 2020, maintaining the blog’s continuity with the Missouri Botanical Garden.
James Aronson is a botanist, naturalist, restoration ecologist, and amateur anthropologist who approaches ecological restoration in a broader context that includes conservation and sustainable local economic development. He is president of the Ecological Health Network (EHN) and co-director of EHN’s Healthy Ecosystem Healthy People (HEHP) Initiative. His work emphasizes the integration of ecological health with human well-being and local economic development. James co-founded the NHER blog with Leighton Reid in 2014 while they were working together at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s CCSD.
Leighton Reid is a restoration ecologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech, where he directs the Restoration Ecology Lab. He strives to be a more observant naturalist and a better writer. His lab’s research focuses on tropical rainforest restoration in Latin America and temperate grassland, woodland, and forest restoration in eastern North America. Leighton also teaches undergraduate and graduate restoration courses and advises a Society for Ecological Restoration student association. Leighton co-founded the NHER blog with James Aronson in 2014 and continues to collaborate on the project through the Restoration Ecology Lab at Virginia Tech.