With nearly 600 members, the Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration Section (LERS) is the largest within the Society for Ecological Restoration. Its mission is to advance public education and enlightenment of resources, provide a community of practice for practitioners, develop the concept of large-scale ecosystem restoration as a discipline, and encourage and evaluate the development and advancement of all branches of large-scale ecosystem restoration and practice. LERS has a growing international membership base that reflects the global attention on ecological restoration as a necessary component of sustainable development. LERS members give priority to learning and communicating about on-the-ground restoration techniques but are also interested in ecosystem valuation, funding opportunities, policy and governance, collaboration with other members and a network for outreach and communication of their work.
As a community of practice, LERS is a diverse assemblage of restoration professionals from dozens of countries, each of whom are interested in and working on large-scale ecosystem restoration on a large geographic, sectoral, or procedural scale. LERS members provide support and inspiration to help each other address technical and administrative challenges including issues of scalability, geographic analysis, governance, and public support for large-scale restoration. LERS is primarily a way to learn and communicate with other restoration practitioners about successes and challenges in ecosystem restoration and it accomplishes this though supporting communication among members and in promoting topics and resources that are valid and useful in restoring the ecological function of degraded areas.