Three ways of living with grasslands: What a German “Real-world Lab” teaches us about restoration

If you think restoration is only about planting flowers and waiting, the recently published paper by Gray et al. 2025 gives a broader perspective. It shows that people understand 'restoring nature' in different ways, often without noticing. In two real-world labs in Germany, the research team spoke with farmers, village groups, conservationists, and local officials to learn about their values, knowledge, and hopes for restored grasslands before starting any work. Three main views emerged: living with nature, living in nature, and living from nature. All three are important for real projects.1.

What is ecological restoration?

Ecological restoration helps bring back ecosystems that have been harmed or destroyed. The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) Standards offer a practical way to set goals, find reference points, choose actions, and track both ecological and social results2. The SER framework uses two 'wheels': one focuses on ecological recovery, like species makeup, ecosystem functions, and diversity, while the other looks at social benefits, such as knowledge, well-being, strong economies, and fair sharing of benefits. This paper uses those wheels to find out which results people really want, turning 'values' into something practical. Restoration now considers many values of nature, not just material benefits but also meanings, responsibilities, and relationships3,4.

What counts as grassland?

Grasslands are ecosystems dominated by grasses and herbs rather than trees. In Europe, many species-rich grasslands depend on regular human management, such as grazing or mowing, to remain open. Without this, they often revert to scrub or forest. The main threats are agricultural intensification, including excessive fertilizer use and frequent mowing, and land abandonment, leaving land unmanaged. Here, restoration means managing grasslands carefully to support both nature and people's livelihoods, not removing people from the land5,6.

The set-up: restoration as a “real-world laboratory”

This research is part of Grassworks, a German program on grassland restoration that uses real-world laboratories. These labs are long-term collaborations based in specific places. The study focused on two labs:

• Gifhorn (Lower Saxony): an agricultural landscape working with farmers, the county administration, and a local NGO.

• Südharz/Hainrode (Saxony-Anhalt/Thuringia): a village-centred collaboration in the South Harz Biosphere Reserve led by a local history & nature association.

Real-world labs are places where scientists and practitioners work together. The team began by listening. Before taking action, they asked participants about four things: (1) broad values (like altruistic, biospheric, egoistic, eudaimonic, hedonistic), (2) specific values (such as intrinsic, instrumental, and different relational values like identity, heritage, and sense of place), (3) knowledge (self-rated across nine topics from soils to financing to traditional practices), and (4) visions for what successful restoration would look like (using the SER wheels)1.

Who answered? Fifty participants across the two labs completed the survey in early 2023 (29 in Gifhorn; 21 in Hainrode), via paper at workshops, on-site follow-ups, and an online link.

The team analyzed the responses using principal component analysis (PCA) to group related items within each set (values, knowledge, visions). They used the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues > 1), and for knowledge, included a 0.9 component to reach 60% explained variance. They then applied varimax rotation to make the results easier to understand. The resulting factors were grouped using Ward’s hierarchical clustering (Euclidean distance). This is a standard and open way to find patterns without forcing them.

The punchline: three restoration perspectives

This detailed analysis found three groups that combine values, knowledge, and visions. These are best understood as restoration perspectives, not as fixed types of people.

1. Restoration for living with nature

This perspective brings together intrinsic and biospheric values, ecological knowledge, and goals focused on ecological recovery. It follows the traditional science-led approach: focus on species, structure, and processes to achieve results. This matches early restoration ideas that valued ecological expertise.

2. Restoration for living in nature

This perspective focuses on well-being, cultural continuity, and traditional knowledge. People want restored grasslands that feel like home, support identity and heritage, and improve quality of life. This human-centered approach works alongside, not against, ecological goals.

3. Restoration for living from nature

This perspective sees grasslands as the foundation for strong livelihoods, including farming and the desire for a simple life in harmony with nature. It challenges the idea that making a living and caring for nature are mutually exclusive, showing that livelihoods and deeper connections to nature can go hand in hand.

These groups do not fit neatly into the usual ecocentric or anthropocentric categories. People often belong to more than one group, and values like identity, place, and heritage show up in all the results. Real projects should expect overlap, not clear-cut groups.

Why this matters beyond Germany

Land managers often deal with different priorities: one person wants "proper meadow species back", another wants "a place to walk and breathe", and someone else needs "hay that pays". This study shows how to spot these differences early, before projects are set and conflicts begin. By treating values, knowledge, and visions as equally important, teams can design solutions that protect biodiversity and meet the needs of people who use and care for the land. This is the practical benefit of this approach1.

This approach also moves the field forward. Over the past decade, global assessments (such as those by IPBES) and many researchers have called for recognizing the many values of nature, including meanings, duties, and relationships - not just money or numbers3,4. This paper shows how to put these ideas into practice: ask clear questions, analyze carefully, and use the results to guide inclusive design.

In the survey, relational values were the most important. They were the largest group of specific values and shaped the clusters. This is a key lesson for anyone making indicators: if you ignore identity and place, you might miss why people get involved.

So what should practitioners do differently?

• Begin by assessing values, knowledge, and visions. Use short, tested questionnaires that match the SER outcome wheels and the Life Framework of Values (the with/in/from nature terms come from there). This helps everyone build a shared understanding before opinions become fixed.

• Make integrated plans. In one area, you might restore species-rich meadows (living with), set up a community trail and cultural heritage program (living in), and arrange special grazing contracts to keep farms running (living from). The ecological and social categories help explain the purpose of each action.

• Track the outcomes that matter most to stakeholders. If local goals focus on sharing benefits and building knowledge, measure them alongside plant and soil indicators. Only promise results you can actually measure.

• Expect people to have overlapping priorities, not just one goal. Some may want species recovery, safe places for children, and profitable hay production all at the same time. Accept and plan for this range of needs.

A note on limits (and why that’s fine)

The study does not make broad claims. The sample is small (n=50) and comes from only two labs, so the patterns found may not be stable. The clusters are shown as perspectives from these labs, not as universal truths. This honesty is helpful. Practitioners should try the method in their own areas and compare results to build stronger evidence across regions and ecosystems.

Bringing it back to first principles

Ecological restoration often fails because people assume everyone has the same goals. In real grassland areas, restoration is not about recreating a perfect past, but about finding a livable future for plants, insects, soils, and the people who depend on these fields. Taking values seriously is key; it is the basis for successful social-ecological systems.

By measuring values without turning them into money, finding knowledge gaps, and asking for visions using SER outcome language, the authors offer a repeatable way to do inclusive restoration. This method is practical, can be used again, and is clearer than using just one measure to define a meadow.

If you start your next project by listening in this way, you will likely find your own examples of living with, in, and from nature. This will make it easier to achieve all three.

References

1. Gray, K. et al. A multi-layered values-based approach to advance social-ecological restoration: Insights from real-world laboratories in Germany. Ambio https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02259-w (2025) doi:10.1007/s13280-025-02259-w.

2. Gann, G. D. et al. International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration. Second edition. Restoration Ecology 27, (2019).

3. O’Connor, S. & Kenter, J. O. Making intrinsic values work; integrating intrinsic values of the more-than-human world through the Life Framework of Values. Sustain Sci 14, 1247–1265 (2019).

4. Pascual, U. et al. Diverse values of nature for sustainability. Nature 620, 813–823 (2023).

5. Dengler, J., Janišová, M., Török, P. & Wellstein, C. Biodiversity of Palaearctic grasslands: a synthesis. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 182, 1–14 (2014).

6. Török, P., Brudvig, L. A., Kollmann, J., N. Price, J. & Tóthmérész, B. The present and future of grassland restoration. Restoration Ecology 29, e13378 (2021).