Our History
In 1996, Wally Covington became the director of the new Ecological Restoration Program at NAU. The academic program operated within the university’s School of Forestry. Researchers from the program began to work with land managers to design, implement, and monitor restoration treatments at a variety of sites in the Southwest.
In 2000, with the aid of federal funding from the Bureau of Land Management, the program evolved into the ERI. Four years later, in October 2004, ERI became one of three state-level institutes approved by Congress to work to solve problems of forest health and unnatural wildfire through science-based approaches. The other two institutes are based in Colorado at Colorado State University and New Mexico at New Mexico Highlands University. The three institutes collaborate closely on research, education, and outreach aimed at implementing and improving restoration work in the interior West. To read more about the collective institutes, known as the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes, visit sweri.eri.nau.edu.