ERI Director, Wally Covington, discusses ecological forest restoration at this thinned-and-burned site.

The Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona is nationally recognized for mobilizing the unique assets of a university to help solve the problem of unnaturally severe wildfire and degraded forest health in the region. The ERI works to help land management agencies and communities by providing comprehensive focused studies, monitoring and evaluation research, and technical support. The goals of ERI go beyond scientific discovery to the meaningful application of scientific knowledge that makes a difference for western forests.

The ERI was formally established by the Arizona Board of Regents in 1997 and by federal legislation in 2004. The ERI is funded by a combination of programmatic state and federal funding and through competitive grants programs.

The mission of ERI is to serve as an objective leader in research, scholarship, and education, and in collaborative efforts to plan and implement restoration treatments for frequent-fire forest and woodland landscapes of the Interior West.