The culture of environmental restoration has become more and more popular in the past few years, along with the reduction of the impact of anthropogenic activities, through techniques that are intended for the reinstatement of degraded or destroyed environments.
These actions can all fit in the same category of the acts of renaturization. They start from the analysis of damages and disturbances caused by human activities or natural events to the structure and functions of natural ecosystems and they tend to restore natural conditions as much as possible. Specifically, the techniques of naturalistic engineering deal with the conservation of the naturality of the shores and their stabilization, the recovery of the morphological diversity of the riverbed, the increase of fish refuges in beds and littoral zone. The presence of areas of varying current strength, the alternation of pools, riffles and runs,  the abundance of refuges in beds made of rocks, trees in water, carved banks, roots and stumps, the presence of gravel and sands is a complex of micro and mesohabitat essential to the well-being of the fluvial and lacustrine ecosystem. The riparian strip of vegetation, other than stabilizing the shores, is, finally, an area of extraordinary naturalistic interest and vital importance, because it brings shadow, food for animal communities and continuity with the terrestrial ecosystem.

The main aim of these acts is to increase environmental diversity on a micro-macro scale and to reinstate longitudinal and lateral connections, in order to reconnect the fragmentations among systems and restore the functional interchanges. A more stable balance is achievable through these acts and, in some cases, it is also possible to accelerate natural recovery processes that otherwise would be too slow.