Objection to Restoration Projects on Wildness Value Theory

Consider a complicated passage in Hettinger and Throop which seems to come dangerously close to self-contradiction: “Wildness value can count in favor of restoration projects. By returning the system to what it would have been had humans not altered it, restoration can help diminish human influence” (196). While the authors realize the strangeness of this statement and recognize the potential difficulties for a theory of wildness value which simultaneously supports restoration projects, I do not think that they are able to overcome these problems.
What should we require of such a restoration project, which sets as its goal “returning the system to what it would have been had humans not altered it”? Should we hope that the exact number of wolves that were originally removed from the ecosystem can be successfully reintroduced, despite the ways in which the ecosystem has inevitably changed? This would likely magnify the effects of human intervention in the ecosystem and would therefore be an increase in human intervention. In a certain sense, this is same as saying that the amount of wildness is decreased.
Should we instead try to reintroduce what seems to be an appropriate number of wolves to the ecosystem? But what could this possibly mean, other than protecting the stability and equilibrium of the ecosystem, which is the view that the authors reject?
Again, restoration projects such as the one in Yellowstone seem to be the opposite of what an advocate of the wildness view would support. After all, it is not as if we could change the past and manipulate the environment in such a way that it would really be like the removal and reintroduction of the wolves never happened. It seems more correct to me to accept the conclusion that “wildness value” would be maximized by limiting our involvement as much as possible. On this view, once human intervention has resulted in the removal of the wolves from the ecosystem, we should just “quit while we’re ahead”, so to speak.
These issues raise problems for Hettinger and Throop’s conclusion. Indeed, while “restoration designed to enhance wildness value wears its limitations on its sleeve”, it seems that the wildness value theory will ultimately conflict with our intuitions “about our obligations to preserve and restore natural systems like Yellowstone” (197). While it may have seemed that we should try to undo our previous evil of intervention, I do not see how it is possible to hold this on Hettinger and Throop’s view.