Eco-compensation is an environmental economic instrument for internalization of external cost.Returning farmland to lake is one of the important parts of restoring wetland ecosystem function in the Yangtze River Valley of China.Whether the project of lake recovery can be successful depends on the compensation to the farmers who have lost their original benefits and contributed to the wetland ecosystem recovery by returning farmland to lake.Aiming at the wetland recovery of the Dongting Lake,the practical implementation of programs of the lake recovery and flood control in this area has been challenged by the heavy task of population resettlement,so it is an ideal area for case studies to reach the academic objectives proposed as the above.Based on field survey and experimentation,this research evaluated the benefit losses of the resettled farmers and the increased values of ecosystem service functions caused by wetland recovery,and furthermore,the value of eco-compensation for relocated farmers was calculated by considering the combination of the farmers’ compensation appeal.The value of eco-compensation for relocated farmers in the Dongting Lake area was 6084.5 yuan per household by synthetic analysis of the effects on wetland ecosystem restoration.Moreover,this article took Dongting Lake area as a case to study and explore the basic issues of the eco-compensation by returning farmland to lake,that was who should pay,who should be paid,how much the payment was and what the payment means was,which sought the mechanisms of wetland restoration eco-compensation and prompted the people’s enthusiasms for ecological restoration.