Habitat Restoration Benefits Humans and Fish: Examples of Practical Approaches That Link Habitat Restoration to a Broad Spectrum of Community Needs

Two primary challenges for ecosystem restoration are demonstrating ecologically meaningful outcomes at various scales and gaining the community and political support needed to get from the science and concepts to implementation.  This requires us to focus as much on the social and economic benefits of restoration as the ecological outcomes.  The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has had the privilege to lead eight National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Recovery Act restoration projects, three of which focused on habitat restoration for salmon. This partnership has demonstrated that coastal habitats can be restored with innovative approaches and collaborative local partnerships that gain support from a broad spectrum of community stakeholders.  Each project had well defined ecological, sociological and performance goals and scientific monitoring plans.  These projects also brought increased focus to metrics pertaining to social and economic outcomes, such as creation of jobs in communities that are experiencing economic challenges.  This presentation will highlight how TNC Recovery Act habitat restoration projects in California, Washington and Southeast Alaska provided an important framework for restoring threatened salmon species and U.S. coastal habitats.  In California’s Shasta River, TNC began restoration of the nearly 6,000-acre working cattle ranch that surrounds Big Springs Creek to test the hypothesis that salmon and cows can co-exist in this important California ranching landscape. This restoration project has protected 8 miles of river habitat from cattle, planted 6,000 native riparian trees and shrubs, and constructed stock water troughs to provide off-river water to cattle.   In Washington’s Fisher Slough, an estuary of the Skagit River, project goals included restoration of estuarine habitat for juvenile salmon, improved fish passage and increased flood storage capacity for the sub-basin using levee setbacks, installation of self-regulated floodgates and the removal of antiquated culverts and fish passage barriers.  In Alaska, the Klawock River and its estuary were reconnected by installing a fish friendly culvert in a causeway that blocked fish passage since 1964 to benefit in-migrating adult and out-migrating juvenile salmon.  All of these project’s goals were developed with project partners and success would not have been attainable without community support. Examples of the ecological and scio-economic benefits of these projects will be discussed.