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Perspective on Community-based Habitat Restoration
| Introduction/ Background | Restoration Benefits |
Eco- psychology |
Eco- ethics |
Civic Environmentalism |
Monitoring Socioeconomic Parameters |
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Introduction and Background
"Human dimensions" with respect to habitat restoration refers to how people use, value, and benefit from the restoration of degraded habitats. The human dimension of restoration is often at the root of our desire to restore habitat in the first place. Restoration provides a host of socioeconomic benefits - from property protection to improved water quality to restored aesthetics. While natural systems and non-human species certainly benefit from habitat restoration, people often benefit as well. Whether through legislation, volunteers, or private/semi-private funding initiatives, restoration actions are driven by a need to correct some form of human-induced environmental impairment. Corrective action is often determined by social perceptions grounded in environmental values. "While a mechanistic ecology denies any commitment to values, restoration ecology represents a technique for basic research that explicitly links ecology to values such a beauty, community, and the well-being of the ecosystem." (Jordan 2000)
Human dimensions refers to human activities that relate to the individual, society, or the environment. Human dimensions includes a suite of social science considerations:
B. Human management of natural systems Today, nearly all resource management is based on the intensity of human interaction with the environment. We do not manage species and habitats so much as we manage human interactions with and impacts on natural systems. Human activities can alter every physical component of an ecosystem. Our past inability to predict and prevent the adverse consequences of our actions has resulted in significant ecological harm. Our past actions have also created the need for the emerging science of ecological restoration.
Ecological restoration is rarely perfect. Nature's sequences of ecological, geochemical, and climatological processes are extraordinarily complex. Human attempts to replicate these sequences present a challenge. Restoration is also challenging because it must be performed within the context of human understandings and limitations. It is a quickly evolving science. Techniques are increasingly becoming standardized and are resulting in success stories. And participation in this new frontier is often marked by personal satisfaction and excitement by laypeople and professionals alike. Thousands of restoration projects are carried out in North America every year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) alone facilitates several hundred projects annually. NOAA focuses on coastal and marine areas. Restoration actions in these areas address habitats such as tidal marshes, wetlands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, and kelp forests, to name a few. These habitats provide homes for marine mammals, foraging and nursery grounds for fish and shellfish, and nesting and migration corridors for birds. Coastal habitats provide services to people as well, such as protection from wind, waves, and flooding, and socio-economic opportunities via tourism, commercial, and recreational industries. C. Environmental Stewardship Ethic Environmental stewardship encompasses our knowledge, attitudes, values, ethics, perceptions, and behaviors toward environmental renewal. In a society as diverse as ours, environmental values vary widely and shift within and across generations. For example, filling wetlands to increase acreage for agriculture or urban development and damming rivers to improve commerce and transportation were common practices in the early and mid- 20th century. Past generations seemed to give little consideration to the ecological consequences of these actions. Today, such practices are rare and may be viewed as socially or legally unacceptable. Because actions that either enrich or degrade the environment are carried out by communities, building a deeply committed constituency (stewards) for future protection and conservation of intact landscapes is vital to the success of habitat restoration. Community-based restoration offers one way to approach the enormous task of restoring degraded ecosystems while helping citizens develop an environmental stewardship ethic. When communities mobilize by participating in restoration they naturally develop a relationship with their immediate environment. This new relationship offers the opportunity for lasting changes in the way an individual perceives and values the environment. If this perception translates into behavior that benefits the natural environment, an environmental steward is born. Organizations sponsoring habitat restoration often seek to build communities that will energetically support habitat protection and conservation. Activating an individual's passion for positive environmental change, thereby helping him or her to become an environmental steward, is important to the long-term success of habitat restoration. Environmental stewardship is evidenced in activities such as attending public meetings related to restoration proposals, actively engaging in responsible environmental behaviors (e.g., recycling or using mass transit), contributing money to an environmental organization, or volunteering to monitor and evaluate restoration projects. Community-based habitat restoration offers a unique opportunity to connect citizens to their environment and foster a sense of environmental stewardship. Through hands-on habitat restoration, individuals develop a special relationship with a particular part of the landscape or seascape and often come to realize that they can positively influence complex ecosystems in small but significant ways. These environmental stewards may also realize they can, by extension, enhance the larger environment of their watershed, their region, and the planet as a whole. A few websites that might be of interest:
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