The Nature Conservancy’s Brian Richter Discusses Ecosystem Restoration

The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. PBS&J Highlights discussed the topic of ecosystem restoration with Brian Richter, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Sustainable Waters Program.

Why is ecosystem restoration important to the nation?

During the past two centuries, the American people have been quite industrious in developing the country’s natural resources. As a nation, we have attained a high level of agricultural productivity, developed extensive electricity generation systems, built an expansive transportation network, and harnessed the flow of rivers to supply water to farms, cities, and industries. However, in recent decades we have come to understand some of the things we have lost along the way. We have degraded many of our natural ecosystems to the point where they no longer sustain healthy fish and wildlife populations, and the recreational and aesthetic qualities of many rivers and streams have been compromised.

Now we are asking our natural resource managers to embrace a broader mandate. We want to manage our ecosystems in a way that not only provides reliable water supplies, sustains the production of important commodities, and supports local economies, but also sustains natural ecosystem services including recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual qualities. And we are asking that these qualities be restored in many places where they have been lost.

From your perspective, how does ecosystem restoration fit in with sustainable development?

It is important to be clear about what we mean when we use the phrase “sustainable development.” The most often-cited definition was provided by the Brundtland Commission in 1987, which emphasizes the importance of not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. While this definition provided an important philosophical construct, it has been difficult to apply in resource management because of its vague wording and inherent subjectivity.

In our river management efforts, we have emphasized the need to set very clear and measurable ecosystem management goals as an essential first step in the practice of sustainable development. When managers and stakeholders are working collaboratively to attain those goals, and fostering an open and inclusive process in which interested parties can discuss and modify the goals over time to reflect changing social values and knowledge, then sustainability is realized. In many instances, managers and stakeholders will adopt goals that cannot be attained without some degree of ecosystem restoration. In those cases, sustainable development will need to incorporate a change in management practices, or more direct forms of ecosystem restoration, that will bring the ecosystem into the desired condition and functionality.

What type of ecosystem restoration does your institution pursue related to water?

The Sustainable Waters Program is working with water managers around the world to advance ways to meet human needs for water while maintaining or restoring freshwater ecosystem health. We are working with municipal water agencies, hydropower companies, private corporations, and federal dam operators to find ways to supply water to cities, farms, or industries, or to generate hydropower or control floods, while attaining ecosystem management goals.

One of our most ambitious programs is our national “Sustainable Rivers Project” with the Army Corps of Engineers. Together, we are exploring opportunities to improve ecosystem health and recover imperiled species populations while continuing to meet the original purposes of the dams and reservoirs. We are now working with the Corps at 12 dams across the country, and both of our organizations are hoping to extend our partnership to hundreds of Corps dams in the coming years.

What types of projects and where in the nation will your organization implement its water-related ecosystem restoration projects?

We take a strategic approach in deciding where to work on freshwater ecosystem restoration. With our limited capacity, we simply cannot work at all of the places needing such attention. Our goal is to help create some examples of ecologically sustainable water management that can be emulated by many other organizations and agencies. We are working across a variety of water management settings – e.g., rivers that are being used for municipal or agricultural water supply, or hydropower generation, or managed for flood control – in an effort to demonstrate some concepts, tools, and approaches that can help water managers achieve ecological sustainability. Fortunately, there are many other talented and energetic river conservation interests pursuing similar goals, and we’re all becoming better at magnifying our influence through shared learning and capacity-building.

What focus do you think is important in the environmental science disciplines to adequately address ecosystem restoration?

The environmental sciences are essential to successful ecosystem restoration. The complex nature of ecosystems requires input from many different scientific disciplines, working synergistically to form the holistic understanding and broad knowledge base required in ecosystem restoration. For example, in our river restoration efforts, we work with fish biologists, riparian ecologists, hydrologists, fluvial geomorphologists, water quality specialists, computer modelers, statisticians, and many other types of experts. Facilitating productive exchanges of ideas and information across these many disciplines can be quite challenging, but absolutely necessary.

While “good” environmental science is necessary, ecosystem restoration efforts cannot hope to succeed unless there is strong socio-political support as well. Virtually every restoration project requires a continual commitment of resources and energy, and without it, the project withers and dies. Success therefore depends upon being able to gain and sustain socio-political enthusiasm. For this reason, a focus on communicating science to decision makers and stakeholders is critically important. I commonly encourage college students interested in ecosystem restoration to seek cross-training in both the environmental and social sciences.

We are hearing a lot about dam removal. From an ecosystem perspective, what does your institution believe are the one or two most important challenges in completing dam removal properly?

We have not developed much expertise in dam removal. Fortunately, there are many other scientists and environmental organizations that are doing excellent work in this field. We have instead chosen to focus our energies on modifying the operations of dams that will remain in place. Many existing dams are having significant ecological impact on downstream river ecosystems, through their alteration of river flow patterns, changes in sediment transport regimes, and changes in water chemistry and temperature. For every dam that is being removed, there are literally thousands whose operations can be improved to benefit ecosystem health.

We are hearing a lot about the application of adaptive management in the ecosystem restoration rhetoric. How do you see adaptive management being applied to your projects?

We pursue all of our river ecosystem restoration projects in an adaptive management context, as an expression of our humility for all that we do not know. We know that we cannot know everything about a river ecosystem with perfect certainty, and we never expect that our restoration recommendations will be perfectly right. We implement our restoration designs experimentally, tracking the response of the system carefully and learning from what we see. Through this process of deliberate learning, we aspire to become better ecosystem managers over time.

In too many instances, scientists assume that decision makers will be unwilling to implement their recommendations if they are communicated as being uncertain. We have not found this to be the case. We have found decision makers to be quite willing to assume some risk if scientists are being honest and open about the shortcomings in their knowledge, and they engage decision makers in a cogent and thoughtful plan to improve understanding of the system.

How are we going to define when an ecosystem is fully restored?

Ecosystem restoration is a process, not an endpoint. There are two primary considerations that dissuade me from viewing ecosystem restoration as a finite event. The first is related to the rather impossible challenge of understanding an ecosystem so well that you could know how to fix everything that isn’t working properly. Because of the inherent complexities of ecosystems and the difficulty of knowing how they will respond to restoration actions, ecosystem restoration should be perceived as a long-term process of deliberate (adaptive) learning. We should not expect to someday arrive at a point where we can proclaim that we are “done.” Instead, we can draw satisfaction from knowing when the system is doing better. We can also measure our success against specific goals – such as the recovery of a population to targeted level.

A second consideration is the realization that society’s goals for the management or restoration of any ecosystem are almost certain to change over time. They will change because the science will improve, and as a result our perceptions of success will change as well. Restoration goals also change because social values change – restoration is, after all, a social imperative. Today we expect different things of our resource managers than society expected of them in past generations, and there is no reason to think that society will expect something different in the future.

This does not mean that we cannot take great joy and a feeling of accomplishment from ecosystem restoration just because there is no finality. If you are making progress toward realizing a restoration vision that is broadly embraced by those that care about the ecosystem, you should celebrate now!

There is a lot of discussion about the mega-projects in ecosystem restoration. Can you give us a perspective on what to expect regarding smaller ecosystem projects in the future?

The mega-projects tend to capture much of the media attention, and, unfortunately, this sometimes has the undesirable effect of making people think that all ecosystem restoration efforts are necessarily very expensive and require complex decision-making structures. However, there is a great deal of smaller-scale ecosystem restoration taking place. For instance, we have documented over 700 river restoration projects in which water flows are being restored, from more than 50 different countries. Many of these efforts involve rather simple solutions, such as changing the location or timing at which water is withdrawn from a stream or reducing the amount being withdrawn through implementing water conservation measures. Yet these simple measures might be all that is required to resolve many problems in the stream ecosystem. It is important to acknowledge that much opportunity exists for this type of small-scale restoration, and that it can bring important improvements to ecosystem health.

What do you see as the major trend in ecosystem restoration in the next few years?

With respect to river ecosystem restoration, we can expect to see rapidly growing interest in restoring natural water flow patterns. This is a critically important complement to water quality improvements and other forms of river restoration, and it reflects the recent advances in river science that have highlighted the importance of maintaining natural river flow regimes.

Another inspiring trend, which I expect will grow exponentially in coming years, is the practice of adaptive management on small-scale restoration projects. The scientific community is emphasizing the importance of tracking restoration projects – big or small – with scientifically-credible measurements and learning from the results. Most importantly, scientists are sharing ideas about how to accomplish a useful level of monitoring and adaptive management in practical, cost-effective ways. I expect the success of restoration efforts to rise sharply as a result.

Brian Richter is the director of The Nature Conservancy's Sustainable Waters Program. His role is to build and guide this program for maximum effectiveness both within the Conservancy and the global conservation and water management communities. Richter travels throughout the world helping project teams, government agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and private firms understand the need for and feasibility of sustainable water management practices. He has been involved in river science and conservation for more than 20 years and led the Conservancy's efforts to build organizational freshwater capacity and interest through the Freshwater Initiative.