Protection and Restoration: Are We Having an Effect?

What we need is a new Intichiuma,¹ a way of linking the interests of the natural landscape with the interests and ambitions of human beings who are, as the Aborigines realize and express in their myths and rituals, responsible for its beauty and well being. Any attempt to resolve environmental problems in the other way, by placing nature and culture in opposition, or by demoting human culture to mere equality with the rest of nature, denying its shameful transcendence over it, will inevitably fail. But I believe that if we accept this and the responsibility it entails and make the carrying out of this responsibility an occasion for confronting shame, for learning, and for celebration, we stand a fair chance of succeeding…. The great value of restoration is that it provides a basis for this new Intichiuma, with its double benefit of environmental healing and deepened understanding and caring.

—William R. Jordan III, The Sunflower Forest (2003, 203)

The impetus for this special theme grew out of discussions that began several years ago in the NOAA Restoration Center (a division within the Office of Habitat Conservation, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and resulted in a panel session titled "Protection and Restoration: Are We Having an Effect?" at the 2007 meeting of the Estuarine Research Federation (November 4–8, 2007, in Providence RI). The session was developed with the intent to publish a special journal issue with the same theme. The all-day session was divided into three parts: reflections on estuarine restoration by veteran practitioners; regional perspectives from those actively engaged in habitat restoration on different U.S. coasts; and new kinds of technologies and tools. Twenty invited speakers addressed the question "Are we having an effect?" with our habitat restoration efforts in coastal and riverine areas. A subsequent call for papers for the special volume resulted in over a dozen manuscript submissions, most of which were selected for peer review by experts on the various topics covered.

Exploiting the Environment

In trying to answer the question "Are We Having an Effect?," it is perhaps instructive to reflect briefly on the history and stages of restoration, why we are doing it, and how it has changed over the years. Humans have altered their environments for thousands of years for basic survival needs (for example, agriculture, harvesting trees for firewood, diverting streams), and to increase their quality of life. There are examples of habitat alteration being accomplished in ways that are both environmentally sustainable, such as the Papua New Guinea highlands (ca. 10,000 b.c.e. to present) and the Tokugawa era in Japan (1603 to 1868 c.e.) and unsustainable, such as by the Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula (250 to 900 c.e.) or the people of Easter Island in the Pacific (ca. 500 to 1600 c.e.) (Diamond 2005, Peacock 2008, Somma 2008, Sponsel and Casagrade 2007).

In more recent times, and especially since the industrial revolution, exploitation of resources and poor land use practices have resulted in unprecedented destruction and fragmentation of habitat and loss of species. In the United States, for example, it is estimated that loss of wetlands has been more than 50% since colonial times (HJHCSEE 2002), and about 30% of coastal waters are considered to be in poor overall condition (USEPA 2008). Although it is estimated that the United States gained about 23,800 ha of wetlands per year between 1998 and 2004 (Dahl 2006), about 161,000 ha of coastal wetlands were lost, mostly because of coastal development (Stedman and Dahl 2008). In the Gulf of Mexico, the hypoxic area, or dead zone, has more than doubled over the past 22 years, from about 9,880 km² in 1985 to about 20,500 km² in 2007 (Rabalais et al. 2007), with a maximum of about 22,100 km² in 2002 (Rabalais and Turner 2006).

Some of the most endangered species are mollusks. Although the United States has one of the most diverse arrays of gastropod fauna in the world, freshwater snails are one of the...