This Week In The News
June 8, 2011
Biodiversity Offsets Make the Grade in UK’s Natural Environment White Paper
The UK’s Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs released their “Natural Environment White Paper” today, which will guide environmental policy in the country. Unsurprisingly the White Paper strongly aligns environmental protection and restoration with economic growth, especially considering it follows on the heels of the Natural Ecosystem Assessment, which found that the UK is consistently undervaluing its ecosystem services.
Australia: Land Sale Release to create first Carbon Neutral biodiversity cycle
A new Australian land sale release initiative titled ‘Trees for Tomorrow’ will set new standards in sustainable funding to ensure carbon sink plantations also recognise biodiversity. Carbon Neutral, a Western Australian not-for-profit carbon advisory firm and carbon offset retailer, has released the first parcels of rural land under its restoration and reforestation programme in some of the country’s most significant biodiversity hotspots.
ADB applauds northeast China’s wetland biodiversity preservation project
Asian Development Bank (ADB) officials have praised a recently completed wetland biodiversity preservation project co-financed by the bank in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. The five-year project has reached its goals of restoring wetlands in the Xingkai Lake Natural Reserve, located in the Sanjiang Plain wetlands, and establishing a monitoring system to observe wildlife there, Cui Changjie, deputy head of the natural reserve, said Thursday.
California: Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy nears long-held goal
The state of California recently began the process of transferring ownership of the Newland Marsh, a 44-acre property at Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway that constitutes the final stretch of wetlands that Smith’s nonprofit, the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, has yet to take over. If that transaction is settled, the wetlands conservancy plans to remove a portion of the levee that separates the marsh from the ocean. A few swings of the wrecking ball, and the mission that Smith has pursued without pay since 1985 will be complete.
Vilsack Introduces Framework for America’s Watersheds
The map establishes a baseline that will be used to establish priorities for watershed restoration and maintenance. The national Watershed Condition Framework establishes a consistent, comparable, and credible process for characterizing, prioritizing, improving, and tracking the health of watersheds on national forests and grasslands. The Framework also builds added accountability and transparency into the Integrated Resource Restoration program which is included in President Obama’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
NZ Government supports environmental champions
He also announced another $300,000 will go to the Dune Restoration Trust of New Zealand to restore indigenous biodiversity in coastal environments throughout the country.
Louisiana: Wetland Restoration (Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge)
A bunch of Duke students preparing to plant native marsh grasses in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, in order to revitalize habitat that was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. May 2011.
New York: Grant award will help restore turtle habitat
The York Land Trust was recently selected to receive $300,000 in funding from the Maine Natural Resource Conservation Program in order to help purchase and restore a 52-acre parcel near the Belle Marsh Road Reservoir. The overall cost of the project is expected to be $375,000. York Land Trust’s restoration efforts will involve the removal of two road sections to re-establish a natural flow of water through wetlands in the area, remediation of erosion and the creation of artificial turtle nest sites.
Washington: North Kitsap’s Carpenter Creek restoration finally moves forward
After more than a decade of working and waiting, the Carpenter Creek estuary restoration project finally breaks ground later this month. Kitsap County will begin replacing a 10-foot-wide culvert under South Kingston Road with a 90-foot-wide bridge starting June 27. Funded by a nearly $2 million state grant, the project is considered one of the county’s most important habitat restoration projects in years.
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Welcome to the GRN
The Global Restoration Network (GRN), a project of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), offers the field of ecological restoration a new database and web-based portal to trustworthy and hard-to-find information on all aspects of restoration, from historic ecosystems and causes of degradation to in-depth case studies and proven restoration methods and techniques. The overriding mission of the GRN is to link research, projects, and practitioners in order to foster an innovative exchange of experience, vision, and expertise.
The GRN is fast becoming the central hub for ecological restoration – a vital resource for policymakers, professionals and communities, whether researching options for habitat restoration, writing a project proposal, coordinating volunteers, or looking for educational programs and funding. Perhaps the most exciting feature of the GRN is the database where you can make a specific query and find restoration case studies and annotated links to a wide variety of relevant resources including experts, organizations and literature. Here is a small sample of the links you will find in the GRN website and database.
CASE STUDIES
Alexander River Restoration Project, Israel
The Alexander River Restoration Project is Israel’s leading river restoration and was awarded the Thiess International Riverprize in 2003. Implemented by Israeli agencies, with cooperation and support from local Palestinian officials in an unprecedented show of solidarity, the project aims to restore a river severely degraded by untreated sewage and pollution from more than 70 sources–in both Palestinian and Israeli territory.
Restoration of the Mata Atlantica, Brazil
Instituto Terra is a non-profit organization founded in 1999 by Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado and the renowned photographer Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado. It is located at the Bulcão Farm in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, and it covers an area of 676 hectares.
Mangroves Restoration in Andhra Pradesh, India
This project was launched in Andhra Pradesh with the aim of inducing concerted action towards conservation and sustainable management of the mangrove wetlands on the east coast of India. The restoration employed canal techniques, instead of simple plantation of seedlings, and a fish bone pattern of canals was utilized.
ORGANIZATIONS
The Ecosystem Services Partnership seeks to enhance this integration by coordinating collaborative efforts on ecosystem services at the global, national and local level working toward better understanding, modeling, valuation and management of ecosystem services and natural capital.
Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration is a network of governments, organizations, communities and individuals who recognize the importance of forest landscape restoration and want to be part of a coordinated global effort.
European Centre for River Restoration supports the development of river restoration as an integral part of sustainable water management throughout Europe ensuring that projects will be more cost effective, more likely to succeed, and will encompass multifunctional objectives.
LITERATURE
Saltmarsh Restoration – Rebuilding Habitat with a Community Partnership
A recent project in the Tweed Estuary has shown that when the shared goal of committed stakeholders is the rehabilitation of a damaged saltmarsh ecosystem, then progress is definitely possible.
Sustainable River Restoration in Urban Streams
Based on a review of the literature, we identified candidate indicators of hydrologic alteration and ecosystem response that could be used to guide restoration. Using available biological and hydrologic data we tested candidate indicators to determine if flow-biology relationships could be identified and used as guidance in restoration programs.
The Restoration of Forests: Temperate Zone of China
The restoration of forests in the northeast and northern China, including the loess plateau, is of benefit to biodiversity conservation and the improvement of the natural environment.
VIDEO
Post Tsunami Mangrove Restoration in Sri Lanka
The video is part of the Global Nature Fund’s project to restore mangrove forests and livelihoods in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami of 2004.
Regrowing the Borneo Rainforest
By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans — and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.
A River Reborn: The Restoration of Fossil Creek
The inspiring rebirth of a biologically critical river in Arizona is recounted in A River Reborn: The Restoration of Fossil Creek. The one-hour documentary examines the ecological effects of a dam and hydroelectric facility on the waterway and chronicles the 15-year effort that led to decommissioning.
Click on the logo below for some great videos of coastal and salt marsh restoration projects
Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration
