Restoring Rivers, Restoring Community

Healthy ecosystems are good for everyone in California—they provide us with abundant wildlife and fisheries, clean drinking water, and needed space in nature for recreation, among other benefits. Here at the PPIC Water Policy Center, we’ve studied restoration issues in the past—including the importance of restoring more natural flow patterns, improving permitting, and storing water for the environment. This year we brought in three CalTrout Ecosystem Fellows to look at another major challenge in river restoration: community engagement.

There is a lot of literature on the importance of stakeholder engagement in restoration work. Studies in the US and internationally have shown that robust engagement can improve restoration outcomes. Yet project proponents frequently make erroneous assumptions when trying to engage community stakeholders, as a recent study of urban stream restoration illuminated. This includes assuming that community members and those proposing restoration actions have the same goals; that education and outreach alone will create community support; and that the community will benefit from restoration, and thus support it.

In addition to illuminating—and not falling prey to—these assumptions, proponents of restoration work must clear other major hurdles. These include:

This is just a sample of some of the challenges facing community outreach and engagement in ecosystem restoration efforts. Useful summaries of the many approaches to constructive engagement can be found in reports by The Nature Conservancy and the Pacific Institute.

Experience also shows that community engagement challenges vary, depending on the type of restoration project and the affected communities. We asked our three PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellows to look at this issue through their journalist eyes. They tackled the complex topic of community engagement and restoration on three very different rivers: the Eel River (North Coast), where efforts to remove aging hydropower dams are underway; the San Joaquin River (Central Valley), where multiple agencies and non-profits are attempting to restore salmon runs and floodplain habitat; and Trabuco Creek (southern California coast), where a broad coalition is attempting to improve passage for steelhead trout.

Over the next few weeks, these journalists will present their observations in a series of blog posts on this site. We hope that their insights will be helpful to those planning similar projects for the future.