WHERE AND WHY DOES RESTORATION HAPPEN ? COASTAL SUSTAINABILITY ALUMNI HAS THE ANSWER
But that answer, it turns out, is more complicated than it might seem.
Bronwen Stanford, an alumni of the Wells Fargo Coastal Sustainability Fellowship at UC Santa Cruz, published a new paper in the journal Biological Conservation this month to answer that very question.
Stanford, a PhD candidate in the Environmental Studies department at UC Sant Cruz, examined the relationship between ecology and demographics to predict stream restoration on the California Central Coast. Along with coauthors Erika Zavaleta and Adam Millard-Ball, the research looked at 700 sites with publicly funded restoration. The paper’s findings indicate that more restoration happened in watersheds with more native fish species, more steelhead, more water pollution, and more people living in the area.
The author’s results also made interesting conclusions about the places in which restoration isn’t happening. More restoration also happened in watersheds where communities were more white, wealthy, and educated—a result that may reflect the demographics of conservation practitioners themselves. The research is an argument for the importance of representation matters in restoration and conservation—as well as a call for regional environmental planning.