Part 10
IN THIS LESSON
Complicated work.
Restoring rivers is not for the faint of heart. Multiple agencies—with individual codified rules; planning and funding processes; and standard procedures and practices designed to protect and provide a variety of goods—make the process of riverscape restoration enormously complex. We also find tension between goals to improve riverscape process functions with goals to improve landscape condition (rangeland, forestland) on federal lands which can limit the scale of process-based riverscape restoration projects. On top of these challenges, restoration practitioners regularly face constraints with innovative approaches—even with scientific support—when up against institutional norms or society’s long-held cultural traditions and beliefs. We’ll examine constraints by diving into institutional and cultural challenges associated with restoring floodplains, illuminating these challenges with stories about beaver and wildfire followed by an engaging federal land management panel conversation.