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Alternative Approaches to Urban Natural Areas Restoration: Integrating Social and Ecological Goals

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Alternative Approaches to Urban Natural Areas Restoration: Integrating Social and Ecological Goals Chapter 8 Alternative Approaches to Urban Natural Areas Restoration: Integrating Social and Ecological Goals Paul H. Gobster 8.1 Introduction Ecological restoration incorporates land management principles and activities aimed at returning a damaged or degraded ecosystem back to a key historic trajectory in order to achieve goals of ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability (Society for Ecological Restoration 2004) . Please consult Chap. 1 (Lamb et al. this volume) for additional perspectives. In the United States, many restorationists look to ecological conditions present before the time of European settlement as the key historic landscape they are seeking to restore, and employ an approach to restoration management that has been called “classical ecological restoration” (Callicott 2002 ) . Nine attributes of successfully restored ecosystems identi fi ed in the Society for Ecological Restoration International’s Primer ( 2004 ) conform closely to this classical management approach, and have been summarized by Ruiz-Jaen and Aide ( 2005 ) as falling along three major ecological dimensions: (1) diversity measured in terms such as the richness and abundance of native plants and other species; (2) structure measured in terms such as the age, distribution, and density of vegetation; and (3) processes measured in terms such as the presence of natural disturbance regimes such as fi re. While these dimensions and their measures can help guide restoration efforts on a trajectory toward ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability, the ultimate success of classical ecological restoration is judged by how well the measures fall within an historic range of variability found in closely matched reference sites (Ruiz-Jaen and Aide 2005 ) . Thus in a broader sense, the overarching goal of the classical approach is authenticity or fi delity in how a restored site looks and functions like one before European settlers arrived, minimally in fl uenced by contemporary human impacts and values (Higgs 2003 ) . P. H. Gobster (*) U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station , Chicago , IL , USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Stanturf et al. (eds.), Forest Landscape Restoration: Integrating Natural 155 and Social Sciences, World Forests 15, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5326-6_8, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 156 P.H. Gobster While this classical approach to management has led to many successful restoration projects, ecologists and other environmental professionals are increasingly questioning its ef fi cacy in dealing with severely disturbed landscapes (e.g., Martínez and López-Barerra 2008 ) and unpredictable trajectories (e.g., Choi et al. 2008 ) . These concerns might be especially apparent in urban areas, where landscape fragmentation, soil and hydrologic alterations, and microclimatic patterns introduce novel and often substantially different effects than what may have occurred historically. Perhaps even more signi fi cant are concerns raised about people’s uses, perceptions, and values of the landscape and its restoration, which may pose formidable challenges for managing urban natural areas in socially acceptable ways (Gobster 2010 ; Ingram 2008 ) . In this paper I examine these issues within the context of urban ecological resto- ration, with an emphasis on incorporating social goals alongside ecological ones in managing natural areas. While the Primer’s nine attributes of restored ecosystems strongly imply the classical approach as a dominant model, its mention of additional goals suggests that other approaches could be considered as conditions warrant: For example, one of the goals of restoration might be to provide speci fi ed natural goods and services for social bene fi t in a sustainable manner. In this respect, the restored ecosystem serves as natural capital for the accrual of these goods and services. Another goal might be for the restored ecosystem to provide habitat for rare species or to harbor a diverse genepool for selected species. Other possible goals of restoration might include the provision of aesthetic amenities or the accommodation of activities of social consequence, such as the strengthening of a community through the participation of individuals in a restoration project (Society for Ecological Restoration 2004 ) . In light of these additional goals, it is important to examine how restoration managers and stakeholders negotiate the implementation of restoration activities and practices for different urban natural area restoration sites and programs. In what follows, I describe restoration programs in two major North American cities and suggest that there may be a number of alternative approaches to restoration that could be applied to achieve social and ecological goals. From this work I outline a framework for how appropriate approaches to natural areas restoration in urban contexts might be identi fi ed for a given site or a system of sites. This framework, adapted from the USDA Forest Service’s ( 1982 ) Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, could provide restoration managers with a systematic way for matching ecological goals and management practices with people’s broader desires and expectations for urban nature. 8.2 Case Studies: Key Issues and Constraints In order to better understand the diverse goals that underlie the restoration management of urban natural areas, I examined restoration activity in Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California to identify the key issues faced by practitioners and public stakeholder groups when restoration programs are implemented within metropolitan 8 Alternative Approaches to Urban Natural Areas Restoration… 157 areas (for details see Gobster 2000, 2001, 2007a, b ) . Both locations have signi fi cant amounts of protected open space within their metropolitan boundaries: there are more than 279,000 ha of open space in the 9-county “Chicago Wilderness” planning region (9% of land area; 12 ha/1,000 residents) and more than 400,000 ha (24.8% of land area, 65 ha/1,000 residents) in the 9-county Bay Area Open Space Council region (Gobster 2007a ) . But while extensive restorative management is happening throughout these two metropolitan areas, I focused my case studies on sites within each city and its host county because of the diverse range of social and ecological issues that are being dealt with. In Chicago, there are 49 restoration sites in City of Chicago parks and another 70 sites in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. The sites range in size from a fraction of a hectare to 1,500 ha in size and include prairie, savanna, woodland, and wetland communities. In San Francisco, there are 30 restoration sites in City of San Francisco parks and another 12 sites in Golden Gate National Recreation Area within the County of San Francisco. These sites range in size from less than 1 ha to more than 160 ha in size and include coastal dune, scrub, grassland, wetland, and non-native forest communities (Gobster 2007a ) . The fragmented character of these urban natural areas imposes signi fi cant restric- tions on what ecological conditions can be restored through management programs (e.g. Vidra and Shear 2008 ) . For example, a prairie restoration at the scale of even the largest of sites in Chicago or Cook County is unlikely to become home to an American bison ( Bison bison ). Instead, most restorations focus on recovering or reintroducing the key fl ora of a target community and hope to attract smaller fauna such as butter fl ies and birds. By the same token, a dune restoration in the city or county of San Francisco cannot be given the freedom to shift across a park road or into a neighbor’s backyard. Instead, ecological communities are necessarily fi xed in space and any movement of elements in the community must take place within site boundaries. And while prescribed burning may be used to manage the understory of open oak woodlands in Chicago or reduce woody shrub growth in coastal scrub area of San Francisco, setting back succession with an all-consuming fi re is not in the urban restorationist’s playbook. Thus temporal dynamics are also more or less fi xed and give the impression that such communities are stable and climax in character. Along with these structural constraints there is a host of social and political issues that further de fi ne what conditions should be restored in urban settings (e.g., Trigger and Head 2010 ) . Demand for open space by a diverse range of user and interest groups not only limits the number and size of restoration projects within a program but also what other uses might take place, how sites are managed, and by whom. In San Francisco, designation of natural areas and concomitant restrictions on off-leash dog access have led to a major con fl ict between natural area restora- tionists and dog owners and threatened progress toward adoption of the city’s Signi fi cant Natural Resources Area Management Plan (San Francisco Recreation and Park Department 2006 ) . Removal of exotic trees from restoration sites, especially Australian blue gum eucalyptus ( Eucalyptus globulus ), has also been a point of con fl ict in plan adoption, and, along with tight air quality restrictions and strong attitudes against the use of prescribed burning, public sentiment has forced restoration man- agers to consider alternative ways for managing natural area sites. While restoration 158 P.H. Gobster in Chicago has also been contentious at times (e.g., Gobster and Hull 2000 ) , volunteer- based restoration has long been a hallmark of the metropolitan region’s restoration
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