Setting the Stage—: Agency Support for Restoring Corridors

As many readers of Ecological Restoration are aware, work is underway in Washington State to remove 2 dams on the Elwha River. For almost 100 years, the dams blocked movement of 5 species of Pacific salmon (oncorhynchus spp.), as well as nutrients from upland forests to coastal ecosystems (Olympic National Park 2012). Elsewhere natural resource managers are working to restore ecological corridors on the landscape. By corridor, I include specific pieces of infrastructure, such as fencing and culverts, linear habitat features, and broad ecosystem attributes that facilitate the natural movement of a species across its range. For example, in California’s Santa Monica Mountains, a complex mix of public and private lands, National Park Service scientists work with state transportation managers to couple highway infrastructure projects with monitoring and research to understand which, and under which conditions, highway improvements are effective in facilitating wildlife movement across roads (Strasburg 2006). In 2008, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) established the nation’s first designated wildlife migration corridor to allow for the annual 241-km movement of pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) in western Wyoming (Environmental News Service 2008). Managers continue to respond to a variety of laws and regulations directing them to conserve species and natural systems, but in these and other cases, they are applying their analysis and work at larger scales and in a landscape ecology context. This is a result of a combination of factors, including developments in conservation biology, restoration ecology, and landscape ecology; increasing ecological pressures (contamination, biological invasions, anthropogenic climate change, habitat loss, fragmentation, etc.); and a stark realization that our protected area boundaries rarely reflect the needs of biological and ecological resources and processes. Common across these actions is a significant investment in partnering and cooperation and in research of restoration techniques and connectivity effectiveness before, during, and after implementation. Federal and state agencies are working to facilitate the former, while articles in this special edition of Ecological Restoration address the latter; that is, provision of more tools to increase efficiencies and effectiveness in the emerging area of corridor restoration. As identified above, one area that requires more attention to implement corridor restoration is to collaborate among the myriad partners on the landscape—federal, state, conservation and recreational organizations, and private landowners. Federal and state agency landscape initiatives are underway to increase cooperation among resource management organizations while continuing to respect individual jurisdictions and missions and to seek compatibility with other uses of the landscape. Through these initiatives, restoration practitioners can better identify partners with whom to develop and implement their work. Because much restoration work is still at the local site scale, these partnerships also enable better integration and interpretation of results at broader scales. These initiatives include the following: