An Application of the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Scoping Tool at Restoration Sites in Tillamook Bay (Presentation)

Stakeholders may have different priorities regarding the purpose or goals for restoration, particularly regarding the benefits that the restoration might provide to them or the communities they represent. Early in the project process, those different priorities should be reconciled into a final set of shared goals around which the restoration project design and monitoring are developed. In many cases, those goals are expressions of final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS) which are those biophysical attributes of nature that people directly use, appreciate, or enjoy – such as charismatic wildlife for recreation, property protection for residents, and edible fauna for hunters and anglers. The FEGS Scoping Tool (FST) can be used by restoration practitioners for a particular restoration decision, using a structed approach, to identify what FEGS can speak directly to the values of the stakeholders involved and the beneficiaries they represent. This can help restoration practitioners focus on common interests and priorities that build toward shared restoration goals. We will demonstrate an application of the FST in Tillamook Bay, OR where we worked with restoration planners from Tillamook Bay’s National Estuary Partnership. We used the tool to determine how restoration goals and monitoring metrics could be linked to FEGS most relevant to local stakeholders. This allows for an evaluation of restoration performance that can be communicated in terms of locally relevant benefits from nature. This transparent and replicable approach can be useful for restoration planners interested how FEGS can be incorporated into restoration goals and monitoring. It is transferrable across a wide range of environmental decision contexts in which it is important to consider various, complex stakeholder interests and restoration engineering options. This flexibility also allows for the FST to be easily adaptable from small to large-scale restoration projects both in size/extent of the project and number of stakeholders involved.

Impact/Purpose

Framing ecological restoration and monitoring goals from a human benefits perspective (i.e., ecosystem services) will help inform restoration planners and surrounding communities on the direct social benefits of the restoration. The goal of this presentation is to continue to disseminate the applicability and use of the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) Scoping Tool (FST) to identify the shared values amongst the suite of stakeholders in the decision-making process. The FST provides a transparent and replicable approach to reconciling different priorities into a final set of shared goals that can inform the restoration project goal-setting, design and monitoring. This work will help address the lack of ecosystem services concepts in early stages of restoration planning practices to better connect restoration goals to what people in the community value. The methodology of the FST is transferable to other ecosystems in which any number of stakeholder and interests need to be considered in a decision-making context.

Citation

Hernandez, C., C. Jackson, L. Sharpe, AND Ted DeWitt. An Application of the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Scoping Tool at Restoration Sites in Tillamook Bay (Presentation). PERS/CAERS 2021 Joint Annual Meeting, Virtual, OR, April 22 - 24, 2021.