Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Scoping Tool Analysis of Beneficiaries and Environmental Attributes for the Tillamook River Wetlands Project

Stakeholders may have different priorities regarding the purpose or goals for restoring specific sites (or areas), particularly regarding the benefits that the restoration might provide to them or the communities they represent. This technical report provides a structured decision-making approach using a multi decision criteria analysis methods guided by the FEGS Scoping Tool (FST) to incorporate the different priorities of stakeholders regarding the decision alternatives at the Tillamook River Wetlands restoration site. There are four steps to an analysis using FST: 1) articulating the relative influence of stakeholder prioritization decision criteria for decision makers, 2) assessing relative stakeholder prioritization based on those decision criteria, 3) building beneficiary profiles for each stakeholder group, and 4) finding the shared interests in environmental attributes based on what beneficiaries need or care for. Additionally, this report explores how the top priority environmental attributes translate to common interests amongst stakeholder groups. These priorities can be useful to build a set of shared goals around which to develop restoration project design and monitoring, build a stakeholder communication strategy, or be the basis for some other type of approach to incorporate stakeholder interests into the decision making and planning of the restoration site.

Impact/Purpose

Framing ecological restoration and monitoring goals from a human benefits perspective (i.e., ecosystem services) can help inform restoration planners and surrounding communities about the direct human benefits of the restoration. The goal of this presentation is to introduce Tillamook Estuary Partnership managers to 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 in the context of the Tillamook River Wetlands restoration project in Tillamook Bay. 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 can help TEP managers explore the FST as a method to identify and prioritize the benefits that stakeholders want from restoration, and to utilize ecosystem services concepts in early stages of restoration planning practices to better connect restoration goals to community values. The methodology of the FST is transferrable to other ecosystems in which any number of stakeholder and interests need to be considered in a decision-making context.

Citation

Hernandez, ConnieL, C. Jackson, L. Sharpe, AND Ted DeWitt. Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Scoping Tool Analysis of Beneficiaries and Environmental Attributes for the Tillamook River Wetlands Project. Presentation to Tillamook Bay National Estuaries Partnership Mangers, Tillamook, Oregon, March 21, 2022.