7636 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

OVERVIEW ~ 19 aquatic ecosystem that was disturbed at some earlier time (e.g., 2, 20, or 200 years ago) is a candidate for restoration.. An approximate point in time must be selected to develop criteria for restoration. Restoring an aquatic ecosystem to its predisturbance condition may be a difficult problem. For some ecosystems, the fossil record (fossil plants, pollen) can be helpful. For lakes, paleoecological methods can be used. For prairies, soil core analysis is used. Sometimes what is required is some "historical investigative ecology." Whereas restoration aims to return an ecosystem to a former natu- ral condition, the terms creation, reclamation, and rehabilitation imply putting a landscape to a new or altered use to serve a particular human purpose (creation or reclamation) (see Glossary, Appendix B, for definitions). The term restoration is used in numerous regulations and public laws when what is meant is reclamation, rehabilitation, or mitiga- tion. In 1937, Congress enacted the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restora- tion Act (P.L. 75-415), which was intended to aid wildlife restoration projects. In the statement of purpose, however, the terms restoration and rehabilitation are used interchangeably. Further, the bill deals only with "...improvement of areas of land or water adaptable as feeding, resting, or breeding places for wildlife ... ". In a similar vein, a memorandum of agreement between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1990) de- fines restoration as "measures undertaken to return the existing fish and wildlife habitat resources to a modern historic condition. Resto- ration then includes mitigation as well as some increments of en- hancement." Mitigation is simply the alleviating of any or all detri- mental effects arising from a given action (although this may not truly occur). Mitigation for filling a wetland in order to build a shopping center may involve restoring a nearby wetland that had been filled for some other reason, or it could involve creating a wet- land on an adjacent area that was formerly upland. Mitigation need not, and often does not, involve in-kind restoration or creation. For example, the loss of floodwater storage due to filling a wetland might be mitigated by creating a detention basin. Although the functional attributes of flood control are rehabilitated, the chemical and biologi- cal characteristics or other functional values of the wetland are not. Mitigation of frequently and rapidly fluctuating water levels in a flood control reservoir may be achieved simply by altering the re- lease schedule from the reservoir. In this case,- mitigation is achieved by reclamation, not by restoration or creation. Preservation is the maintenance of an aquatic ecosystem. Preser- vation involves more than preventing explicit alterations, such as