New vistas in monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects

Monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects: A journey rather than a destination
Francine M.R. Hughes, Peter A. Stroh,William M. Adams, Keith J. Kirby, J. Owen. Mountford, Stuart Warrington
Journal for Nature Conservation
Volume 19, Issue 4, September 2011, Pages 245-253

This paper opens up new vistas in monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects and makes interesting reading.

Eco-restoration involves setting a target of species or habitat that has to be achieved by prescribed restoration activities or through natural processes. The researchers say where no reference systems exist for defining outcomes or where restoration is planned on a large spatial scale, a more ‘open-ended’ approach to defining outcomes may be much more germane.

This ‘open-ended’ approach suggested by the researchers needs changes to the definition of goals and the design of monitoring and evaluation programmes. The researchers suggest that in open-ended projects restoration goals should be framed in terms of promoting natural processes, mobile landscape mosaics and improved ecosystem services. They contend that this kind of monitoring can then focus on the biophysical processes that underpin the development of habitat mosaics and the provision of ecosystem services, on the way habitat mosaics change through time and on species that can indicate the changing landscape attributes of connectivity and scale.

Stakeholder response is paramount since an open-ended restoration approach is unusual and can encounter institutional and societal antagonism. The authors signs off saying “Evaluation should focus on reporting changing restoration impacts and benefits rather than on achieving a pre-defined concept of ecological success”.