A wetland monitoring crew collecting samples at an environmental restoration site.
(Photo Credit: Chris May, The Nature Conservancy Michigan)

By Matthew Jurjonas, Christopher A. May, Bradley Cardinale, Stephanie Kyriakakis, Douglas R. Pearsall, and Patrick J. Doran.

Read the full paper here.

The practice of environmental restoration–meant to remove pollution or improve conditions for wildlife–typically only measures things like water quality, amount of wildlife, or plant cover to determine success. This is because funders generally only require these environmental considerations. However, there is also a growing interest in understanding how restoration affects people and communities, as recent research has shown positive connections between restoration and property value, reduced flood risk, outdoor recreation, and people’s happiness. Additionally, research has shown that these benefits for people are much more likely to lead to public support for restoration efforts. Nonetheless, many programs that fund restoration projects still do not prioritize people and the adoption of new ways of thinking about measuring the success of restoration has been slow. As a result, little is known about how many restoration projects are designed to directly benefit people, as opposed to solely the environment.

We believe that the best way to understand how widespread current interest in restoration is, as well as to encourage more consideration of people and communities in restoration, is to engage the local restoration project managers. To that end, we surveyed over 400 project managers who do actual restoration work. We used the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) as an example. The GLRI, funded by the United States federal government, has provided over $3.5 billion to more than 5,300 projects in the midwestern United States since 2010, but it currently requires only environmental considerations. Even so, our findings revealed that almost half of the project managers set goals to improve the lives of people and communities, and more than 70% of those who did believe they achieved it. In comparison, 90% of project managers believed they met their environmental goals.

These results indicate that restoration efforts already have positive impacts for both people and nature, highlighting the need for more thorough evaluations to capture the often-overlooked benefits. To expand public support, we recommend that environmental restoration funders adopt a broader perspective that fully documents all the outcomes from their projects.