The Environmental Law Institute and The Nature Conservancy offer insight into how often-piecemeal wetland protection can lead to positive-sum outcomes through a watershed approach. The January/February issue of the National Wetlands Newsletter provides a series of articles on pilot projects undertaken across the country that aim to improve watershed health.
Traditionally, wetland professionals lacked the data at a watershed scale to make coordinated decision on protecting and restoring wetlands to improve the health of the watershed. And many decisions remain limited to case-by-case approaches to improve individual wetland or project outcomes. The pilot projects offer guidance on how establishing watershed goals among a range of stakeholders and utilizing data at a watershed-scale can lead to the sum of watershed health becoming greater than the individual restoration and protection parts.
The projects include:
- Frameworks for watershed plans, outcomes, and approaches;
- Focus on ecosystem services as the basis for mutually beneficial goals;
- Linking priorities between species conservation and wetland and stream mitigation; and
- Encouraging watershed approach planning to address land use and development.
Also in this issue:
The issue also features updates on two watershed approach pilot projects lead by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The updates provide insight into the process to training regulators and planners in using data-rich tools to implement a watershed approach.