Restoration is a New Economic Narrative for the West's Wild and Urban Landscapes

By Headwaters News, 7-06-06


The West has been playing around with its economy lately. Not in the same way the federal government does — through interest rate manipulation, industry regulations and creative subsidies — but in a more narrative way.

Energy has been the primary story of the past several years, as many Western states possess energy resources far beyond their own needs, and see the relative surplus as an economic engine. That story surrounds sustainable production, clean technologies and renewable sources.

But the West has a new economics narrative it’s starting to tell, that of the restoration economy. As Pat Williams, former U.S. Representative for Montana and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, said in a recent column on Headwaters News, “Yesterday’s scars are tomorrow’s pay dirt.”

That column followed last month’s Governor’s Restoration Forum, sponsored by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. The two-day forum, written about in this week’s Western Perspective on Headwaters News, brought together conservationists, industry leaders, scientists, labor leaders and other interested parties. Together, they touted and discussed the burgeoning restoration economy that is pumping millions of dollars into and around Montana, fueling a new economic engine aimed at, simply put, cleaning up the old economic engines of mining, timber and agriculture.

And Montana is certainly not the only Western state with restoration on the brain.

In May, the Forest Service and New Mexico state officials worked with a handful of conservation groups and industry leaders to create a series of 18 restoration principles that they hope will help guide projects in the state and avoid extraneous red tape. The principles outline goals, such as “reduce the threat of unnatural crown fires” and “restore ecosystem composition,” and techniques, including “utilize existing forest structure” and “integrate process and structure.”

Arizona (PDF) as well has established some guiding principles for an economy based on forest restoration. Those principles acknowledge problems with forests and watersheds, including fires and insects. And they include provisions on monitoring work and developing new forest product industries.

The idea of a restoration economy has even gained the attention of the Western Governors’ Association, which has developed a policy resolution on a restoration economy (PDF). In the policy statement, the governors ask Congress and the president to not only recognize this new industry in the West and around the nation, but also ask them to support it with funds and policies through a multiyear appropriations formula.

In the West, the restoration narrative primarily concerns ecological restoration. The Society for Ecological Restoration defines it as “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.”

Most commonly in the West, that applies to restoring forests, watershed, waterways and grasslands damaged by agriculture, mining, energy extraction, logging and recreation over- or misuse.

But the restoration talked about by states and regional leaders includes more. It also concerns itself with sustaining local economies, providing good-paying jobs, re-beautifying landscapes and preserving lifestyles. The narrative of restoration in the West is not only about natural resource and land management; it’s a social contract as well.

Community and conservation groups in New Mexico are working to restore the Rio Grande and other damaged waterways. Project goals are determined not just by biologists, but by watershed councils and communities that have a vital stake in the health of the rivers.

In Montana, restoring some watersheds includes thinning forests and using the harvested wood to heat schools. Similar programs are taking place in Idaho as well, where rural schools can’t afford rising energy prices.

Restoration projects, spearheaded by large national groups such as Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, and Ducks Unlimited, are restoring wildlife habitat that supports fish and game species popular with hunters and anglers — another huge economic engine in the West.

And in Colorado, numerous large and small groups are contributing to restoring areas burned in the huge Hayman Fire of 2002, which charred 138,000 acres and destroyed 133 homes. That fire, while devastating to the forests, has become a huge living laboratory for biologists and ecologists, and has fueled a mini-restoration economy in itself, engaging businesses, local leaders and thousands of volunteers in efforts to help the landscape rejuvenate itself, which it has already begun to do.

The idea of a restoration as a social contract is also evident in “Good Samaritan” legislation, which allows groups that want to take on mine reclamation or forest restoration to do so without assuming potential liabilities from the work. The bills come out of a movement by environmental groups willing to take on the cleanup of abandoned miles for which there is no longer a clear owner or responsible party.

Storm Cunningham, the self-proclaimed futurist who gave the keynote at the Governor’s Restoration Forum, extended the idea of restoration to beyond just restoring natural landscapes to include urban landscapes as well. The same basic defenition applies to both, exchanging “ecosystem” for “urban landscape.”

The idea may sound far-fetched, until one realizes that it is already happening in many Western cities. Redevelopment of brownfields and airports is breathing new life into formerly blighted areas of Denver, Missoula, Boise and other cities and towns. Real estate entrepreneurs are buying up old, rundown buildings and restoring them, creating condos and mixed-use developments that are attracting high-dollar buyers.

The idea of urban restoration may still be a bit far out, but as ecological restoration becomes a bigger business in the West, the transformation of cities isn’t far behind — even if what many of the cities are restored to may hark back to cities older and farther away that what may have existed here before.

Restoration is still a new idea, though, and is by no means a panacea for the region’s economic woes. For one thing, the precise distinction between “restoration” and “cleaning up” hasn’t yet been fully made. Nor is the idea of exactly what restoration should entail, in terms of that social contract.

As well, as Marnie Criley and Michael Kustudia point out in their Western Perspective, restoration’s upfront costs can be very high, with little short-term returns relative to money spent.

Who is going to make the initial investments? And inherent in the idea of restoration is the idea that something is damaged, broken or even destroyed. Admitting that doesn’t always make for good public relations, even if it’s true. Some industries and communities may be slow to admit there is a problem, or may argue against it.

But in many cases, the damage is not only already done, it is undeniable. Westerners have always prided themselves on capitalizing on the resources and situations at hand, and the new restoration economy is sure to be no exception.

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