Facilitated Discussion
Kristen gets the discussion started by asking: Are there any areas that you feel like you are having success in?
Pete Solvinsky, Maine Geologic Society: We have done well with the collaboration element. Development of our project involved a lot of collaboration between state agencies, NGOs and communities. However, when it came time to approached the communities we did so with a carrot stick approach. I kind of wish that all stakeholder had been involved in the development phase.
Stewart, FWS: We also experienced a lot of success with the collaboration element. We started with a vision to protected sea bird nesting islands. We held public meetings to gage municipal and landowner interest. Once we found out that we would have public support we went and identified what islands needed to be protected. We went to the stakeholder because we knew we could not accomplish what we wanted to with out buy in from the public.
Q: How did you determine what habitat to protect
A: We did an economic analysis to determine what the value of sea bird habitat is. It is difficult because there is no market for sea birds. However, we used a variety of sources to value the birds habitat, including dues to non-profits like Audubon, studies on the intrinsic value of sea birds, and the profits of businesses that conduct sea bird tours. I am not sure if economists would find our method of valuation to be based in solid science, but sometimes you have to take what you have and go with it. "We should not sacrifice the possible for the perfect."
Massachusetts is funding a study to develop a valuation system for non-market resources as a way to address the lack of economic indicators. Also there is a document out now on the economic value that is contributing to well functioning estuaries in the US.
FYI: FWS yesterday came out with an analysis of the recovery cost for the links, look for it in the news
Besides valuation what are some other problems you have been facing?
A: I work on a lot of projects that do a good job of tracking progress, but there is often a disconnect between tracking progress and outcomes. The piece that is missing is the long term monitoring.
Q: How would you like to see that played out?
A: If the goal is to have a landscape that supports all of our native plants and animals, you need to have measures to get there and meetings with towns is not going to accomplish this.
Judy Colby-George, spatial alternatives: In my experience it has been really hard to write plans that loop back, we write plans that include check lists. Now we have started creating plans that have measurable goals. The next step is to include provision that say if we do not meet this goal we will go back and revisit the plan and implement policies that will allow us to accomplish our original goal.
Stewart, FWS: Our goal is population objectives-we count the acres of wetlands we have restored or protected, but we can not say tell you exactly how many black ducks have been saved because those acres of wetland have been saved.
Working on the New England cottontail project, the problem is that our grants do not fund the long term tracking, so how do you fund the on-going monitoring.
It might be that all the organizations working together might be accomplishing the long-term monitoring even if it is not done by your organization.
That might be the case but there needs to be some uniformity.
One of the biggest challenges with ecosystem based management is that you are working with a lot of different elements, which makes base lines problematic. As a scientist it seems to me that it would be very difficult to embark on one of these projects without base lines.
One way we try and address this problem is through collaboration, the more people the wider the variety of knowledge. However, we need acknowledge that we do not have perfect knowledge and account for this by practicing adaptive management.
John Sowles, Maine Department of Marine Resources had expressed a concern about the scale of the project at Tauton Bay. This might be an example of a project that might be more effective if it is scaled down.
It is important to create a project that can be supported by the available funding. For example, you may be able to accomplish more by limiting your project to a specific topic, i.e. fisheries, New England cottontail, or limiting the geographical boundaries. Even though single species management is passe we still need to do it in some instances. Also even when you are engaging in single species studies theses species are interconnected and you end up looking at a number of different species even if only one is the focus of your research.
Seems as if the scale issue is also a social problem, i.e. it has been very difficult to engage communities in issues facing the whole Gulf of Maine as opposed to the area of Gulf that they live on. With each project we need to ask: what is the appropriate scale for achieving effective ecosystem management and trying to strike a balance between what is the appropriate scale at an ecosystem level and also at a human level.
It is interesting to note that there are projects, for example the Yukon to Yellowstone that are trying to employ an ecosystem approach on a large scale, at least for terrestrial resources. However, this is much more difficult for marine areas.
I work in the non-point source management field and a lot of our outcomes have come down from Washington. In addition, to outcome goals imposed by EPA Maine has develop intercept and social surveys prior to project to try understand the public's perspective of the problem. One success story is the volunteer lakes project that has been collecting data for 30 years, data that allows us to scientifically verify our progress. We need the data of these nonprofits identify whether or not out goals are being met.
Can you think of something that by October 2009 you would like to do that might address the need for indicators of progress?
Chris Feurt, NERR and UNE: An example is low impact development. It is something that the towns of Well, Kennebunk, Sanford want to engage in. I also know that there is a link between low impact development and water quality. By encouraging the town to adopt low impact development ordinances I can accomplish something I want (protection of water quality) without additional funds. In addition we do not need to provide an incentive because we know that the interest is there and it does not have a negative economic impact.
Problem is in Freeport low impact developments are not selling, while the standard subdivisions are selling. Those ordinances assume that there is market demand for low impact development.
Steve Burns, Community Development Director: My goal is to invite Pete to York for dinner to talk about doing sea level change work in York.
Trying to quantify the increase in the value associated with the acres protected. As a land trust we need to develop indicators for the positive impact that conservation of land is having on water quality, species preservation, etc.
What are towns interested in now?
How do we create a way for people to visualize the impact of regulatory changes to help people conceptualize the impact and enter into the discussion.
How do we start collaborating?
There was a legislative mandate that the we look at an ecosystem based management approach to bay management. As a result the marine community is developing a centralized organization. We are in a trust building phase where groups are getting together once every few month to share experiences and develop relationships so that when a project comes up we will be able to mobilize, we will have a foundation for working together.
Matt Nixon is Dept. of Marine Resources' new coastal fellow and he going to be working on ways to better coordinate overlapping agencies and facilitate data sharing.
Just having a dialogue like we are having today is a start. Our goal for today was to look at some of the deficiencies identified in the survey. Specifically, we wanted to provide examples from the state so that folks can recognize and have a better understanding of ecosystem management. It seems as if we have accomplished our goal. The final key pad polling exercise indicates that people learned a lot and were satisfied with the material and format of the conference.
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