Symposium Summary: (Re)envisioning Process-based Restoration

Sponsor: Cramer Fish Sciences When we first imagined this symposium, we thought we’d invite enough speakers to fill one slot. Instead, there was enough interest among AFS members to fill an entire day. We had 19 talks that all addressed fish restoration. Speakers were agency and tribal scientists, academics, consultants, and students. Some talks were focused on biological response. Some were aimed at reconnecting physical habitat within watersheds while others focused on intense in-stream habitat manipulations in river ecosystems. There were talks that explored theory, and uncertainty, and our ability to detect system responses. Results were presented from long-running watershed-wide restoration programs and comparative assessments of individual projects on small streams. The systems we learned about included highly urbanized and urbanizing Eastern Seaboard streams, Great Lakes connecting channels and tributaries, high desert beaver ecosystems, large rivers of the California Central Valley and coast, and intact watersheds of southeast Alaska. We learned about Stone Rollers and River Chubs and Lake Sturgeon and several salmonids. Nearly all of our talks addressed the needs of fish relative to the processes of their ecosystems. Emphases were on understanding and addressing system deficits in an increasingly dynamic climate, with the goal of biological conservation.   — Raymond Timm, Cramer Fish Sciences, [email protected] Read the symposium abstracts here.