How things change in Pennsylvania

Yesterday I was feeling quite pleased with myself for having posted my schedule of lessons for Stream Habitat Management and completed my compilation of book references and journal articles for the semester. I thought I could return to the task of completing a review of a book manuscript on case studies in instream flow. Whenever you think you are caught up you will be surprised -- and perhaps 'surprise' is a great gift.

I received an email criticizing me for giving opinions unsubstantiated by scientific evidence, based on a recent quote in a newspaper. Then two items arrived in the mail... The June issue of the North American Journal of Fisheries Management contains a special section on Stream Restoration with 8 articles. The first article had located 345 studies on the effectiveness of stream rehabilitation, yet firm conclusions were difficult to make! We have a long way to go in the habitat management field. Then I opened the box from Amazon and reviewed "River Futures. An Integrative Scientific Approach to River Repair" which offers a comprehensive overview of our knowledge about river rehabiliation. This book contains more findings about this emergence of integrative river science but was not as comprehensive as I had hoped for -- so it is not a candidate for textbook adoption. It does contain a number of principles and common ground for productive collaborations among scientists and managers.

I have witnessed a welcome change in our society's focus on stream 'repair' since I first walked on a college campus decades ago. It is fitting to see the establishment of a Habitat Division in Pennsylvania as more and more agencies, non-profits, and for-profit enterprises advertise for and hire Stream Habitat Specialists. Rivers and streams remain some of our most altered ecosystems; yet progress is being made. Most importantly there is a surprising amount of crossdisciplinary agreement among geomorphologists, hydrologists, and ecologists in understanding how rivers function -- at least in general. When it comes to specifics there is more to disagree about, yet we recognize the absence of scientific knowledge, mismatches of time or spatial scales, or lack of specific data. And we are getting better at recognizing the solvable problems and avoiding the "train wrecks. "

Let me applaud you for enrolling and wanting to learn about successful management of stream habitats. It is a complex endeavor that requires "knowing and caring about the uses and values that people have in mind for the resource, such as angling, commercial fisheries, species protection, and aesthetics. It requires knowing when not to manage- to leave streams as they are. Increased abundance of fish, better fishing and ecosystem health are basic objectives. The modern trend is toward more professional management, toward more attention to the design and planning, and toward managing in ways that derive from and are increasingly attuned to natural processes in streams, the processes to which the fishes are adapted. This trend- in contrast to the artificiality and concern for tidiness that characterized some past work -- involves increased focus on the drainage basin; on riparian grazing and logging practices; on the roles of streambank vegetation, woody debris, and beaver; and on structural complexity within the channel."(Orth and White 1993 Stream Habitat Management, Chap. 9 Inland Fisheries Management in North America)