Ben's Principle

Within stream restorations are only appropriate when the major causes of poor stream quality are identified as in-stream factors. If the flow regime is drastically altered by urbanization, agriculture, or some other changing land use, the driving force behind reduced habitat complexity is likely the change in flow characteristics. Attempting in-stream habitat manipulation will not be a successful strategy in such situations, because it does not fix the problem, and the restoration activities will fail as a result. Most structural changes to in-stream habitat can only be maintained successfully through proper stormwater management (Walsh et al. 2005a), because the degradation to these habitats is a direct result of changing flow regimes. Therefore, in-stream habitat manipulation is a poor use of resources if there are overarching issues with flow regime.