By Larissa Lee; USC Sea Grant Class of 2019 Knauss Fellow
Published April 29, 2020
When I joined the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Restoration Center in 2019 for my Knauss Fellowship, I thought it was the perfect fit. The Restoration Center works to create and improve habitats for endangered, threatened, and commercial fisheries, and I had experience doing just that. Previous to the start of my fellowship, I completed my master’s degree researching habitat use of various fish species in streams and ultimately used those findings to make management and habitat restoration recommendations. For instance, I worked for Trout Unlimited, a frequent partner of the Restoration Center, on assisting their stakeholders in planning a restoration strategy for a degraded watershed. I also have related work experience with various other federal agencies that manage threatened and endangered species such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. A placement in the Restoration Center therefore seemed to fit seamlessly into my path building a career in fisheries habitat conservation.
For someone who loves fish habitats, I thought to myself, “How hard could this job be?”
However, once my fellowship started, I realized that this job was slightly different than my other roles in habitat restoration. Although my team focuses on helping implement community-based restoration with a multitude of partners, my main task was to create a strategy to assess the socioeconomic value of such work. For someone who loves fish habitats, I thought to myself, “How hard could this job be?” But in reality, developing metrics and methods to assess the socioeconomic value of projects that the Restoration Center funds felt like a whole new field of study. I am not a social scientist, nor an economist. I am simply a scientist with a passion for fisheries habitat conservation that cares about communicating the importance of this work to others. I quickly learned that this type of work helps to communicate to both the public and policymakers on why habitat restoration is a worthwhile endeavor that contributes to our communities. So, as this line of work is imperative to connecting fishery conservation to policy decisions, I was up for the challenge to expand my skillset and excited to have the opportunity to learn about a topic I love from a new perspective.
I scheduled meetings with numerous economists from across NOAA within my first few months. ‘How do you calculate the value of restoration?’ I would ask them, as if there is a simple solution. I was often met with a look that seemed to say I was in over my head. They would inevitably refer to literature I had often never seen before. I found myself reading documents that cut across multiple disciplines, from restoration science to economic valuation to human behavior.
How could I possibly come up with a way to track the multitude of benefits from ALL of this work in just a year’s worth of time?
In addition to my lack of experience with economic valuation, I quickly realized that my knowledge of habitat restoration was limited. Not only did I need a broader understanding of the techniques used by restoration projects supported by my office, I also needed to understand the numerous ecosystem service benefits of each type of restoration. My past experiences with restoration were limited to dealing with topics such as freshwater streamflow, water quality, and riparian vegetation for freshwater fishes. The Restoration Center has a much more extensive list of restoration techniques including coral outplanting, controlling land-based sources of pollution that affect corals, removing barriers that limit fish migration, building new oyster habitats, and reconnecting tidal flows and freshwater in estuarine environments, just to name a few. How could I possibly come up with a way to track the multitude of benefits from ALL of this work in just a year’s worth of time?
It quickly became clear to me that the answer was not as intimidating as I originally thought. Rather than identifying one or two overarching strategies for assessing socioeconomic value, I found that it is instead a dynamic process of considering a variety of strategies, as the benefits of restoration can differ across varying habitat scenarios. There are so many reasons that habitat restoration work is valuable: restoring fisheries habitat often protects communities from coastal flooding during storms, provides livelihoods through commercial fisheries, sustains recreation and tourism opportunities, and returns culturally important habitats to more natural states. Therefore, instead of a single answer, I developed a strategy that considers many options to describe the value of restoration, prioritizing them based on what is best for each habitat type.
To get to this point, I’ve relied on the help of an expert economist and a team of restoration practitioners, and have had an abundance of opportunities to visit local restoration projects. For example, I traveled to rural coastal Maine to try to understand how community members value the fishing recreational opportunities associated with removing barriers to migratory fish movement. There, we spoke with a fisherman above a recently removed dam site and kayakers who enjoy moving through a free-flowing Penobscot River where Veazie Dam was removed in 2013. In addition to the ecological benefits for fish, the community enjoys the recreational opportunities that the dam removal has afforded them.
I was also welcomed by coastal communities to Tillamook Bay in Oregon to learn about how they are restoring estuarine fish habitats while reducing flooding to coastal farmland, and increasing access to safe roads during storm surges. They achieved this by improving the tide gates at the Southern Flow Corridor site of Tillamook Bay, allowing for increased tidal connection and more wetland habitats. This project has provided improved nursery habitat for salmon while also increasing safety for the community.
And finally I visited Hawaii, where communities are using traditional ecological knowledge to restore watersheds and increase fish populations for sustenance. I visited He’eia Fish Pond, where restoration was carried out to remove invasive mangrove species in the watershed and restore traditional fish ponds to the site. Fish ponds like He’eia restore both ecologically and culturally significant aspects of Hawaii.
The journey of identifying how to calculate the value of restoration has been the most unexpected, yet exciting part of my fellowship. This year has humbly reminded me of how much more I can learn when I expand my scope beyond the disciplines I know best. My fellowship has prompted me to ask more questions without any expectations of what the answer may be, and has demonstrated the importance of continuing to seek new knowledge as I progress in my career in habitat restoration. I now understand that although there may not be simple answers to tough questions like how to value habitat restoration, there are endless opportunities to learn, absorb, organize, and communicate information about this important work.
As I continue my work in habitat restoration, I am now constantly reminded by the diverse viewpoints of the people I talk to that value is truly in the eye of the beholder.
As this fellowship comes to a close, I reflect on how valuable it was for my personal career journey to take on a new discipline and make recommendations to my team based upon research, expert input, and analytical thinking. It has helped me reflect on what aspects of habitat restoration resonate with stakeholders, from community members to policymakers, and how to communicate to those various groups. As I continue my work in habitat restoration, I am now constantly reminded by the diverse viewpoints of the people I talk to that value is truly in the eye of the beholder. These perspectives will inspire me as I continue in a career that restores habitat for fish and the communities that depend on them.
Learn more about NOAA's John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.