NCER #2

the rest of my notes from NCER:

August 2, day 2: I got off to a slow start today after not sleeping very well last night… too many ideas buzzing around in my head as a result of the conference. Trading the first 15 minutes for finding a cup of coffee, I made it to the second plenary session in time to hear former U.S. Senator Bob Graham discuss Everglades restoration, the evolution of the political process, and more. Subsequent speakers weren’t holding my attention though, so instead I went over to the exhibit hall and quickly walked into a dynamic and productive conversation with a planner from a big east coast firm.

After the break it was time to get upstairs and be ready for my own talk, scheduled for third of four in the late morning session. It’s a policy talk this time, about implementing projects in the context of local and regional government, and it fit in well with other talks on implementing the decision making progress, including one from a congressional perspective.

After the talk I had a long and productive conversation with yet another potential teaming opportunity, a conversation that got me thinking about big-picture synergies and ways to leverage technology and social networking to help make things happen.

After lunch, it’s been a mixed bag of talks thus far. One by an old friend I’d lost track of more than a decade ago, and there was an important lesson imbedded in that talk. After that, a disappointingly narrow talk with nothing new to offer, although I did manage to pull some useful region-specific information from it. Now, we’re back to a bigger picture view, in another part of the country.

In the evening, there’s a party sponsored by local firm BioHabitats. It’s a relaxed and fun evening, perhaps a little too much talking about work. I encounter two people from my old Chicago network, people I haven’t seen in over 10 years, and we really enjoy talking about our experiences in the much earlier days of the restoration community.

August 3, day 3. Today, I’m tired. The first two days have been packed full and very intense. Fortunately, the early papers today aren’t that interesting to me, so I’m able to linger over a cup of coffee. Then, late morning, we board buses for field trips. I’ve chosen one that includes visits to a pair of recently removed dams plus another in the design stage for removal.

Heavy cloud cover saves us from the extreme heat of recent days, but it’s still very humid and there are a couple of brief light drizzles. There’s a fair amount of walking involved, a few miles total. Since I have little experience with dam removal, I mostly listen quietly. At one of the sites in particular I’m struck by the changes in the landscape; the long anthropogenic history, finally turned toward renewal. Standing where there was water and sediment only a year ago, in the shadow of abandoned factory buildings and newly planted riparian trees, I take some time to photograph the scene. Not documentary photos, instead I’m trying the capture the mood. At the end I encounter a gentleman who remembers the reservoir from his childhood, and has stopped to see the changes today. He is deep in thought, full of questions, but I need to rush to catch up with the group after a few moments of conversation.

Finally this evening they’ve left us a little free time, so I walk the margin of the inner harbor and find a place to have dinner. Walking back just after dark, the calmness of the water contrasts with the adjacent high-rise urban community, new construction mingled with a few much older buildings.

August 4, day 4. It's a short conference day, and not a particularly productive one for talks with the exception of a big-picture view by someone I'd met a couple of days earlier. By mid-afternoon I've left for the airport, arriving in Chicago by a little after dark.

The transition from idea-oriented conferences to the real world can be a letdown. But this time I'm walking right back into cutting-edge endangered species projects. While the thought process is a little different, in this case the conference experience will probably contribute to fresh thinking.

It looks as if the next NCER event will be a joint meeting with the Society for Ecological Restoration in Madison Wisconsin in 2013.

NCER #1

Just over a month ago I attended the fourth bi-annual National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration, held in Baltimore. It's been a crazy month since then, as I moved on to Chicago, then to Ohio, then back to Chicago, then San Francisco, then finally home, and completed a Hine's emerald dragonfly population estimate along the way.

The ideas from the conference are worth sharing, so better late than never. Here are my notes, mostly taken in live-time at the conference. I'd originally intended to upload them right there, but the host hotel had limited wi-fi access and when I tried to dash down to the lobby it inevitably resulted in either running into someone I hadn't seen in ages, or responding to some important bit of work e-mail instead of doing blog posts. So here's the first of a few entries:

August 1.  It’s bigwig time, also known as the plenary session. Thus far we’ve heard from Assistant Secretary of the Army JoEllen Darcy on Corps of Engineers initiatives, including an upcoming revision of guidance for water resources projects; and Assistant Secretary of the Interior David Hays, with a litany of collaborative federal/state/local efforts.

Now it’s Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s turn, and in addition to his polished political delivery, he comes across as knowledgeable on environmental issues, leading off with a discussion of the restoration of Chesapeake Bay. He’s using two key words, words that I hear too seldom from politicians: accountability and transparency. And he’s a metrics geek, as evidenced by the BayStat slides he’s showing us. It’s basically a series of GIS maps to track output instead of input… that is, to track delivery of government services, to measure performance. He's on to something that too many have missed.

He says that the greatest challenges aren’t technological, or financial; that they’re political and spiritual. We’re out of balance, and that we need to use expectations to change behavior.

... more to follow...