posters

Kansas City, Missouri: National Ecosystem Restoration Conference

They gave us very little free time today, no break between the paper sessions and the evening social and poster session. I left the last paper session a few minutes early to be able to grab a snack, as always at this conference there was plenty of food near the posters. Then, a two-and-a-half hour period standing in front of my poster.

Traffic was pretty good as these things go, with more people than usual actually reading all the text and then answering questions. A PhD from Florida, a person from the USACE Omaha District, and a graduate student asked the most detailed and extensive questions.

The highlight though, was when I did my quick five-minute dash to skim all the other posters. A few rows down from mine was an unattended poster by someone from California Dept. of Fish and Game, on a wetland restoration near Suisun Slough... contiguous with my 14-acre restoration from 1993, which was identified on the air photos. At that time we'd been unable to convince DFG to allow restoration of the entire tract, they'd actually insisted that we construct a berm to prevent extreme high tide flooding of anything south of the relatively small area of their land where they'd allowed restoration. Apparently a new generation is in charge, because now breaching levees at the south end of a several hundred acre area will return tidal influence to much of the site, leaving a small area of mixed seasonal wetland and upland between their restoration and mine, which includes a freshwater stream (Laurel Creek) running into a tidal slough located where a straight-sided ditch had been when we'd started. So instead of a narrow connection along the slough, the entire site will now function together. This makes me very happy. Apparently it's up to preliminary design and permitting, with final design and construction not far off. Unfortunately, no one ever did attend the poster, so I'll need to fire off an e-mail to learn more.

There was also a poster which included Chilton Creek Preserve in the Missouri Ozarks as one of the study sites. This was the location of a three-year research project I worked on with Missouri TNC in 1998-2000, to monitor the response of amphibians and reptiles to fire management. I didn't bother to seek out the author, it was one of those grad student posters that provoked a response of.... and, this study tells us what? I really don't see the application, and didn't feel like faking any interest beyond geography.

There was another one of those too, in a different and less benign way; a poster by someone from a large consulting firm which allegedly was about choosing ridge and swale restoration sites in northwest Indiana. Again, this is an area I know well, having helped assure the acquisition of a 220-acre nature preserve in the early 1990s as natural resource damage mitigation, and having worked on several other high-quality remnants of this globally endangered (G1) ecosystem on various projects. So it puzzles me when they put white boxes around several sites which are already fully protected and owned by state or county agencies, including a dedicated nature preserve. This seems like sloppy work (best case) or misleading (worst case). It's not like this data doesn't exist, because we mapped every remnant ridge and swale site in that area, and tied it to a full database, for TNC's Great Lakes Project in 1991. That means it's already in Indiana's Natural Heritage Database, and available upon request. They charged someone to do redundant work. One more firm I will never, ever team with on a project.

The rain the forecasters have been threatening all week finally moved through late this afternoon, at least I saw it out the window. I haven't been out of the building since sometime Sunday night, odd for a restoration conference, but things are pretty self-contained here. The storm didn't look serious despite the tornado watch someone mentioned. Thunderstorms can get pretty severe here, but not this one.

It's time to get the poster back in the shipping tube, pack away all the accumulated paper, and be ready to check out in the morning. The conference continues through Friday, but I'm going to catch the Wednesday morning and early afternoon sessions, and then grab the shuttle to the airport for a 5:00 pm flight and a late return to San Francisco.