wrapup

Eureka, California

The NCER conference is ongoing, but I was only able to stay through Wednesday afternoon. That day I concentrated on California and PNW papers, and heard about watershed restoration in Oregon, an overview of the Trinity River restoration activities, some Klamath River activities including a large TNC wetland restoration in the upper watershed, CALFED restoration in various Sacramento River tributaries, and levee setbacks at the Bear-Feather River confluence. None of it was quite as exciting as the previous day, in fact at least two of the papers struck me as rather unimaginative attempts to slightly change the course of vast bureaucracies; although the new approach is an improvement on the status quo, it's still a command and control mentality, and one must wonder what might be possible with some truly original thinking.

After catching up on things with an old IDNR friend who is now working on an upper Mississippi River partnership, I left about 4:00 pm, arriving at the airport for my rain-delayed flight. general inefficiency contributed to a departure more than an hour behind schedule, and a missed connection in Denver. It all worked out, with a re-route through Las Vegas to San Francisco, where I caught up with my checked bag. The parking garage shuttle was just pulling up as I walked outside, a nice touch at 2:00 am. Yesterday was spent in the Santa Rosa office, and I made it home by 10:00 pm.

I'll attempt to pull together some concepts from the overall event after I've had time to get fully unpacked and caught up on office things. Time permitting, this blog may persist as a place for general restoration-related thoughts and ideas.