An International Perspective on Wetland Rehabilitation

327 Pages·1999·8.136 MB·English

by  E. L. Gilman (auth.), William Streever (eds.)

AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON WETLAND REHABILITATION
AN INTERNATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE
ONWETLAND
REHABILITATION
Edited by
WILLIAM STREEVER
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
An lnternatlan.l perspectIva an Natland rahabllltatlon I edltad by
Wllll.1 Straavar.
p. CI.
1. Wetland cansarvltlon. 2. Restaratlon acalagy. r. Straavar,
Wlllll1.
CH75.15258 1999
333.91·S16--dc21 99-22955
ISBN 978-94-010-5972-5 ISBN 978-94-011-4683-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4683-8
Printed on acid-fraa papar
AII Rights Reserved
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
Section 1: Regional Overviews
1. Compensatory Wetland Mitigation in the Commonwealth 3
of the Northem Mariana Islands: An Incipient Discipline,
E.L. Gilman
2. Wetland Rehabilitation in Australasia, A.E. Jensen 19
3. Mangrove Rehabilitation in the Coastal Mekong Delta, 29
Vietnam, W. Benthem, L.P. van Lavieren and W.J.M.
Verheugt
4. Mangrove Rehabilitation in the Philippines, R.O.D. de 37
Leon and A. T. White
5. Rehabilitation of Wetlands: An African Perspective, 43
G.I. Cowan
6. Wetland Rehabilitation in the Mediterranean Basin, 55
Georgios C. Zalidis, Vassilios Takavakoglou, and
Argyrios Gerakis
7. Central European Perspectives in Lake Shore 69
Rehabilitation, Wolfgang Ostendorp
8. Putting Policy into Practice in South West England, 81
Lyn Jenkins and lain D. Sturdy
9. Wetland Rehabilitation in the Caribbean, Peter R. Bacon 91
Section 2: Case Studies 105
10. Rehabilitating Wyndgate: Bringing Back Wetlands on a 107
Family Property in South Australia, Kym Denver
11. Saltwater Intrusion and the Mary River Wetlands ofthe 113
Northern Territory, R.J. Applegate
12. Effective Planning and Community Consultation: the Big 121
Swamp Urban Wetland Rehabilitation Project, City of
Bunbury, Western Australia, B.K. Masters
13. Moanatuatua Bog-Proposed Restoration of a New 127
Zealand Restiad Peat Bog Ecosystem, B.R. Clarkson, K.
Thompson, L.A. Schipper, and M. McLeod
14. Local Community Involvement in Mangrove 139
Rehabilitation: Thailand's Yadfon, Alfredo Quarto
vi
15. Prescribed Flooding and Wetland Rehabilitation in the 143
Zambezi Delta, Mozambique, R.D. Beilfuss and BR.
Davies
16. Management of the Alien Weed, Salvinia molesta, in the 159
wetlands of the Okavango, Botswana, I. W. Forno and
P.A. Smith
17. Conservation and Rehabilitation of Lake Kanyaboli 167
Wetland, Kenya, Phillip Okoth Raburu
18. The Hula Valley (Northern Israel) Wetlands 173
Rehabilitation Project, K. David Hambright and Tamar
Zohary
19. Ecology and Politics of Rehabilitation: Mogan Lake 181
Wetland Ecosystem, Ankara, Turkey, Uygar Ozesmi
20. Restoration Prospects of Degraded Lowland Brook Valleys 189
in The Netherlands: An Example from the Gorecht Area,
Rudy van Diggelen and Ab Grootjans
21. Rehabilitation Following Industrial Contamination: Jaua 197
Lake, a Coastal Wetland in Cama~ari, Bahia, Brazil,
E.M. da Silva, A.F. Barros, M.F. T. Navarro, M.F. V. Mota,
P. Cotsifis, and C.B.A. Chastinet
22. Restoration of High Latitude Wetlands: An Example from 205
the Canadian High Arctic, Bruce C. Forbes
Section 3: Issues in Rehabilitation 215
23. Valuing Wetland Rehabilitation, Jeff Bennett and Mark 217
Morrison
24. Revegetation Strategies for Northern Temperate Glacial 225
Marshes and Meadows, S. Galatowitsch, R. Budelsky,
and L. Yetka
25. The Consulting Industry in Wetland Rehabilitation, 243
John J. Zentner
26. Wetland Rehabilitation and Remote SenSing, T.A. 251
MacDonald
27. Ecological Theory and Its Role in the Rehabilitation of 265
Wetlands, Charles Andrew Cole
28. Disused Shrimp Ponds and Mangrove Rehabilitation, 277
N.J. Stevenson, RR. Lewis, and P.R. Burbridge
vii
Section 4: Putting Rehabilitation into Perspective 299
29. The Ecological Restoration Spectrum, Joy B. Zed/er 301
30. Constraints to Successful Rehabilitation of Subtropical 319
and Tropical Wetlands, Thomas L. Crisman
Index 327
Acknowledgments
A number of people were instrumental in this book. Angela Jones and Rene Mijs of
Kluwer Academic Publishers provided encouragement and advice, and Louise
Streever and Ima Streever assisted with proofreading. Sincere appreciation is
extended to all of the authors who took time away from their rehabilitation work to
write chapters for this book.
Section 1: Regional Overviews
The intent of this section is to summarize regional information in an effort to find similarities and
differences in approaches to wetland rehabilitation around the globe. Gilman's chapter covers
projects in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, where U.S. laws targeting no-net
loss of wetlands drive rehabilitation and have led to a number of practices that support legislated
rehabilitation-practices such as the hydrogeomorphic approach to wetland assessment, wetland
mitigation banking, and the advanced identification process. In contrast, many of this section's
other chapters focus on community involvement and support. In the absence of legal
requirements for rehabilitation, every project relies on popular appeal. Jenkins and Sturdy point
out that projects in England currently supported by government programs will ultimately depend
on voluntary cooperation by landowners. Bacon feels that one way to gain support for wetland
rehabilitation in the Caribbean is to demonstrate the economic importance of wetlands. In some
parts of the world, as seen most clearly in chapters on Vietnam and the Philippines, by Benthem
et al. and de Leon and White, wetland rehabilitation is only part of a larger rehabilitation
movement, in which people are changing their approach to life and learning to think about a world
that includes wetlands and their direct, long-term beneftts.
Scientists should take note that these chapters focus largely on social issues. As Cowan
points out, experience suggests "that most of the successes are driven by social science and
participatory management processes, rather than pure environmental science." The impression
is that people frequently know or at least believe they know how to rehabilitate wetlands.
Nevertheless, some knowledge gaps are pOinted out; for example, Jenkins and Sturdy point to a
need for a better understanding of factors that structure plant communities, and Jensen lists a
number of "gaps in technical knowledge." As rehabilitation efforts become more common, further
gaps in wetland science will become apparent, as has happened in the United States over the
past two decades. Also, several authors call for improved technology transfer, or spreading of
information from scientific studies and rehabilitation projects. Ostendorp's chapter offers insight
into the value of technology transfer and an example of technology transfer in the context of lake
shore rehabilitation.
Most authors discuss wetland losses, and, not surprisingly, no region reports a net gain in
wetlands from rehabilitation. Nevertheless, anyone who supports wetland conservation will take
some satisfaction from the information presented in these chapters. It is clear that wetland
rehabilitation is catching on around the world. If nothing else, the efforts going into rehabilitation
will underscore the importance of conservation and preservation; if people are willing to repair
and rebuild damaged wetlands, they may be willing to protect relatively pristine wetlands.
Before proceeding, a few words about definitions are in order. Differences in the use of
terms such as "wetlands" and "rehabilitation" can make discussions about wetlands challenging.
In most chapters, the term "wetland" is limited to include only those systems that support vascular
plants with at least some emergent plant tissue, so some systems considered to be wetlands
under the Ramsar definition, such as deepwater lakes, coral reefs, and seagrass beds, are not
considered in this book. The term "rehabilitation" is intended as an umbrella term that includes
both "restoration" and "creation," where "restoration" is the return of a system to some previous
condition, and "creation" is the establishment of a wetland where no wetland had existed in the
past.
Compensatory Wetland Mitigation in the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands:
An Incipient Discipline
E.L. Gilman
Office of the Governor, Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands, PPP 171 Box 10000,
Saipan, MP, USA.
1. Introduction
The 750-km long Mariana Island archipelago consists of the sixteen islands of the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the U.S. Territory of Guam, a
separate political entity from the CNMI (Figure 1). As a self-governing Commonwealth of the
U.S., the CNMI is subject to all U.S. environmental laws (U.S. Department of Interior 1996),
including the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (the Clean Water Act) of 1972, as amended,
which regulates activities that impair wetlands and can require mitigation-the avoidance,
minimization, and compensation for activities that degrade wetlands. Compensatory wetland
mitigation, which can take the form of wetland restoration, enhancement, creation, and, in some
cases, preservation, is required to compensate for authorized activities that cause unavoidable
and minimized adverse wetland impacts (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S.
Department of the Army 1990, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1994a). This chapter describes
compensatory wetland mitigation activities in the CNMI.
The CNMI's climate is tropical marine, with an average humidity of 81%, uniform
temperatures throughout the year and an average temperature of 27°C, and an annual rainfall of
200 cm (U.S. Soil Conservation Service 1989). Saipan, Rota, and Tinian are the three developed
islands of the CNMI. Of these, Saipan, home to 90% of the CNMI's population of 59,913
(Department of Commerce 1996), is the only island under major development. All authorized
wetland impacts and rehabilitation projects in the CNMI have been on Saipan.
Rota, Tinian, Saipan, and Pagan contain the only freshwater wetlands in the CNMI. More
than 85% of these 336 ha of wetlands are on Saipan, comprising a total of 2% of Saipan's 119
km2 landmass (Figure 2) (Coastal Resources Management Office 1991, Coastal Resources
Management Office 1993, Gilman et al. 1997). Most of these depressional freshwater wetlands
are classified as palustrine emergent persistent systems under the Cowardin system and are
dominated by an obligate wetland reed species (Phragmites kafka) (Gilman et al. 1997). The
CNMI's estuarine wetlands and deep water marine sites include three small stands of the
mangrove Bruguiera gymnorhyza, totaling less than 1 ha, 405 ha of seagrass meadows, with
Enhalus acoroides, Halodule uninervis. and Halophila minor in Saipan's lagoon. and large barrier,
fringe, and patch coral reefs (Coastal Resources Management Office 1991. Coastal Resources
Management Office 1993, Coastal Resources Management Office 1997. Western Pacific
Regional Fishery Management Council 1997).
Saipan's and Tinian's inland wetlands serve important habitat functions for the U.S. listed
endangered Mariana Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus guamt), which lives only in wetland
3
W. Streever (ed.). An International Perspective on Wetland Rehabilitation. 3-17.
© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
4
habitats and is endemic to the freshwater wetlands of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian; the Mariana
Common Moorhen has also been found in created wastewater treatment ponds on a Rota golf
course (Stinson et al. 1991, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1991, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1996, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and CNMI Division of Fish and Wildlife 1996). The
Nightingale Reed-warbler (Acrocephalus luscinia), another U.S. listed endangered species, lives
in both upland and wetland habitats and is found only on Saipan, Aguiguan, and Alamagan (Craig
1992, Reichel et al. 1992, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1997).
The Mariana Islands
Farallon de Pajaros .d--__'o_r __- '----,
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lii Asuncion ~.- .. ;.CN" .....
Agrihan • o~ •• ., Pacific Ocean
(,;;
p Pagan
Alamagan
i;)
ii Guguan
4i Sarigan
Q Anatahan
r1~ Farallon de Medinilla
Saipan
ff
Tlnian
Aguijan
Rota CNMI
Territory of Guam
~/?
t
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JJ
Cocos
Not to Scale I I I
147"
Figure 1. The Mariana Islands.