Linking the decision making process of ecological restoration to biodiversity outcomes in the Chicago Wilderness Region

Background/Question/Methods

Ecological restoration (ER) in the Midwestern region of the U.S. is steeped in history and controversy. The Chicago Wilderness alliance (CW) was formed to unite regional organizations to work together to improve land management and conservation efforts. Today more than 250 organizations have come together to advance the science and practice of ER. While CW members share the goals outlined in the 1999 Biodiversity Recovery Plan, a blueprint for a region-wide effort to restore rare ecological communities, the implementation of these goals varies widely among CW land managing organizations. To date no study has documented and analyzed how these different styles of regional ER decision making relate to biodiversity outcomes.  The goals of this study were to 1) document variation in management styles and biodiversity at 14 sites across CW, and 2) to test whether the well-established Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework can be utilized in a novel way for non-extractive resource management issues influenced by both political and ecological factors. Vegetation, macroarthropods, and soil properties were measured as biodiversity outcomes thought to be directly or indirectly influenced by constitutional and operational decision-making processes in sites managed by 7 different agencies and organizations.

Results/Conclusions

Extensive interviews revealed that although management goals were often vague, land managers commonly utilized several strategies to attain their stated goals:  restoration of ecosystem dynamics such as hydrologic and fire regimes, removal of aggressive plant species, and the addition of native plant material. Decision making was characterized in terms of groups of actors such as land managers and volunteer stewards who are guided by rules and norms of behavior, exogenous variables such as time and money, biophysical constraints such as weather, and public influence. Ecological biodiversity of the study sites varied widely across the region, but seemed to reflect the goals of the agency and management history. Non-native, invasive plants were present but not dominant and prescribed burning promoted higher graminoid and forb diversity where canopy openness was greater. Common buckthorn seedlings, one management target species, was less abundant in study plots managed by volunteers than in those managed by paid staff, but varied greatly due to canopy openness and site history. This study highlights the usefulness and limitations when applying the IAD framework in a novel context to determine patterns between ER decision making processes and biodiversity outcomes.