Effective planning and implementation of ecological rehabilitation projects: A case study of the regional municipality of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada)

The literature guides environmental planning and, specifically, how to use ecological rehabilitation projects to achieve long-term planning goals and landscape-scale environmental sustainability. There is, however, a perceive d gap between principles in the literature and the use of them by practitio ners involved in smaller-scale ecological rehabilitation projects. Using in terviews with practitioners involved in 11 projects within the Regional Mun icipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we tested whether practitioners use d five principles for effective planning and implementation of ecological r ehabilitation that we derived from the literature. These five principles we re: establishing political and ecological context, using ecologically appro priate objectives and practices, using comparative multidisciplinary and cr oss-scale approaches, using adaptive planning and implementation, and estab lishing good communication within and external to projects. Few projects fo llowed all five principles, and practitioners indicated that they used thre e more project-specific principles: obtaining political/social support, pro moting projects and changing attitudes about projects, and securing suffici ent and persistent funding to maintain a project's life. While the literatu re emphasizes that ecological rehabilitation is only effective if projects are coordinated on a watershed basis, most practitioners focused solely on the goals of their specific project. The gap between literature and practic e may arise because most practitioners are new to the field of ecological r ehabilitation and still are focused on the methods involved. Time pressures force practitioners to obviate the literature and get projects started qui ckly, lest support evaporate. Complicating these difficulties is decreased support from federal and provincial governments for large-scale environment al planning. It is unclear whether ecological rehabilitation projects in Wa terloo Region (at least) will ever become effective at promoting landscape- scale ecological goals or remain smaller-scale stop-gaps.