Digital Commons Network^™

Manager Perspectives On Communication And Public Engagement In Ecological Restoration Project Success, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Kristen C. Hychka

New Hampshire EPSCoR

We look to a particular social-ecological system, the restoration community in Rhode Island, USA and the rivers, wetlands, marshes, and estuaries they work to protect, to draw connections between communication, community involvement, and ecological restoration project success. Offering real-world examples drawn from interviews with 27 local, state, federal, and nonprofit restoration managers, we synthesize the mechanisms that managers found effective to argue that the communication employed by resource managers in each phase of the restoration process, in prioritization, implementation, and monitoring, and for garnering broad-based support, shapes the quality of public engagement in natural resources management, which, in turn, can …