Restoring Riparian Areas through Collaboration on Public Lands; Cerissa Hoglander

¹Grand Canyon Trust

 

 

As climate change advances in the Southwest, intensifying droughts and increasingly variable rainfall further stress already scarce water resources and the human and ecological communities that depend on them. These climate-driven changes can compound existing degradation on multiple-use public lands and amplify the conflicts associated with maintaining a balance between land uses and arid landscape health. We propose that riparian restoration efforts grounded in collaborative approaches can be one pathway for addressing these challenges on multiple-use lands. Climate adaptation actions on public lands that demonstrate measurable co-benefits can transcend the otherwise difficult-to-measure concept of “improved resilience to climate change,” and garner additional support from land and wildlife managers and other stakeholders. We present examples of collaborative restoration efforts from northern Arizona that have demonstrated initial success through engaging volunteers, citizen scientists, and land management agencies in on-the-ground work.