A comparison of coastal habitat restoration projects in China and the United States

Abstract

We compared coastal restoration projects in a developing country, China, and a developed country, the United States of America, both of which are facing loss and degradation of coastal habitats at similar latitudes, for the period of 1992–2014. To document the scale of coastal habitat restoration projects in the two countries, we identified 914 coastal restoration projects with an accumulated area of 300,521 acres in China, with most of our information coming from scientific papers, and 1,620 coastal restoration projects with an accumulated area of 243,064 acres in the USA, with most of our information coming from public databases. In both countries, about half the projects were in wetland habitats, but China had a greater proportion of projects in submerged habitats (43% versus 28% in the USA) and the USA a greater proportion in coastal upland habitats (21% versus 9% in China). The number of new projects steadily increased over time in China, but dropped after 2006 in the USA, although the total cost of new projects continued to increase. The number of projects in China and the total cost of projects in the USA were correlated with national GDP. Restoration projects in China used fewer techniques, had fewer partners, and took longer to complete than projects in the USA. Information about projects was incomplete, especially in China, and both countries could do more to make information publically available. We know more about project construction than project outcomes, and it is unclear whether projects are achieving their goals or whether the techniques used are optimal.

Artificial refuges for wildlife conservation: what is the state of the science?

“…The artificial refuge literature we examined is dominated by studies of arboreal refuges and volant species (birds and bats) in a small number of developed countries. This bias reflects similar biases across the ecological literature (Clark & May, 2002;Troudet et al, 2017) and may partly be due to the exclusion of non-English studies (Li et al, 2019;Konno et al, 2020).…”

Ocean Optimism: Moving Beyond the Obituaries in Marine Conservation

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“…The high costs of marine restoration have been attributed to the inaccessibility of the environment, and fewer opportunities for community and volunteer-based projects (Bayraktarov et al, 2016). This high cost is perhaps a contributing factor in the observed decline in the level of restoration activity in the United States following economic downturn, although in China (where restoration efforts are overwhelmingly government-led), the number of coastal and marine habitat restoration projects has continued to increase over time (Li et al, 2019).…”