Toward a framework for evaluating civic environmental stewardship in the Green-Duwamish watershed, WA

Abstract

This thesis explores civic environmental stewardship and its ecological impacts, using the Green-Duwamish watershed as a case study. This study 1) characterizes environmental stewardship activity in the watershed; and 2) evaluates the effectiveness of ecological monitoring on environmental stewardship sites in measuring and improving ecological outcomes at various scales. Stewardship practitioners were interviewed and responses were analyzed using qualitative coding and guidelines adapted from the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Environmental stewardship was found to be common throughout the lower and middle watershed, distributed proportionally to population density but influenced as well by political boundaries and financial and technical resources. Collaboration among organizations was important, although communication gaps were identified between geographical regions and between ecosystems. Monitoring efforts were unevenly distributed, often unsystematic, and used for management only inconsistently. Future efforts should focus on developing a landscape-scale assessment protocol and incorporating the social impacts of stewardship.