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Hole-in-the-Donut Restoration Project
Robert Doren
Assistant Research Director
South Florida Natural Resources Center, Everglades National Park
The in case you're wondering, is the
band of individuals who are interested in research related to the "restoration" of
the Hole-in-the-Donut (HID) in Everglades National Park and all the issues
related to ecological resotration of wetland and associated wetland communities
of the Everglades. I realize the word "team" has been overused and often has a
trite bureaucratic connotation. But, according to Webster's, there are several
viable, non-bureaucratic definitions that include: 1) draft animals with a
harness pulling a vehicle; 2) a brood of pigs or ducks; 3) a number of persons
associated together in work or activity; 4) collaborate. While I may agree with
some of you who see merit in definitions one and two, the message I impart
here arguably has more to do with the latter two definitions. I hope you'll
agree.
The purpose of the is to bring scientists
working on the HID restoration and other related Everglades restoration
efforts together to ensure consistency and compatability throughout the
research being conducted. The Target Team will serve as the nexus for ensuring
congruity of research effort, eliminate duplication, and provide a forum for
scientists working on related areas to talk about their research, learn about and
hopefully from others' research, and to collaborate and coordinate their
individual and collective efforts. In order to accomplish this the Park is
developing a research plan to guide the short and long-term research and
monitoring studies. Developing this research program entails organizing
numerous scientific specialties and research questions into an integrated whole.
A whole that, through this team coordination and synergy, will, we hope, be
greater than the sum of its parts. This team needs to be flexible; to increase or
decrease participants as research focuses on new or different questions; to
regularly adapt the findings of the integrated research program to resource
management needs and changes in direction; and to incorporate new
information and new ideas into the research program to provide new
directions to the existing program; to interact with other professionals in
appropriate and complementary fields of expertise; to conduct quality research;
to collaborate; and to cooperate.
In order to accomplish the tasks ahead the Target Restoration Team will have to
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be able to ask; what is the big picture in this restoration program, are we
focused on expectation not methods, do we have the right resources identified,
and are we focused on actions and products? Only through these coordinated
interactions will individual scientists working on a large but integral project be
able to take advantage of team synergy to be resourceful and proficient.
The scientific approach advocated embraces a closely linked and integrated
program of monitoring, research, modeling, and adaptive management.
Through monitoring, we can track critical ecosystem parameters and provide
baseline data and model parameterization. Through research, we can develop
an understanding of the physical and biological process regulating succession,
and their underlying causal relationships. Through modeling, we can develop
predictive tools to assess system response to change, to hindcast to historical
conditions, and to develop, adapt and select management alternatives.
In order to provide extramural oversight to this loose and potentially large
team of scientific investigators, an interdisciplinary panel of nationally
recognized scientists will be invited to become members of a Department of
the Interior chartered, Scientific Peer Review Panel, members of which will
have no financial stake or research investment in the project. The review
panel's role will be to provide periodic, broad, technical review of the overall
research plan and program, individual research project elements of the
program, program priorities and direction and research results. Members of
the panel will have to forego subsequent research as investigators funded
under this program.
No one organization has sufficient management control or scientific expertise
to independently answer the broad research questions in wetland restoration.
Only through an instrument of the Target Restoration Team and Scientific Peer
Review Panel can we expect to find a way to make complementary
contributions and encourage synergy in the scientific enterprise entailed in this
precedent setting project. Everglades National Park has the principal
responsibility for leading deliberations on the HID restoration planning, for
setting research-restoration goals and for coordinating the science programs.
The Park intends to carry out this responsibility by encouraging and
developing a collegial and integrated program of research leading to the
restoration of the Hole-in-the-Donut and a comprehensive understanding of the
scientific questions underlying the concepts) of restoration. It will be the
Park's job to develop this restoration-research-management program, to
implement it, to adapt it, to make it successful and, perhaps, a paradigm for
other such programs.
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