ABSTRACT
New challenges for river managers (Chapter 7) have resulted in the development of conservation-based management approaches based on ‘river restoration’ and related strategies. These approaches are based on undoing river stress to result in partial system recovery, and are usually intended to resolve competing management concerns regarding water resources, channel instability and conservation (9.1). The goals for conservation-based approaches include statutory obligations of the management agency or agencies (e.g. related to conservation, flood defence, maintenance, channel instability, water quality) and aspirations of the catchment community (e.g. aesthetic, recreational, community action, development) that together form the basis of management schemes (9.2). Priorities for individual schemes should be specified according to the environmental condition of the channel and translated into approaches based on principles of: preservation and natural recovery, restoring flow and sediment transport, prompted recovery, morphological reconstruction and instability management (9.3). The evolution and future success of river restoration is dependent upon addressing a series of requirements, opportunities and limitations that challenge the philosophy and methods used by the channel management community (9.4).
