ABSTRACT
This chapter describes ways to build social capacity, discusses foundational principles of engagement, and highlights tools practitioners can use to meaningfully engage stakeholders in restoration projects. The integrated approach is particularly essential for large-landscape restoration efforts where resources span multiple jurisdictions, including public and private land, outcomes affect multitude of stakeholders, and decisions are open to public scrutiny. Achieving restoration success at this scale requires a social-ecological systems (SES) approach. Building social capacity has been a prominent concept in natural resource literature, including areas of natural hazards, risk perceptions, environmental change, and climate change. An essential step to building social capacity is to establish fair and inclusive process for stakeholder engagement to engage stakeholders early and often. Managers involved with restoration projects should consider implementing public engagement processes which go above and beyond legally required minimums to achieve meaningful stakeholder engagement. Often, restoration that occurs on US federal lands may require National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or similar state-level reviews.
