Obtaining public support

Public support and accountability are becoming increasingly important in environmental restoration (Hickman and Cocklin 1992; Higgs 2003; van der Meulen et al. 2004), and the politics of sustainability may rest more on human perceptions and values than on the intrinsic worth of natural systems (Doody 2001). Protecting or restoring locations subject to intensive development pressure will be difficult without considering humans as part of the solution. As a result, restoration goals may require change in the attitudes and actions of scientists, restoration advocates, and environmental regulators as well as in residents, tourists, and businesses.

Tourists and local residents can place greater value on human-altered elements of nature than on naturally functioning habitats and species, giving introduced species preference over the natural dune landscape (van der Mulen et al. 2004). Stakeholders may also place greater value on human-induced stability than natural dynamism, indicating that acceptance of sand movement as a natural process of dune evolution may require a fundamental change in attitude (Doody 2001). The desire to maintain the status quo can override actions to improve natural environments. Re-mobilizing the protective dune near Markgrafenheide, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Chapter 4) is an implementable option because it is acceptable to local stakeholders, but state managers were unsuccessful in overcoming resistance to a similar project on a nearby island, where residents preferred a familiar landscape to an unknown dynamic one (Nordstrom et al. 2007c). This reluctance to accept change has been noted elsewhere (Leafe et al. 1998; Tunstall and Penning-Rowsell 1998).