Integrated Restoration and Adaptive Management of the Las Vegas Wash - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 110

CONCLUSION
The restoration of the Las Vegas Wash and creation of the Clark County Wetlands
Park were dependent on the organizational structure put in place from the very start.
One of the major reasons for success is that over the years, there were over two
dozen interested stakeholder groups made up of various agencies, regulators, non-
governmental organizations, and environmental permitting and regulatory agencies
all intimately involved with the project. The bottom-line reason why the Las Vegas
Wash is perhaps the most challenging and successfully implemented desert wetland
restoration project in the world today is a direct consequence of how all these groups
moved from being isolated individual organizations with their own agendas to a
state of interdependence (France 2011). Successful environmental restoration proj-
ects have to find such a way in which to morph into a collaborative integrative com-
munity with an understanding that they hold shared responsibilities, shared benefits,
and shared goals (Scharnhorst 2004). The only chance that the restoration efforts in
the southern Iraqi marshlands have of succeeding is if such a feeling of confraternity
develops beyond the self-interests of all the vested players working there currently
and in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Adapted from Scharnhorst (2004).
REFERENCES
France, R. L. 2001. (Stormwater) leaving Las Vegas. Landscape Architecture , August, 38-42.
———. 2011. Designing new natures: People, ecology, and landscape repair . Boca Raton,
FL: Taylor & Francis.
———, ed. 2005. Facilitating watershed management: Fostering awareness and stewardship .
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
———, ed. 2007. Wetlands of mass destruction: Ancient presage for contemporary ecocide in
southern Iraq . Winnipeg, MB: Green Frigate Books.
Scharnhorst, V. 2004. Restoration of the Las Vegas Wash and other desert wetlands. Paper pre-
sented at the Mesopotamian Marshes and Modern Development: Practical Approaches
for Sustaining Restored Ecological and Cultural Landscapes conference, Cambridge,
MA, October.