Planning and Development of a Desert Wetland Park in the United States - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 206

environmental conditions, social equity, economic impacts, and thoughtful aesthetics
can create legacies in terms of sustainable places of timeless beauty, enduring qual-
ity, and untold values for future generations. Successful restoration and place-making
efforts must begin with a mission or vision that is held passionately over the long
period of time that it often takes to accomplish these types of projects. An example
of such a mission statement might be to create beautiful, imaginative, and environ-
mentally sensitive places where people meet, children play, and the curious explore.
Another mission statement might be to preserve unique landscapes, memorialize
historic sites, protect the land, and meet the recreational needs of the community.
Design Workshop has capitalized on such a strategy to create exceptional parks and
open spaces for people and nature around the world. Of key importance is the need
for cultivating a collaborative environment involving people, paper, and places.
Restoring wetlands or any other type of environment begins with an idea or a dream
that is researched, reality tested, and then used to generate alternative approaches in
order to reach the desired outcome (see chapter 4). The final vision is a result of the
process of testing those initial ideas against scientific, cultural, and economic reali-
ties. In other words, restoring wetlands requires people. Environments do not restore
themselves; it takes people to believe in what an environment should become or be
returned to (Zimmerman 2004; France 2007a). Environments are rarely successfully
restored without plans, without detailed studies, and without imaginative solutions,
all of which are captured on paper . Restored environments create landscapes which,
most importantly, become valued places (France 2008).
The focus of this chapter is the Clark County Wetlands Park. But first, it is impor-
tant to briefly review several other examples from Design Workshop of the impor-
tance of people and culture in restoring ecosystems, special habitats, and refuges (for
both wildlife and people). The eight thousand acre Walnut Creek National Wildlife
Refuge, now called the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, in Iowa was created
at a time when the U.S. Department of the Interior was directing its funding toward
projects that served more of the public good. This was a significant departure from
the business model of one of its departments, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
whose traditional role had been in creating wildlife refuges solely for the preserva-
tion and conservation of wildlife habitat with little or no public access opportuni-
ties. As a result, this new orientation brought about new challenges and benefits
(Zimmerman 2004). The newly designed refuges would now have to encompass edu-
cation, interpretation, and explanation of the complex natural and cultural forces at
work on this site over time (such as previous agricultural use). But this focus would
also foster some great opportunities in terms of community partnerships that would
create volunteers to help the refuge staff, and to also generate funding in order to
expand that supplied from federal revenues.
The design approach to the Walnut Creek Refuge was both pragmatic and sensi-
tive. The team first completed a market study to determine if this site would have the
demand to be a publicly visited facility. In other words, a market study was used to
determine if an environment should be restored in the first place. This is, of course,
a very novel concept in the arena of environmental restoration (Zimmerman 2004).
This was followed by an intensive period of research supported by the design team,
wildlife biologists, botanists, and educators. From the start, it was deemed important