Ecosystems are made up of a large variety of plants and animals interacting within their local landscape, including streams, riparian buffers, and wetlands. The complex interactions between plants and animals are delicate and can break down when local landscape is impacted by human activities or catastrophic natural events. Ecosystem Restoration is often best accomplished by assessing and restoring the natural functions of stream, riparian buffers, and wetlands systems. Restoring these natural functions gives nature a head start in regaining stability and establishing a self-maintaining and sustainable natural ecosystem.

Most of the Nation's stream and river corridors and riparian buffers have been impacted by human activity ranging from agriculture practices to urban development and by natural catastrophic events, such as hurricanes and wildfires. These impacts have caused a significant loss of stream and riparian habitat and have led to drastic declines in water quality. The US EPA has identified excess sediment as the primary cause of degraded water quality in stream and rivers and recognizes that unstable stream banks are a main contributor to this problem.

Many of our natural wetlands have been lost to agricultural impacts and urban development. Some estimates indicate that more than 50% of the Nation's wetlands have been filled, drained, or impacted to make room for cropland, roads, or development. Wetlands have a wide range of benefits to the environment and to the public. They offer unique habitats for plants and animals, remove nutrients and other contaminants from ground and surface water, provide floodwater attenuation, and recharge groundwater aquifers.

Wildlands is a leader in the rapidly growing ecosystem restoration industry. We utilize our unique combination of expertise in ecology, stream design, wetland and riparian buffer restoration, hydrology, and engineering to restore and conserve streams, wetlands, and endangered species habitats. Natural systems such as streams and wetlands can become degraded over time due to human manipulation or catastrophic natural events such as hurricanes. Restoring stream and wetland systems gives nature a head start in regaining stability and establishing a self-maintaining natural system. Through ecosystem restoration, Wildlands Engineering aims to restore habitat, stability, and natural functions to streams, wetlands, and their surrounding environment.

Ecosystem Restoration services include:

• Feasibility Studies which balance economic and ecologic value to identify the best site for a project as well as the best approach for implementing the project;
• Identification and acquisition of project funding sources;
• Existing Conditions Assessment to determine unique site characteristics;
• Wetland Functional Assessment and Subsurface Hydrologic Modeling;
• Hydrologic and Hydraulic Analysis to develop discharge and sediment transport relationships for design;
• Detailed Stream Restoration Design based on natural channel design principles;
• Coordination with appropriate regulatory agencies for required permit approvals;
• Project Implementation including bid administration, contact awarding, and construction observation;
• Post-Construction Monitoring to ensure project success;
• Regional Curve Development in areas where hydraulic geometry relationships have not been established.

The impacts of human activities such as urban development and changing land cover by forest removal or other agricultural practices has a significant influence of both the quantity and the quality of stormwater runoff in a watershed. Stormwater Management is an essential approach for controlling stormwater runoff for the purposes of improving water quality and reducing downstream erosion and flooding caused by increases in peak discharges.

Historically, engineers have been skilled at designing highly efficient drainage systems that collect stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces through inlets, storm drains, and concrete channels. The intent of these designs was to move the water off of a developed area as quickly as possible. This collected water was then discharged into a large detention facility so that the peak discharges for various sized storms (typically 2-, 10-, and 100-year) could be attenuated back to the pre-development rate to prevent downstream flooding and stream bank erosion. This method of stormwater management is often referred to as 'end of pipe' treatment. Although this approach accomplished the goal of draining a site efficiently and controlling selected peak discharges, it was found that the 2- and 10-year peak control actually tended to exacerbate stream bank erosion, reduce groundwater recharge, increase water temperature, and not improve water quality. The detrimental effect that drastically changing the natural hydrology of an area has on the ecologic health of the receiving wetlands, streams, and rivers was rarely considered. Today, Low Impact Development is gaining popularity as the future of stormwater management.

Low Impact Development (LID) is a relatively new approach to managing stormwater from a developed site by using a distributed system of both structural and non-structural Best Management Practices (BMPs) integrated into the natural landscape and designed to replicate, as closely as possible, the hydrologic character of the site prior to development. This is accomplished by using a combination of techniques such as infiltration, filtration, bio-retention, reduced impervious surfaces, better site design, retention/detention, grass channels, green roofs, rain barrels, cisterns, pervious pavements, and preservation of environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands, riparian buffers, highly permeable soils, and woodlands.

Wildlands works with land developers early in the planning stage by assessing the site's environmental features, native soils, and existing hydrology. We work closely with the site designers in the concept phase of the site layout to integrate LID practices into the design in a practical and aesthetically pleasing way. After concepts are developed, we meet with the approving authorities to assure the design meets or exceeds their criteria. Once concept approval is received, we proceed with final design including all hydrologic and hydraulic computations, grading plans, profiles, and details, and technical specifications. The final design is submitted to the approving authority for the appropriate permit(s). During construction, Wildlands provides construction inspection and as-built certification of all LID BMPs to ensure the success of the project.

Results of the floodplain study are used to determine whether a no-rise certification or a Conditional Letter of Map Revision (CLOMR) is required prior to project construction. A Letter of Map Revision (LOMR) may also be required after construction, depending on the floodplain study findings. Wildlands' staff includes several Certified Floodplain Managers (CFM) who are familiar with regulatory requirements for modeling. Wildlands coordinates with the local floodplain manager as well as with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) when required to ensure that the project receives the proper approvals prior to implementation.

We have experienced staff that will coordinate with all stakeholders to:

• Coordinate with all vested stakeholders;
• Assess existing watershed conditions;
• Identify existing water resources and their functions within the watershed;
• Identify and prioritize problems within the watershed;
• Define management and development objectives;
• Develop improvement or maintenance strategies;
• Implement the Watershed Plan

The first step in determining if impacts are likely to occur is to perform a jurisdictional area delineation to identify potential wetland and stream impacts. Wildlands' staff of environmental scientists and biologists are well trained and experienced in providing delineations in support of land development activities in waters of the United States.

Once potential impacts are identified, Wildlands assists its land development clients with the appropriate federal, state, and local government agency coordination and permitting necessary in order to proceed with development. Wildlands' permitting experience ranges from brief Nationwide Permits to complex Individual Permit coordination with alternative site analysis, minimization and avoidance recommendations and mitigation. Wildlands is fully staffed and experienced to handle all aspects of environmental permitting including:

• Clean Water Act Section 401 and 404 permitting
• State and county buffer variance permitting
• Master environmental planning

The protection of threatened, endangered, rare, and sensitive plant and animal species has become increasingly important with the rapid rate of land development and changes to natural terrestrial and aquatic habitats. As more land is developed and converted to non-forested uses, impacts to critical habitats of protected species can occur at rapid rates.

Because of this, development must address protected species issues whenever there is a potential to impact critical habitat of listed species. Additionally, even stable populations of rare and sensitive species must be continually assessed in order to protect them from potentially being listed and ultimately imperiled.

Protected species are often an indicator of stable and high quality terrestrial and aquatic environments. Many protected species only exist under pristine or well-preserved environmental conditions. A decline in protected species and their habitats may indicate that adverse impacts to terrestrial or aquatic ecosystem are occurring. Maintaining stable populations of protected species often indicates that the ecosystem is functioning naturally without excess negative environmental influence.

Protective Species Surveys

Our protected species survey capabilities include:

• Fish, mussels, and other benthic macroinvertebrates
• Bird, amphibian, reptilian, and mammalian species
• Terrestrial and aquatic plant speciesg

As urban areas continue to expand and develop outward to more rural communities, the demand for linear facilities development becomes more apparent and increasingly important. In order to support this growth, roadways, electricity, sewer, water, and gas infrastructure become critical corridors and pipelines supporting economic development.

Linear facilities often span long distances, therefore impacts to natural resources, including wetlands, open waters, streams, riparian buffers, and threatened and endangered plant and animal species become important concerns.

Wildlands provides expert services in the fields of wetland and stream ecology, geomorphology, terrestrial and aquatic plant and animal surveys, sediment and erosion control, and Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis in support of these resources. Wildlands then provides practical solutions to minimize and avoid impacts to our natural resources to the greatest extent possible during construction of these facilities.

Wildlands' involvement in linear facilities expansion ranges from initial routing and feasibility studies to complete environmental assessment and permitting of linear facilities development.