Natural recovery: A practical natural resource restoration option following oil spills

Abstract

This paper evaluates the role of natural recovery in the restoration of populations, communities, and ecosystems following natural and anthropogenic disturbances, especially oil spills. Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, options for the restoration of natural resources and services injured by oil spills range from natural recovery to aggressive methods requiring human intervention. Natural recovery is defined herein as the return of natural resources to a dynamic baseline with no active human intervention. Populations, communities, and ecosystems are a product of biological responses to a wide variety of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In an oil spill, biological communities will generally recover naturally to baseline conditions about as quickly and effectively as they will with active human interventions, and at a lower cost and lower commitment of people, equipment, and materials. Therefore, natural recovery should be considered a primary restoration alternative for each oil spill incident. Natural recovery should also be the standard or benchmark restoration alternative against which all active restoration alternatives are compared for cost-effectiveness and probable success in restoring natural resources and services. We conclude that natural recovery is a cost-effective, efficient process that, in most oil spills, restores natural resources to baseline about as quickly as would the most aggressive active restoration alternative.