Is ecosystem restoration worth the effort? The rehabilitation of a Finnish river affects recreational ecosystem services

The need to assess the societal consequences of human actions impacting the environment has led to the concept of “ecosystem services” (ESS), which can be valued in socio-economic terms to communicate the ecologically-based costs and benefits of management choices. Quantifying the usually-neglected value of ESS should lead to better awareness of the societal importance of ecosystems and more balanced decision-making. We examine the case of the rehabilitation project of the River Pajakkajoki (Finland), aiming to improve conditions for fish spawning and increase the recreational attractiveness of natural areas along the river. We investigated how the rehabilitation changed ESS provision and the value of such change, focusing on recreational ESS due to data availability. We conducted an economic valuation of recreational ESS based on questionnaires administered to both locals and non-locals, analyzed by combining revealed and stated preference methods. We show that the rehabilitation generated great benefits: the estimated increase in recreational ESS value was 40.0-144.7 €/person/year, with slight differences between residents and non-residents. When scaling up this value to all the visitors of the area, the benefits of river restoration were estimated to compensate for the project costs in approximately 3-10 years, justifying investments in restoration from a societal perspective.