Shifting Baseline Syndrome

What we forget, what we accept, and what we choose to restore 

I didn’t grow up knowing what a “healthy” river or fishery looked like. I had no concept or visual model of what an “intact floodplain” might feel like. I knew the difference between a canal and a creek, but that was about it. Like many people who spend their lives around rivers, my understanding of what’s normal was shaped by what I saw and experienced in front of me. A good day of fishing. A decent run-off year. Bugs on the water. A stretch of river that still held trout if you knew where to look. It felt whole enough. 

But then I started seeing pictures. 

Old photographs from my great grandfather — anglers holding fish that seemed almost out of place by today’s standards, and lots of them. Stories followed. Not exaggerated fish tales, but matter-of-fact accounts of abundance that felt foreign compared to what we now celebrate as success. After moving to the Wood River Valley, I interviewed people like Scott Schnebly (owner of Lost River Outfitters) who spun tales back to the 1970’s about fishing in the heydays of the Wood River basin. Yes, the glasses may have been rosy colored, but Schnebly described fishing holes up to 20 feet deep that struck a distinct hue of blue — which naturally provided primo holding water and the ability to sort sediment during big flood years. I also read passages in the Big Wood River Atlas detailing a river system that once functioned very differently — broader floodplain corridors, more complex habitat, a fishery supported by natural processes that have since been constrained, simplified, or severed altogether. 

Figure 1. Early photograph taken near the confluence of the Big Wood and Little Wood River show a broader, more connected system — one that supported a fishery very different from what we know today. 

After living and fishing in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, the pattern was hard to ignore: many of our fisheries have slowly shifted from vibrant, resilient systems into relics of their historical potential — and most of us in at least my generation, never noticed it happening.  

I finally had language for this when I read Robert Macfarlane’s Are Rivers Alive? There, woven among the philosophy of rivers as living entities, was a concept that struck a chord: shifting baseline syndrome. 

What Is Shifting Baseline Syndrome? 

Shifting baseline syndrome describes the gradual lowering of expectations over time. 

First articulated by fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly in the 1990s, the idea is simple but unsettling: each generation comes to see the environmental conditions they inherit as “normal,” even if those conditions represent a degraded version of the past. As ecosystems decline slowly, the baseline for what we consider healthy shifts downward — not because we’re indifferent, but because we lack memory. 

The result is a quiet amnesia. 

We celebrate stability where there was once richness and diversity. We call systems “restored” when they’re just less broken. We aim for improvement without fully realizing how much has already been lost. Shifting baseline syndrome has been well-documented in fisheries science, ecology, and conservation psychology. It’s real. And it matters — because management goals, restoration targets, and public expectations are all shaped by what we believe is possible. 

If our baseline is already low, our ambition will be too. 

LIONS PARK COMPARISON – TODAY VS MALLORY PHOTO 1910

Shifting baseline syndrome describes how each generation comes to accept the conditions they inherit as normal — even when those conditions represent significant loss. 

Most people walk along Draper Preserve near Lions Park and think highly of that beloved stretch of river. It looks fine on the surface, but clearly lacks the natural serpentine meanders seen in the early 20^th century. 

Why This Matters for Rivers and Fisheries 

Rivers are dynamic systems. They flood, migrate, braid, reconnect, and reset themselves — or at least they used to. Over time, many river corridors have been narrowed, straightened, disconnected from their floodplains, or simplified to serve other needs. Fish responded predictably: reduced habitat, less refuge, compromised resilience. But because these changes happened incrementally, often over generations, the loss was normalized. This is how a diminished fishery becomes “the way it’s always been.” And once that happens, it becomes harder — politically, socially, and even scientifically — to argue for anything better. 

Lifting the Baseline Back Up 

At the Wood River Land Trust, our river program exists to challenge that quiet drift. 

Through habitat restoration, monitoring initiatives, and prioritization frameworks, we’re working to reconnect floodplains, restore channel complexity, and reestablish the processes that healthy fisheries depend on. Just as importantly, we’re measuring outcomes — not to prove success, but to understand how far the system can recover when given space and time. This work isn’t about recreating the past exactly as it was. Rivers, landscapes, and communities have changed. But it is about lifting the baseline — setting future expectations higher than the ones we inherited. 

Because if we don’t, future generations will inherit an inferior version of what’s possible and call it normal. 

Remembering Forward 

Shifting baseline syndrome isn’t about guilt or nostalgia. It’s about awareness. 

By looking back — through photos, stories, data, and lived experience — we gain the perspective needed to move forward with intention. We remember not to romanticize the past, but to recalibrate our sense of what rivers can be when they’re allowed to function. 

That remembering is an act of stewardship. 

And in the side channels — the quieter places where reflection happens — is where real restoration begins. 

Let's lift the baseline back up.

Cory McCaffrey

River Program Director