Do not restore the past
From REFORM wiki
In the past, many river projects aimed at attaining certain target reference states, based on images of pristine or historical states of the river. The desire to re-create the past is tempting, but river systems follow complex trajectories that frequently make it impossible to return to a previous state. Reference-based strategies are therefore progressively replaced by objective-based strategies that reflect the practical limitations of developing sustainable landscapes and the emerging importance of accounting for human services of the target ecosystem: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rra.1239/abstract
