Mattole River and Range Partnership

April 28, 2004


The Mattole River and Range Partnership (MRRP), an alliance of Mattole watershed groups, will publish a Watershed Plan in December 2004. The Plan will set forth a 30-year vision for the watershed, including a 5-year "implementation" plan that will recommend site-specific projects that build towards the long-range vision. The watershed planning and habitat-improvement efforts are being coordinated by the Mattole Restoration Council (MRC), and funded by contracts from the California State Coastal Conservancy (CSCC) and the California State Water Quality Control Board. The hope and intent within the MRRP is that these contracts will be the first of many that will allow partner groups to use a coordinated, systematic, and synergistic approach to salmonid and watershed restoration in the Mattole.

Photo: Map courtesy of the MRC GIS Department

This is the first effort of its kind since the MRC published Elements of Recovery in 1989, which planned sediment reduction projects on a watershed-wide scale. In a similar fashion, the Watershed Plan will assess the current conditions in the Mattole watershed and will develop projects such as riparian planting, instream enhancement, invasive exotics removal, fuel load reduction, channel monitoring, salmon rearing, restoration forestry, and landscape conservation strategies.

MRC staff member Sabrina Stadler is coordinating the project timeline and directing the MRC portion of the Plan. During the next three months, MRC staff will survey creeks throughout the Mattole to assess their needs for conifer replanting, with the goal of re-establishing the historic abundance of conifers in the riparian zones, eliminating invasive exotic species, and developing site-specific projects to enhance creekside habitats in the Mattole. The surveys are coordinated by Unity Peterson, the Watershed Plan Technician and will be effected by a crew of MRC staff members.

	Campbell Thompson of Mattole Salmon Group assesses a decommissioned crossing in Ancestor Creek for fish habitat enhancements. Photo: Sanctuary Forest Archive

The Mattole Salmon Group (MSG) has begun an exhaustive channel monitoring study to examine and track the healing of tributaries in the watershed following upslope restoration such as road removal and tree planting. Under the CSCC funding of the MRRP, the Salmon Group has been able to expand its spawning surveys, dive surveys, and water quality monitoring. In addition they will be able to produce a long-anticipated "State of the Salmon" report to assist watershed groups in understanding where they have come from and where they must go in order to restore native salmon populations. The watershed funding will also allow the MSG to review its conservation rearing program and reconstruct its facilities to better accommodate its Rescue Rearing program.

A Board mixer in February for members of the Mattole River & Range Partnership. Photo: Sanctuary Forest Archive

Other partners include the Middle Mattole Conservancy and Sanctuary Forest, who will focus their Watershed Plan efforts on land conservation strategies. Starting this summer, Sanctuary Forest will host Conservation Easement House Meetings at locations throughout the watershed. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements that landowners can use to establish a stewardship vision for their property that will last far beyond their own lifetime, while still allowing them to use their property according to their needs. Conservation easements can be tailored to protect a property's most valuable ecological and aesthetic features in perpetuity, and can reap financial rewards for a landowner through tax savings and estate planning.

These meetings will be a chance for Mattole landowners to learn how they can best make use of this powerful, flexible conservation tool.

If you are a Mattole resident and would like to contribute to the Watershed Plan, you may submit a Watershed Plan questionnaire (visit http://www.mattole.org/program_services/watershed-plan.htm). To comment on the draft report next November, or to be included on the Watershed Plan e-mail or postal mailing list, please contact Sabrina Stadler, sabrina@mattole.org, P.O. Box 160, Petrolia, CA 95558, (707) 629-3514.


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Forest & River News is produced by Trees Foundation.