Mattole River and Range Partnership: Watershed Plan to Create 30-Year Vision for the Mattole
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.
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Mattole Restoration Council: MRC Plans for Riparian Conifers
Ecosystems are composed of inter-related functions and parts that create a larger collective whole. Restoration groups in the Mattole watershed, working in partnership, also create a larger whole. While it is beyond the scope of any one organization to address each of the restoration issues effectively, the joint effort of the Mattole River and Range Partnership is enabling Mattole groups to rapidly propel our important work forward. In 2002, the Mattole Restoration Council helped form the Mattole River and Range Partnership to coalesce our efforts with the Mattole Salmon Group, Middle Mattole Conservancy, Lower Mattole Fire Safe Council, and Sanctuary Forest, in hopes we will accomplish even greater work as a collective force.
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Sanctuary Forest: Community-Building Through Education And Restoration
This spring, Sanctuary Forest completed a major road decommissioning project in the Mattole headwaters that spanned more than two years and cost well over 700 thousand dollars. The work took place throughout the headwaters on lands owned by members of the Upper Mattole River and Forest Cooperative, a partnership of non-profits, public agencies, and private landowners who together own or manage about 4,000 acres containing much of the Mattole's remaining old-growth forest and salmonid habitat. The project was designed to reduce the damage being done to salmon spawning and rearing grounds in the headwaters by removing much of the sediment being delivered from abandoned logging roads and stream crossings.
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Mattole Salmon Group: Fish on a Roller-Coaster
For the first time in several years, the wild salmon of the Mattole had a near ideal spawning season. The rains came a little late, and early arriving chinook salmon had to hole up in pools in the lower river for a few weeks. But when the rain began falling, it was in just the right amounts and at the right time to allow the chinook and then the Coho to reach their preferred headwaters spawning reaches. Spawner surveys through the late fall and early winter indicated a substantial run of both chinook and Coho salmon. It is difficult to determine the specific number of returning fish, but our best guess is that this was one of the better runs in recent years. Rainfall and river levels continued at fish-friendly levels through February of this year, with no extreme flows threatening the eggs or alevins in their redds. Our hope is that this will translate into a large population of salmon fry successfully migrating to the ocean or over-summering in the Mattole headwaters. Beginning in early April, the Mattole Salmon Group (MSG) will be installing fish traps near Ettersburg and our Petrolia headquarters to help estimate the number of down-migrating juvenile salmonids. This should help us confirm the degree of success of this past season's run.
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