Watershed Restoration in the Temperate Rainforest of the North Coast
Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.--Lyndon B. Johnson
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Watershed Restoration: Thirty Years of Progress
When I was asked a few weeks ago to "write up" some watershed restoration projects--how they worked, how they didn't work, problems, processes, successes, lessons--I immediately started to weigh the comparative merits of a dozen or so projects that might be good examples to evaluate. By yesterday I'd pared it down to three or so possibilities for this edition of Branching Out. But then, tossing and turning at various times during the night, my mind mulled over the broader context and approaches of "watershed restoration" rather than the myriad of details in any particular example of a current restoration or rehabilitation project. For a person involved in watershed restoration, like any number of people carrying out projects for years along the North Coast, there's a whole lot of background that gets "jumped over" by focusing judgment on a particular project.
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Eel River Salmon Restoration Project
Springtime is soon upon us with new steelhead hatching and tree buds bursting. The Eel River Salmon Restoration Project (ERSRP) has been busily planting trees, in anticipation of the increased daylight hours. Erosion control projects are the areas now being prioritized for planted. After this year's scouring stream flows and landslides, our group will be assessing future projects and the effects of this season's storms on previously completed projects.
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Restoration Lessons from Ancestor Creek
Watershed and fisheries restoration is part science, part art, part engineering, and part sociology. Ancestor Creek is just one of the more than twenty tributaries to the Mattole River headwaters where Sanctuary Forest and its partners are working to restore the habitat of endangered salmon as part of the Upper Mattole Watershed Rehabilitation Project. Many of the successes and lessons learned from this project are seen in Ancestor Creek.
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