Community-Based Watershed Restoration: 2023 Watershed Awareness Volunteer Events a Success

By Watershed Stewards Program Corpsmember Lizzie Bear, San Francisco Bay Area Network Salmonid Monitoring Program

Volunteers planting willow stakes at the Stewart Ranch WAVE event in March.

NPS / Watershed Stewards Program Corpsmember Catherine Masatani

May 2023 - As part of their term of service each year, Watershed Stewards Program, or WSP, corpsmembers plan a volunteer restoration event to improve watershed health. This spring, corpsmembers at Point Reyes National Seashore planned two restoration events to improve habitat quality for coho salmon and steelhead trout monitored by the San Francisco Bay Area Inventory & Monitoring Network coho and steelhead monitoring team. Watershed Awareness Volunteer Events, or WAVEs for short, are just one of the many ways WSP corpsmembers engage their communities in watershed conservation and stewardship. WAVEs can be broad in scope and the type of restoration techniques utilized, but have chiefly included invasive plant removals, native plantings, erosion control, and riparian protection fencing installation/repair.

The first event of the spring took place on Stewart Ranch, which has a tributary that flows directly into Olema Creek, one of the main creeks supporting federally endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead. A total of 15 volunteers participated in the event, helping remove a large quantity of invasive Himalayan blackberry, plant 13 native plants with cattle/deer browsing guards, and install 43 willow stakes.

Volunteers repair degraded fence at the Cheda Creek WAVE in April. This will exclude cattle from the creek, which otherwise could create organic pollution and sedimentation.

Watershed Stewardship Program / Grace Cecil

The second event took place at Cheda Creek, a tributary to Lagunitas Creek, which is also critical coho salmon and steelhead habitat. At this event, 20 volunteers helped plant 46 native plants, remove invasive Himalayan blackberry and Italian thistle, and repair 75 feet of degraded fenceline to continue excluding cattle from the creek. Both of these events occurred in partnership with the Point Reyes National Seashore Association, and with generous plant donations from the Salmonid Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN), so thank you to these project partners!

These events provide immense benefit to stream health and habitat quality that salmonids depend on. Statewide, WSP is proud to have developed more than 1,940 WAVE events during its program history. We are excited to continue monitoring previous WAVE sites at Point Reyes and to see what future corpsmembers plan for restoration events!

For more information

• San Francisco Bay Area Network Salmonid Monitoring webpage
• Pacific Coast Science & Learning Center Coho & Steelhead webpage
  • San Francisco Bay Area Coho and Steelhead Blog
• Contact Fishery Biologist Michael Reichmuth

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