While Heller and her crew work on the meadow, Jacob Quinn, USFS trails coordinator, is working downstream on 2.2 miles of trail along Cold Creek. Aspen stand restoration, fuel reduction and trail maintenance are the other projects. The meadow restoration is one of four projects in the area. Big Meadow, one day, will resemble its sister meadow. Cookhouse Meadow, off Luther Pass, was at 7,300. She anticipates this project benefiting the area’s entire ecosystem – aiding the goshawks that nest nearby, creating amphibian habitat, having Cold Creek potentially be home to various fish species, macro invertebrates, butterflies, and warblers and other birds calling the high elevation meadow home.Īt 7,700 feet, this is the highest meadow restoration project the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit has undertaken. This will be a major habitat restoration,” Heller explained. “I think the restoration is broader than sediment. His precision is incredible, making it look like the large yellow piece of equipment is being operated with velvet gloves.īuilding the stack sod bank will help establish vegetation on the bank. The dirt will be used to fill what will be the old channel of Cold Creek.Įxcavator Billy Newman delicately places swatches of sod. Those piles of rocks about a quarter mile away are being dumped on Tuesday into the freshly dug new channel to create a stream riffle. Felled trees are in a pile.Įverything being used in the meadow restoration is native. Boulders and smaller rock, along with piles of dirt are under the power lines. Driving in (which is only allowed in a Forest Service vehicle) it looks more like a major construction site than a serene meadow. The 18 people working on the project are all Forest Service employees. It helps get the fine sediment on the flood plane. “It will average 30 days each year out of the bank. “Now the stream doesn’t get out of the bank,” Heller said. What the public will notice most once the meadow project is done is that this flat, expansive land mass will be wet in the spring, more lush and possibly producing wildflowers like not seen by current generations. The $2 million meadow restoration is being paid for with money from the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. Filling in the old channel will take place in 2012. Next year it’s all about letting the vegetation along the new stream channel take hold. Crews are starting to plant them along the new channel. Cows like willows – that’s why there aren’t any. The area was last grazed eight years ago. This land was bought from a family trust in 2003, with a private cabin still on the property near the entrance to the area off High Meadow Trail, which is off Pioneer Trail on the South Shore. “The goal here is in five years we don’t want people to know we’ve been here,” said Stephanie Heller, hydrologist with the Forest Service and project lead.Įighty of the 280 acres in the meadow are being restored. Forest Service crews complete the project in 2012, Cold Creek will meander like it did before cattle grazed in the meadow, willows will sprout from the bank, the dead beetle-infested lodgepoles will be hauled away, and wildlife will have returned to the area. This is because of the multi-year restoration project that started in August. Photos/Kathryn Reedīut High Meadow could be more aptly named Construction Meadow. Excavator Billy Newman puts sod into the new channel of Cold Creek at High Meadow.
0 kommentar(er)
