How restoration projects are developed

By DD BIXBY
H&N Staff Writer

May 1, 2008  

Danette Watson, Restoration Manager for the Klamath Watershed Partnership, explains Tuesday how the replanting of vegetation and new cattle fences will help restore the Sprague River watershed near Chiloquin.

   When Danette Watson started meeting with landowners four years ago, she would ask, “How would you like your property to look in 20 years?” 

   She soon discovered this was the wrong question, because it limited ranchers to thinking only about what they could envision accomplishing with their own resources. Answers she got were conservative. So Watson changed her tactic and her question. 

   Now she asks, “If money wasn’t an option, what would you want your property to look like in 20 years?” The answers she got were different: Fish ponds, riparian areas and replaced vegetation. 

   About 80 percent of the Klamath Watershed Partnership’s work is focused in the Sprague River subbasin, but Watson said its team would go anywhere it’s requested. 

   Meets with landowners 

   Watson, the department’s restoration manager, meets with landowners to discuss options and possibilities that would best suit them and their capabilities. 

   Restoration projects used to be simple fences along the stream bank, but Watson said the river is only about 10 percent of the entire watershed, and a restoration project needs take a holistic approach by accounting for pasture and grazing management, vegetation, and the development of off-stream watering for livestock. 

   Watson said the partnership acts as a buffer between granting agencies and landowners. It drafts and makes grants and fields questions from the grantors, when necessary. 

   Once a grant is approved, the organization manages the project and contracts for labor and different parts of the job. Watson and her lead project manager, Joe Watkins, try to keep contracts local, hiring Integral Youth Services youth for fencing teams and using Basin contractors for well drilling. 

   Watson said she’s often heard comments and questions about what landowners are putting into such projects, if the majority of funding is coming through government agencies from taxpayer dollars. 

   What landowners give up 

   In response, Watson points out that landowners give up sizeable chunks of land along the stream bank as well pasture. In the development of the projects, Watson works to make restoration mesh with ranch management so both will continue and be sustainable. 

   Ranchers put in much time and other available resources, using tractors and other equipment for the development of their projects, Watkins said. 

   “Fencing is $12,000 per mile, and most farmers or ranchers don’t have that just laying around,” Watson said.

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Two organizations merged to form Klamath Watershed Partnership

   The Klamath Watershed Partnership is the merging of two organizations with a common goal: Success of local ecosystems and the economy. 

   Klamath Watershed Council and the Klamath Basin Ecosystem Foundation merged in July 2007 under the name Klamath Watershed Partnership. 

   Executive director Terry Morton, named to the position in February, said the partnership looks for ecosystem and regional economy overlap. The office acts as an information resource center. 

   Morton said her team helps local landowners discover what’s most economically effective for the ecosystem and their own ranching and farming operations. 

   The local nonprofit at 700 Main St. also acts as a “broker” between funding agencies to help farmers and ranchers obtain grants for restoration projects. 

   Grant projects include off-stream livestock watering, stream bank fencing and juniper management in uplands. 

   Morton said the focus of the effort is above the lake: This is where the most progress can be made repairing and building up the watershed from a top-down approach. 

   Its emphasis is private landowners, but the organization also collaborates with agencies in the Basin, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It has helped work on public projects, too, such as the Wing Watchers Trail and Barkley Springs. 

   More than $1.2 million in grant money is budgeted in 2008 to pass through the organization to more than a dozen local landowner for 18 projects. Those projects include 10 miles of stream bank fencing, a spring reconnection and the Barkley Springs project. 

   Future proposed projects, for which grants are being processed, include 15.7 miles of fencing and 88 acres of riparian vegetation.

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