Riparian repair
After a century of livestock grazing on the Willow Witt Ranch, its owners are trying to restore part of it to a natural state.
And the United States Department of Agriculture is pitching in.
Through the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, the USDA shares the cost of restoration — up to $4.20 per square foot — and offers technical advise to help agricultural landowners restore land around streams and rivers. Along with the USDA cost share of up to 50 percent of the project costs, the Oregon Water Enhancement Board could chip in up to 25 percent.
Willow and Witt's 73 acres are part of nearly 100,000 the USDA aimed to enroll in the program when it started in 1998. The program began under Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Gov. John Kitzhaber. The reserve program is voluntary and aims to protect nine species of salmon and two trout listed as endangered. It includes all streams that provide habitat for these species that cross agricultural lands.
Suzanne Willow and Lanita Witt own the ranch in the shadow of Grizzly Peak. Last week, Trent Luschen — Jackson County executive director for the program — approved a 15-year contract for the project.
"People come in and say, 'I want to improve my riparian area,'" Luschen said. "We just want to make it a functioning area."
Luschen will advise the ranch owners through the project, but the bulk of the work is in their hands.
"We basically are responsible for getting it done," Witt said. Willow and Witt plan to work with the Klamath Bird Observatory, Bear Creek Watershed Education Partners and private contractors to restore the area. They will fence off the 73 acres from livestock. Within three years, they hope to finish planting native vegetation in the wetland near the headwaters of Frog Creek. For the remainder of the lease, they will maintain the plants while keeping the area fenced off from their neighbor's local cows.
The free-ranging cows have eaten willow trees near the streambed, creating erosion and sedimentation in the creek. Replanting the trees and other native vegetation will reduce this erosion and create a healthier riparian area, the ranch owners hope.
Witt and Willow are spearheading the restoration project but other locals will help with the legwork. Aaron Maxwell, an environmental studies graduate student at Southern Oregon University, rents part of a guesthouse at the ranch and used his knowledge of watersheds and stream research to help the ranch owners develop a restoration plan.
"We basically just bounce ideas off each other," he said.
Maxwell works with restoration groups studying Bear Creek, of which Frog Creek is a tributary. He said the main problem near the Willow Witt Ranch is erosion seeping into the creek from lack of vegetation to keep the soils in place.
"Getting some regrowth of willow will reduce the erosion up there," Maxwell said.
Starting late this summer, the Willow Witt Ranch will begin the initial work of fencing off the wetland and riparian areas Willow said she would like to see the area become an educational asset where children could learn about wetland restoration. There is a possibility of reintroducing beavers into the wetland area, and the ideas keep flowing.
For more information about the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, visit www.fsa.usda.gov/dafp/cepd/crpinfo.htm.
Staff writer Alan Panebaker can be reached at 482-3456 x 227 or apanebaker@dailytidings.com.
