Redwood Reader

The Mattole Restoration Councils grand plan to stabilize watersheds in Mattole tributaries through storm proofing roads has come to possibly the most impaired area in the project zone. Good Roads Clean Creeks has come into the Middle Mattole area this year. Participating landowners will see a major improvement in their roads and drainages and annual sedimentation loads should fall drastically as a result, improving fisheries habitat and allowing the landscape to heal itself without new events every year.
A lot of people have spent a long time teasing out the factors involved in wholesale watershed destruction and we finally have actionable intelligence.
As with many large-scale projects, opposition came from people not totally versed in the intent of the program. To the average owner, the program is essentially free roadwork done in a responsible manner and intended to last for years. A small amount of time will be spent in stream moving the creek back into its old bed and away from failing banks that have contributed massive amounts of sediment to the Mattole. This project has taken about seven years to get off the ground, and we have been working on a watershed stabilization plan since 1989 just for Middle Creek. Our efforts before that were contained to our own property but it eventually became clear that the major impacts on the stream were from activities like building and driveways that change drainages further up the watershed. Mattole restoration Council came up with the idea and has successfully sold it to DFG and the Coastal Commission.
The Mattole has somewhere near seventy named tributaries. This years program for the Middle Mattole includes five creeks- Westlund, Middle and part of Dry creeks on the east side of the Mattole and Four Mile and Sholes on the West side. These lands are in or near stewardship zones for Gilham Butte and HRSP, and lie in the Redwoods to the Sea wildlife corridor. All these public lands and most of the private lands are in a state of rapid recovery. With minimal new insults to the landscape we will have a remarkable newly functioning wilderness right in our own backyard.
The Mattole itself is a microcosm of restoration work. Starting in stream salmon restorers realized stream conditions could not improve until uphill discharges of sediment were somehow reduced. A relatively small and closed system, it is possible to fix the majority of currently used roads, the primary source of recurring sedimentation. In many areas its economic value has been stripped and recovering lands are only marginally threatened with new development or extraction. Protections on its main fish species as well as several birds means a lot of land uses are precluded even if topography didn’t already reduce profits to nil.
MRC has entered into a long term agreement called the River and Range project ot restore the river basin. This project seeks to improve the roads in all seventy Mattole sub-basins over the next fifteen years to reduce sedimentation. There is not enough funds to reshape artificially vertical banks or put all the roads to bed but a fully functioning watershed including fisheries, is right around the corner. The biggest current threat would be new roads and logging in the PL ownership near the mouth of the Mattole. Here the estuary is already full of sediment making it shallower and warmer, dangerous to the fry that school there in summer waiting for the mouth to open so they can go to sea.
Good Roads Clean Creeks is one of those ideas so big and so good it deserves to be looked at by other restoration groups, that is, it makes an excellent model. Tied together with tree planting and an understanding of the precipitation, tree, fungi ground storage concept we will actually stabilize the watershed and make that more permanent by regrowing it. By delaying and filtering runoff we control the damage caused by peak events and extend positive effects later into the summer. The investment will be made worthwhile as fish stocks rise, sport fishing is eventually reinstated, and also by cleaner waters being more open to kayakers and canoers, more miles of scenic bike touring open up and more opportunities for camping become available, and higher fuel moisture levels mitigate fire threat to some extent.
Salute and thanks to MRC for this ambitious project!