Legacy Magazine

By David W. Moore & Nancy Rogers

Cooperating agency personnel (from left) Elliot Doss, Bill Cox, and Joel Miller shock and remove fish from the old channel.

As interpreters, we know through experience and training that connecting an audience with a resource can lead to understanding and better yet, inspiration. We were counting on that when we started the Lake Sonoma Stream Restoration Demonstration Project, adjacent to a fish hatchery about 60 miles north of San Francisco. The project “journey,” as it has become known to us, began over two years ago when a group of fisheries biologists, interpreters, habitat restoration specialists, and park managers from three different agencies bought into a single idea—that converting a weedy, man-made ditch into a demonstration site for interpretation of habitat restoration techniques would transcend a simple resource management activity. The interpretive context becomes one of moving select audiences from understanding and to inspiration and action. The journey proved to be full of blind curves, but ultimately one of hope.

We had recently developed a new interpretive master plan with no money to implement it. Does this sound at all familiar? We had confidence that we, as representatives of partner agencies, would work together like a stream leading to solutions. Sometimes bureaucratic systems make it hard to combine resources, and we came across some of that, especially regarding different agency needs with contracting. Each of us had internal agency audiences to satisfy. But we were as opportunistic as salmonids seeking survival. We emphasized bridging to parts of the larger plan wherever we could, always with a mutual desire to move ahead. We were beginning to get our feet wet.

The Early Headwaters

Invasive plants were removed and banks were reseeded with native grasses. The channel was lined with river gravel and a new stream habitat was created with root wads, redwood logs, and rock weirs.

The interpretive master plan completed in 2006 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Warm Springs Dam/Lake Sonoma project described a new theme based on the Russian River Watershed. This stream restoration endeavor was an opportunity to move forward and begin to engage and link to the local watershed concepts. To mitigate loss of steelhead and coho salmon, the Don Clausen Fish Hatchery was constructed at Warm Springs Dam in 1980 and is operated by California Department of Fish and Game, a partner in the master planning process. For nearly 30 years, a man-made ditch directed fish from the dam’s fish ladder to the hatchery entrance. Over time, the ditch had been invaded with Himalayan blackberry, silt, and a chokehold of willow roots. We needed a way to rethink and connect the old ditch with our new interpretive vision.

Every winter, visitors and school children flock to the fish ladder and wade through wet, muddy grass along the ditch to witness the returning steelhead. We learned a lot about our audiences through visitor surveys and focus groups. They enjoy learning about the steelhead and want more direct contact with the fish. They love to see them coming back to the hatchery and want to know more about how the hatchery works. What we didn’t anticipate was how hard it would be to convince the managing agencies that our habitat restoration idea could be successful as well as protect the steelhead, a threatened species in the Russian River Watershed. The take-home message for us was that the seeds for sustaining our partnership and achieving our goal were founded in the power of a good idea and our ability to communicate that idea.

A preliminary survey helped refine the master plan, retooling exhibit and office area spaces in the visitor center and providing data on abating noise conditions in the hatchery. Yet, it didn’t scratch the surface on getting to interpretive installations. The giant interactive salmon that looked so good in the slick pages of the master plan was only a holding place for the future. What could we accomplish now to keep the momentum for progress alive?

Flow Arrives at a Confluence: Zeroing in on the Project

Before: The channel is choked with non-native plants and years of sediment buildup. There is no stream habitat and public cannot see migrating steelhead.

The fish ladder and fish channel to the hatchery always figured in the master plan, but the full potential was never really examined until an out-of-the-box idea came up from staff through a routine exercise at a conference session. Why not use this small stretch of off-stream migration corridor to demonstrate the different kinds of stream restoration techniques used to enhance salmon and steelhead habitat? We can have explanatory interpretive signage—students and landowners will have a place to come see. The conference committee simply loved the idea. So it was time to put the proverbial shoulder to the wheel once again. We looked for hope in our hearts and focused on a plan to restore the steelhead passage (“ditch”) leading to the hatchery gate.

After: A new structure mimics native stream water flow through gravel beds, rocks, and logs for returning steelhead.

The primary partners in our habitat restoration project—U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California Department of Fish and Game, Friends of Lake Sonoma, and Sotoyome Resource Conservation District—worked together to create practical and interpretive goals. We wanted our project to provide both a demonstration for salmonid stream restoration techniques along with opportunities for inspiring stewardship. The ditch would be drained and cleaned out, invasive plants removed, and new habitat features installed that mimic natural stream profiles. Rock weirs, root wads, fallen logs, willow walls, deep pools, and gravel beds—all things that private landowners could do on streams running through their property to improve fish habitat—were to be put in place as a living classroom experience.

The learning would also extend to supporting the popular Classroom Aquarium Education Program through the California Department of Fish and Game. Students would raise steelhead in their classrooms and release the fry in the newly restored channel.

The Russian River watershed is 90 percent privately owned, so private landowners hold the key to successful restoration in waterways connecting to the Russian River. In our vision, this project would provide a microcosm of ideas and a demonstration to inspire them. Casual visitors and organized school tours would benefit from a new wide wheelchair accessible path—close enough to see the migrating fish without having to get their feet wet or trample the ground. Elevated platforms would be constructed out over the water for enhanced viewing and even greater connection. Elements rounding out the plan included new interpretive panels, native riparian plantings, and a rain shelter over the fish ladder viewing area. We were convinced we had a great vision, and everyone loved the idea—but, no good deed goes unpunished. The real journey had just begun.

Flood of Challenges
Our first attempt to gain grant funding was only partially successful. The Corps provided $10,000 seed money, the Friends of Lake Sonoma donated $5,000, and the other partners submitted a $200,000 grant proposal to the state of California only to be turned down.

Huh? “We love the project,” we heard, “but….” We tried again, submitting a revised proposal the following year only to run hard up against California’s budget crisis. All grants were suspended. Adding insult to injury, a new term, “Furlough Friday,” entered our vocabulary and directly affected the state partners. But the power of our good idea would not let go. We met to discuss how we could move forward with the $15,000 we had in hand. With reduced staff resources, we cobbled together donated labor and materials to complete the first phase of restoration. What seemed simple at the time was becoming much more complex.

Our best interpretive efforts would prove invaluable in the numerous meetings to communicate our intentions and coordinate implementation of the actual construction. It became time for adaptive management considerations. One partner felt a bit left out—most of their work was to be funded from the grant that was suspended. How do we keep them included? Once again, our good idea was like a beacon. We’ll find a role for them and the money to pay for it—and we did.

Next, there came a new wrinkle. Corps of Engineers leadership now wanted the project to represent a much larger effort to restore creek habitats as outlined in a Russian River Biological Opinion—suddenly our little project was becoming political football. “We love your project, but….” Front and center, interpretive fast talking and a few more huddles put that football in the end zone. Then, more setbacks and more meetings ensued—when could we be left alone to start the work?

Meanwhile, we were fortunate to have a close network of professional interpreters with whom we met on occasion to share stories, projects, and the like. They were the perfect group to provide the room we needed for catharsis and restoration of inspiration that inevitably followed. The power of interpretive networking cannot be underestimated.

Build it and They Will Come
You wouldn’t think it, but habitat restoration can be a bit ugly and scary. It includes large machinery, lots of dirt moving, and piles of logs and boulders. This is not to mention concern over regulations for water quality, threatened and endangered species, and adhering to scientific protocols for everything you do. It’s all enough to make anyone say, “We love your project, but….” Countless times we could hear that refrain coming. But we couldn’t shake the hope we shared.

Wonderful words must be said for the folks who worked with us, whose can-do attitude began to reshape the landscape bit by bit. We had to close off the stream area due to construction conditions on site. “Fish Ladder Closed” signs adorned the hatchery interior. But the real work was outside. At the peak of summer season with migratory runs far away, the small channel was pumped dry in order to rescue a few resident juvenile fish. Next, scraping away large swaths of non-native blackberry and application of herbicide took place to thwart the return of invasive plants.

We had finally headed down a road and we couldn’t turn back. We’d physically torn the “ditch” apart and had to put it back together. The important thing now was to keep everybody focused on what we were trying to do, and to keep the flame alive. When we worked, momentum took over.

Then one day, the process culminated with the excavation of the channel and artful placement of gravel, stone, and woody structures for re-creation of natural habitat. A rock weir created a fish pool; logs and boulders offered in-stream complexity for protection of fish; and banks were stabilized with native grass seeding, erosion-control blankets, and straw. The foundation for a wheelchair-accessible trail was laid in and adjacent upland areas were contoured to resemble a more natural landscape.

From High Reach to Ocean Deep
Throughout our travails, we had kept a vigilant beam focused on issues that mattered. The science of habitat restoration and fisheries management had to be kept connected to the people who support these efforts through taxes and personal interest. Guiding interpretive principles of provoke-relate-reveal had recaptured the initial naysayers.

Now that the restored stream is taking shape, it seems that everybody wants to be part of a successful idea. The rains have come, the water gurgles through the former ditch like a native stream. The rocks, cobbles, redwood logs, and root wads peek up through the water as it dances along the gravel beds. The native grasses we seeded are beginning to sprout, and a new walkway has a temporary but serviceable base. In recent months we welcomed the first steelhead back. They took to the restored habitat immediately. We’ve even observed spawning activity at this site for the very first time.

Feedback as of late is quite simply music to our ears. The stream of hope and inspiration of the good idea had carried us each step of the journey. Payoff is finding inspiration in the work you are doing and the people you are doing it for. We survived to tell this story. You can, too.

David W. Moore is interpretive services supervisor for California Department of Fish and Game, Bay-Delta Region. Nancy Rogers is the San Francisco District park ranger and interpretive specialist with the US Army Corps of Engineers. They can be reached at dmoore@dfg.ca.gov and nancy.l.rogers@usace.army.mil.