MRC's Resource Center continues reaching out to landowners, residents, and all interested parties, making watershed-related resources available via our website, bi-annual newsletters, and our library. We continue to educate and engage local youth through our Mattole Ecological Education Program (MEEP). This year, MEEP students investigated the possibilities for mycoremediation of contaminated soils using local oyster mushrooms! In the coming year, MEEP looks forward to working with several watershed schools doing phytoplankton monitoring, through a unique partnership with BLM. MRC's Nick's Interns Program is in the midst of another rewarding summer bringing local teenagers into contact with a wide range of natural resource career opportunities. Interns participate in work with MRC as well as a variety of other groups. Interns receive experience in everything from willow wall construction to Geographic Information Systems.
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Quantifying the impacts of sediment reduction work on instream conditions has long been a goal of watershed restorationists, but has proven quite difficult in practice. Starting this rainy season, the MRC's Monitoring Program will collect turbidity samples in a handful of Petrolia area streams, some where sediment reduction work is scheduled for next summer. This study, currently funded for three years, should increase our understanding of the influence road upgrading has on the duration of elevated turbidity levels in Mattole streams.
MRC's Geographic Information System Program uses state-of-the-art equipment and software to provide landowners, residents, community groups and agencies with mapping tools essential to all restoration and conservation efforts in the watershed. We are also working to develop an online map viewer, similar to Google Earth for Mattole data!
Our Wild and Working Lands Program (WWL) is expanding has expanded its focus to all of the Mattole's terrestrial habitats. For instance, we scout out populations of native perennial grasses, collect their seed, and plant it both as seed and as plugs we raise in our new Native Plant Nursery. This project has already helped re-green the 2007 Spanish Flat fire in the King Range; more seed is destined for firebreaks cut around this year's Paradise Ridge fire.
WWL's tree-planting efforts continue with a focus on riparian areas that are most critical to salmon. Last winter, we enhanced 20 miles of streams in the Mattole by planting more than 17,000 2-year-old Douglas-fir seedlings, grown from native Mattole seed. Also during this past year, MRC collected and planted 2,000 black cottonwood along the lower Mattole River. In coming years, The WWL Riparian Ecosystem Restoration program will continue to plant Douglas-fir and broaden our efforts to include other tree and brush species, willow walls, and riparian thinning so that our projects are tailored even more specifically to the needs of each site.
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Lastly but certainly not least, WWL is engaged in a visionary effort to make it feasible for those who wish to log in the Mattole to do so with a light touch. Through a Program Timberland Environmental Impact Report (PTEIR), WWL is crafting a watershed-wide permit for low-impact harvesting that will offer landowners a streamlined permitting process.
Finally, the Council's Forest Practices Review program has focused this year on monitoring the bankruptcy of Pacific Lumber Company and representing a grassroots perspective on the opportunities and threats presented by this sweeping change for 210,000 acres of Humboldt County forestland.
For more information: www.mattole.org