12/11/04
Tis’ a season of celebration and in that spirit, let’s all celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of landowners in the Scott and Shasta Valleys in enhancing and restoring fish and wildlife habitat. 
 
From 1957 to 2004, about $11,370,000 has been spent in the Scott River Watershed on improvements. Of that, more than $5,290,000 has been spent in the past ten years. During that decade, only $236,000 has been spent for strategic planning, $83,000 on administrative projects and $719,000 on public outreach in the form of workshops, field trips and operation of the Scott River Watershed Council. The vast bulk of the money has been spent “on the ground” as follows:
 

• $2,165,000, on fish screens, fish passage improvements, fish-related diversion improvements and fish surveys.
• $4,457,000 on water quality improvements such as sediment reduction, stream bank stabilization and temperature monitoring.
• About $2,431,000 has been spent on water supply improvement including alternative stock watering methods, irrigation, instream structures and diversion improvements. (Only $243,826 of this has been spent in the past decade.)
• About $30,900 has been spent on upland revegetation, weed control and croplands.
• More than $1,246,000 has been spent on riparian improvements including revegetation, fencing and grazing management projects

 
(These figures do not appear to include amounts expended by private owners outside of the RCD process, including private timberland owners such as Timber Products and Fruit Growers.). 
 
The source of some of this funding and labor has been the private landowner. Volunteer efforts from landowners and others have averaged more than $12,240 in time contributions annually. There has also been partnership with organizations such as For the Sake of the Salmon, Orleans Rod and Gun Club, Siskiyou County Fish and Game Commission and several Foundations such as Dean Witter and Cantara. The bulk of funding has been public through agencies such as the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG,) Klamath River Fisheries Task Force, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS – Farm Bill) and California State Water Resources Control Board.
 
Another way of looking at this is by project. A total of 123 projects have been implemented on private lands by the Siskiyou RCD from 1992-2004. During this period of time, 100% of the privately owned portions of the mainstem Scott River where cattle are present have been fenced and 40% of the tributaries. 200 acres of riparian zone have been planted with trees. 51 fish screens with headgate flow control structures have been installed. 11 gravel dams have been replaced with boulder weirs to improve fish passage. 17,490 feet of stream channel have been enhanced with fish-friendly bank stabilization projects. More than 317 instream structures have been installed on private properties. 12 stock watering systems have been installed as an alternative to ditch watering, resulting in 11 cubic feet per second (cfs.) flow to the river. 38 sets of moisture sensors have been installed for 20 landowners to improve irrigation efficiency. Also, in Sugar Creek, an open earthen ditch was replaced by a pipe, increasing creek flows by up to 3.5 cfs.
 
In addition, more than 400 miles of upland roads have been inventoried. This has resulted in erosion reduction improvements on 127 miles of these roads and decommissioning of 19.2 miles of both public and private roads.
 
The work that has been done in our longstanding public-private partnership is just awesome. Our local folks stand as true leaders in the State of California in their environmental ethic and their voluntary willingness to enhance and restore watershed health and the public’s anadromous fish runs in our valley. We have not done enough to celebrate and draw attention to our accomplishments. Let’s make a resolution to spread the word about what can be done if we work together.