solutions

Restoring Watershed Health

Why Healthy Watersheds Matter?

The riparian areas, wetlands, wet meadows, and connected floodplains that comprise healthy watersheds across the Colorado River Basin are essential to the overall health of the river, its tributaries, and the communities that depend on it. Healthy watersheds provide naturally distributed storage areas, which act as natural reservoirs to enhance drought resilience through water storage and groundwater recharge. These areas bolster natural defenses against long drought periods, including mitigating the impacts of wildfire and degraded soils and providing flood control while ensuring cleaner water for people, wildlife, and agriculture. By recharging groundwater and serving as natural reservoirs, naturally distributed storage also provides a buffer against dry conditions, which leads to improved soil health and extended growing seasons. Unfortunately, much of the Colorado River system’s naturally occurring healthy watersheds were lost due to historic land use practices, development, and the extirpation of beavers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

How To Improve Watershed Health

In the Colorado River Basin, restoring the health of watersheds has the potential to restore functioning stream systems and build a more resilient future. Investing in these projects, or a series of projects across a watershed, can improve groundwater recharge and natural storage while reconnecting floodplains, creating wildlife habitat, supporting recovery from extreme events, improving water quality, and reducing and capturing sediment and lowering water treatment costs, among many other benefits.

What Is Naturally Distributed Storage?

Naturally distributed storage projects store water in shallow aquifers and interact directly with streams, support native vegetation, and influence the timing and quality of streamflow. The restoration of wet meadows and implementation of various analogs to beaver-related restoration tactics are opportunities to re-establish natural storage at the watershed scale at which it was lost. These projects may often be unique, depending on the location, but typically involve simple approaches like using wood, rocks, and wire to create hand-built structures that slow river and stream flows, replenish groundwater, and support healthier soil.

What Does It Look Like on the Ground?

Addressing Sediment & Erosion Along the Green River

To improve resilience in Wyoming’s Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River, a multi-year effort is underway to control sediment and erosion issues made worse by climate change. The project includes planting appropriate vegetation, managing grazing to protect established plant communities, and installing simple wooden structures and beaver-dam analogs to slow river flows. When completed, the project will provide a suite of benefits, including improved river health and water quality, habitat for fish and wildlife, and better forage health in adjacent meadows as well as reduced irrigation costs for local ranchers. The project is a partnership between Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Restoring Streams & Wetlands in the Gunnison National Forest

The Taylor Park Wetland Restoration Project is a long-term, collaborative effort to restore stream, riparian, and wetland habitat in the headwaters of the Gunnison River, located in the Gunnison National Forest. This beaver-based restoration project uses simple, structural additions to riverscapes that mimic natural processes (like beaver dams) to recover the ecological functions of riparian and wetland ecosystems. By reconnecting Trail Creek (a headwater stream within Taylor Park) with its floodplain and historic wetlands, the project can recharge the local aquifer, reduce storm flooding damage, increase biodiversity by improving habitat for fish and wildlife, efficiently store carbon in the soil, and decrease drought impacts. The project also promotes wildfire resilience by rewetting the soil, plants, and historic wetlands. Project partners include the National Forest Foundation, Gunnison National Forest, High Country Conservation Advocates, and others.

Restoring Hydrology and Native Vegetation in Tsegi Canyon

Since 2013, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), National Park Service at the Navajo and Canyon de Chelly national monuments, Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture, grazing officials, and adjacent land users have worked together to restore the hydrology and native vegetation assemblages in Arizona’s Tsegi Canyon. Restoration projects include the construction of wildlife-friendly fencing, sustainable grazing practices, the implementation of erosion control structures, stream stabilization structures such as Zuni bowls and permeable porous water catchment structures, and the revegetation of native species. The projects have resulted in ecological benefits and increases in native vegetation and riparian health on more than 9,000 acres of riparian, wetland, and upland habitats. This work has been supported by The Navajo Nation Fish and Wildlife, BIA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife, the Catena Foundation, and the National Park Service, among others.

Improving Water Quality and Fish Habitat Along Lower Elkhead Creek

To help improve water quality on Lower Elkhead Creek, a tributary to the Yampa River between Steamboat Springs and Craig in northwest Colorado, a multi-phase project is underway to stabilize stream banks, improve and re-establish a riparian corridor, and improve in-channel conditions for fish. The project includes over a half mile of stabilized banks using wood and rock structures, which will decrease erosion and provide enhanced habitat for fish. In addition, more than 2,000 native willows, cottonwoods, and alders have been planted with the goal of re-establishing a riparian corridor, increasing shading of the stream, reducing water temperatures, and providing cover for fish. This project is a partnership between Trout Unlimited, private landowners, and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Improving Habitat and Reconnecting Floodplains Along Trout Creek

To improve resilience in Colorado’s Yampa River, a tributary to the Colorado River, local and federal partners worked together to control sediment and erosion issues along Trout Creek, located near Oak Creek, Colorado. This project includes reshaping stream banks, planting native vegetation, managing grazing practices, installation of wood and rock structures, and construction of beaver dam analogs (which are essentially man-made beaver dams) to slow river flows and reconnect floodplains. Completed in 2022, the project is providing a suite of benefits to the environment as well as the local landowner, including improved river health and water quality, enhanced habitat for fish and wildlife, and better forage health in adjacent meadows. The project is a partnership between Trout Unlimited, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and private landowners.

Enhancing Cebolla Creek Alongside a Local Ranch

This multi-phase, multi-benefit project is improving irrigation efficiency, wildlife habitat, and watershed health on Cebolla Creek, a tributary to the Gunnison River located in Colorado’s Powerhorn Valley. A local landowner partnered with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners for Fish and Wildlife, and Trout Unlimited to install a new headgate, construct a riparian fence, and restore 1,800 feet of Cebolla Creek to support a healthier riverine ecosystem and more productive agriculture. The fence allows the landowner to schedule grazing near the sensitive stream banks to encourage recovery of riparian vegetation. Improved grazing management supports the stream channel restoration aspects of this project, including recovering riparian vegetation, reducing erosion, and strengthening channel stability, all of which is improving water quality, riparian habitat, and aquatic habitat while better irrigating pasture on the property. This project demonstrates how upgraded ranch infrastructure coupled with managed irrigation, scheduled grazing techniques, and designed habitat improvements can support both thriving agriculture and healthier ecosystems in the Colorado River Basin.

There is enormous potential for natural distributed storage demonstration projects across the Colorado River Basin, and their methods are relatively low-cost.
Continue to cultivate federal and state agency recognition of the climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits associated with natural distributed storage projects along with co-benefits for fish and wildlife, agriculture, and downstream infrastructure.
Site, implement, and monitor projects to achieve desired results. Large-scale projects throughout the Basin necessitate greater resources, time, and coordination, and will facilitate more holistic solutions in larger watersheds.