The South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) was awarded $3.746 million from the Wildlife Conservation Board’s Forest Conservation grant program to implement Phase One of restoration of Van Norden Meadow (Yayalu Itdeh in Washoe) in partnership with Tahoe National Forest (TNF).
Here on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, quaking aspen exists as a minor element of the forest in terms of acreage, making up only 1% of the forest and within the Yuba River watershed, aspen trees are mostly found within the headwaters. However, aspen trees provide an outsized role in terms of landscape resilience, biodiversity, and human enrichment. By looking to the aspen stands in the Yuba River watershed and where they are present, we can learn more about our home watershed’s natural history.
This year’s lack of precipitation has already led to multiple red flag warnings in our area as well as the surrounding areas. Officials are particularly concerned about fires in and around the South Yuba River corridor due to the remote location and limited cellular communication available. Both of these factors could result in a small fire growing to become a significant and devastating incident.
The North Yuba Forest Partnership is set to receive $34.8 million in federal funding to support the implementation of forest restoration treatments in the North Yuba River watershed. The treatments this funding will support, such as ecologically based thinning and prescribed fire, are designed to promote forest conditions that are more resilient, while reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire and restoring watershed health and native biodiversity.
On April 1st, 2022, Nevada County, as a lead agency, released the Draft IS/MND CEQA Document for the Van Norden Meadow Restoration and Recreation Project, which is a project collaboration between the South Yuba River Citizens League and the Tahoe National Forest.
Spring run chinook salmon are a threatened species on the Yuba. The restoration project at the Rose Bar project site is focused on enhancing the amount and quality of spawning habitat. Redd surveys provide quantifiable restoration results in addition to supplying an index of how the salmon population is doing.
Sometimes the restoration work we do ends up having some unexpected benefits. In this article, we explore some unplanned positive outcomes of our lower Yuba River restoration projects.
Yuba Forest Network’s Resilience Strategy from January 2022: