SYRCL Celebrates 2013 River Monitoring and Restoration Volunteers

A special group of volunteers exemplifies SYRCL’s mission of uniting the community to protect and restore the Yuba River.  In gratitude, SYRCL invited this year’s River Monitoring and Restoration volunteers to an end-of-the-year appreciation party last week.  Nearly a third of SYRCL’s force of 130 Monitoring and Restoration volunteers came to enjoy food, beverages, photos of the year’s work, and merriment.

Attendees included both River Monitors that have been with the program since the beginning (2001) and those who were trained only last spring.  Some River Monitors traveled hundreds of miles over the year to collect data on water quality, and others supported the program by maintaining equipment and entering or checking data.  Altogether, volunteers of the River Monitoring Program contributed over 1,400 hours of service to our community and watershed in 2013.

Restoration volunteers also attended the party to celebrate the hard work they accomplished in 2013. SYRCL Restoration volunteers contributed 310 hours of services restoring 6 acres in the Yuba watershed.  The projects included invasive weed removal at Hoyt’s Crossing, Bridgeport and more, as well as Aspen Regeneration in Loney Meadow, Tahoe National Forest. Restoration volunteers also assisted in monitoring our riparian enhancement project at Hammon Bar and helped complete a Lower Yuba Riparian Survey at four different sites along the lower Yuba River.

As a community-based organization, SYRCL owes a lot of it successes to its dedicated volunteers, so we did not hold back in honoring them last week.  Certain individuals were also recognized for their outstanding contributions.

River Monitoring Awards included the “Most Enthusiastic Award” to David Cross for monitoring the Lower Yuba in Marysville and washing countless water sampling bottles with a positive, joyful attitude.  Ralph Silberstein and Jonathan Keehn were honored for their help maintaining equipment used to measure water quality.  Susan Jorjorian was recognized for identifying, monitoring, and working to eliminate a source of bacterial contamination to the North Yuba with the “Now It’s Safe to Swim Award”.  Ralph Henson was dubbed the “River Monitor of the Year Award” for his many years of contributions to the program and his recent efforts installing a stream gage and collecting flow measurements on Spring Creek.

Restoration Awards included the Most Dedicated Award to Will Dane and his son Willow Dane for attending all of our restoration events this year. The Movie Crew Award was given to Craig Rohrsen and Tony Loro for creating a video on our Scotch Broom project, which can be seen here. Max Norton received the Yuba Techie Award for donating all of his skills and volunteer hours to launch an updated version of Yubashed.org. And finally, Jim Wofford and Gary Palmer received the Catkin Crew Award for assisting with data collection in the field each for the Lower Yuba Riparian Survey over a span of 4 months.

SYRCL looks forward to future program successes (and celebrations) with the help of our volunteers.  Thank you, to all of our volunteers!