SYRCL is proud to announce that we’ve been named a co-recipient of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Region’s 2025 Rise to the Future Partnership Award — one of the Forest Service’s most meaningful recognitions of collaborative conservation work. The award honors organizations whose partnerships with the Forest Service produce measurable, lasting benefits for the landscapes and communities they serve. This year, that recognition belongs to SYRCL who was recognized for our meadow restoration work. SYRCL’s Watershed Science Department brings the expertise, dedication, and persistence needed to make this vital work possible. 

A Decade of Ambitious Work at the Headwaters of the Yuba 

Working in the Tahoe National Forest, in the Pacific Southwest Region, SYRCL’s Watershed Science team has spent more than a decade restoring some of the most ecologically significant landscapes in the Sierra Nevada. Since 2015, the team has fundraised and secured $18.5 million in grants for meadow restoration, resulting in over 900 acres restored across the Tahoe National Forest — with another 378 acres currently in the planning phase. 

Included in this work is Van Norden Meadow, a 485-acre stream and wetland restoration project that stands as one of the largest of its kind in California. Van Norden is a headwater meadow that stores snowmelt, filters water as it moves downstream, and regulates the flows that sustain rivers, fish, and communities across the region. Restoring it required years of planning, permitting, and coordination across a broad coalition of partners — the U.S. Forest Service, Truckee Donner Land Trust, The Washoe Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Trout Unlimited, Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, and numerous universities and partner organizations — all of whom brought their own expertise and commitment to see the project through. 

Why Meadows Matter 

Healthy Sierra Nevada meadows are among the most ecologically and hydrologically important landscapes in the American West. They act as natural sponges, capturing and slowly releasing snowmelt that recharges groundwater, regulating streamflow, and supplying clean water to communities downstream. They support rare and sensitive plant and animal species. They sequester carbon. And they buffer the surrounding landscape against the intensifying effects of drought and wildfire, two of the most pressing threats facing the Sierra Nevada today. 

A century of grazing pressure, water diversion, and altered hydrology has degraded meadow systems across the range. SYRCL’s meadow restoration projects work to reverse that trajectory, taking degraded meadows and making them healthy, by using  a variety of techniques to reconnect streams with their floodplains. Once floodplain reconnection has been achieved, the meadow is able to function properly, and in turn provides a host of ecosystem benefits including groundwater recharge, carbon storage, flow attenuation, improved water quality, and enhanced pollinator, bird and amphibian habitat.   

SYRCL’s Watershed Science Director Alecia Weisman put it plainly: “I am super proud of our team, and it feels great to be recognized for all our hard work over the years. We are grateful for our long-standing partnership with the Tahoe National Forest which supports our ability to do this momentous work.” 

To learn more about SYRCL’s meadow restoration work, check out our projects page.