Powder Basin Watershed Council
$34,430  Blue Mountains Ecoregion  Addresses drought

This project continues a partnership between the PBWC and Wallowa Whitman National Forest (WWNF); PBWC assisting the WWNF in accomplishing aquatic restoration needs (aka. climate change adaptation projects). We will implement low-tech, process-based restoration (LTPBR) techniques to restore floodplain and aquatic habitats along 2.5 miles of Trout Creek in the North Fork Burnt River watershed of northeast Oregon. LTPBR involves simple, cost-effective, hand-built solutions (beaver dam analogs, etc.) that help repair degraded streams and facilitate natural healing processes (including beaver recolonization), rather than using large construction equipment to force a stream into place. Equal in importance to our restoration goal, we will employ youth and young adults to implement the work, connecting them with the watersheds in which they live in an “earn and learn” scenario to help them understand the importance of these watersheds to our communities (where the water comes from to drink, grow food and sustain livelihoods).