Riparian Zones

[osprey]

Riparian zones should be left alone. Not groomed or trimmed. Let mother nature determine the Rip zone. A stream improvement project should remain IN the stream. Maybe planting some stuff to hold up an eroding bank but not groomed or trimmed. IMHO Osprey.

 

[CLSports]

I agree.

 

[NickR]

Agreed 100 Percent... the only evidence I leave of my presence is foot prints.

 

[bearfisherman]

Except in the case of invasives - we have huge stands of knotweed that are turning our stream banks into a monoculture real quick. If you leave it go, it will replace all the native vegetation.

 

[hammertime]

That Japenese Knotweed is bad stuff. Just go to the West Branch of the Delaware if you wanna get mad at some weeds.

 

[sandfly]

I have worked with DCNR on it and you cannot get rid of it, we burned, poisened, dug up and still came back next season. unless you get every little root spore it will come back.

 

[troutbert]

Riparian vegetation is very important. And this has been known for many years.

But how to accomplish it? Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

 

[Chaz]

So I guess that the thousands of trees planted by Perkiomen valley T. U. have all been for nought? Come on now, the temperatures are down all the way to Green Lane Reservior and would not be if we only worked in stream. Most of what is wrong with PA streams is directly attributable to Agriculture and logging, therefore plant lots of trees. But they must be natives. No weepin chinese willows, please!

 

[osprey]

If it's growing there then it's supposed too......leave it alone....plant something good for the water.

 

[Chaz]

If it's invasive remove it!

 

[barbless]

Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

I've wrestled with that question for years. The best answer I've come up with is "induce them to eat peyote".

With the farmers, the question is somewhat different. I think they deserve to be compensated in accordance with "takings" policy, as part of a comprehensive national soil conservation program. That most "unsexy" of issues, according to the sexless drone pundit class.

A massive rural soil conservation effort could have made for part of a great low-tech Federal "stimulus" program, providing not only jobs but an investment that reaps tangible long-term benefits. But Republicans have shot down or shriveled up soil conservation bills for years, and the Dems blew the only chance they had for massive infrastructure investment in environmental quality projects by committing all of their political capital and a large chunk of future government revenues to a massive "universal health care" insurance policy instead (notwithstanding multiple objections from small business owners and uh the majority of the customer base across the political spectrum). And we know how that's worked out so far. But I digress.

 

[wsender]

osprey wrote:
Riparian zones should be left alone. Not groomed or trimmed. Let mother nature determine the Rip zone. A stream improvement project should remain IN the stream. Maybe planting some stuff to hold up an eroding bank but not groomed or trimmed. IMHO Osprey.

So why one and not the other? If mother nature has determined what's appropriate, or not, for the stream bank, then why can't mother nature deem what's appropriate for the actual stream?

 

[troutbert]

barbless wrote:

Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

I've wrestled with that question for years. The best answer I've come up with is "induce them to eat peyote".

We haven't tried this yet. But we've tried nearly everything else.

The PFBC is still mowing many areas along Spring Creek. And not just at the Fishermans Paradise no wading zone, but other places along the creek.

We've tried contacting local PFBC people and we've appealed right to top, without success.

I've seen mowing to the water's edge on other PFBC properties also, around the state.

 

[troutwilleatflies]

troutbert wrote:

barbless wrote:

Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

I've wrestled with that question for years. The best answer I've come up with is "induce them to eat peyote".

We haven't tried this yet. But we've tried nearly everything else.

The PFBC is still mowing many areas along Spring Creek. And not just at the Fishermans Paradise no wading zone, but other places along the creek.

We've tried contacting local PFBC people and we've appealed right to top, without success.

I've seen mowing to the water's edge on other PFBC properties also, around the state.

Now that's really crazy,if anyone should know better it sure should be the PFBC.

 

[Chaz]

troutwilleatflies wrote:

troutbert wrote:

barbless wrote:

Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

I've wrestled with that question for years. The best answer I've come up with is "induce them to eat peyote".

We haven't tried this yet. But we've tried nearly everything else.

The PFBC is still mowing many areas along Spring Creek. And not just at the Fishermans Paradise no wading zone, but other places along the creek.

We've tried contacting local PFBC people and we've appealed right to top, without success.

I've seen mowing to the water's edge on other PFBC properties also, around the state.

Now that's really crazy,if anyone should know better it sure should be the PFBC.

The problem isn't that they should know better, they do know better yet they still wreck habitat by mowing right down to the water line. And when you ask them why you get some really lame answers.

 

[Chaz]

barbless wrote:

Landowners, both private and public, like mowed grass along the streams.

How do you convince them to stop mowing, and allow trees and shrubs to grow in a wide buffer along the stream?

I've wrestled with that question for years. The best answer I've come up with is "induce them to eat peyote".

With the farmers, the question is somewhat different. I think they deserve to be compensated in accordance with "takings" policy, as part of a comprehensive national soil conservation program. That most "unsexy" of issues, according to the sexless drone pundit class.

A massive rural soil conservation effort could have made for part of a great low-tech Federal "stimulus" program, providing not only jobs but an investment that reaps tangible long-term benefits. But Republicans have shot down or shriveled up soil conservation bills for years, and the Dems blew the only chance they had for massive infrastructure investment in environmental quality projects by committing all of their political capital and a large chunk of future government revenues to a massive "universal health care" insurance policy instead (notwithstanding multiple objections from small business owners and uh the majority of the customer base across the political spectrum). And we know how that's worked out so far. But I digress.

It's really not that expensive that web need federal funding. PVTU has been doing riparian haibitat restoration for nearly 20 years with great success on a shoestring budget. It's not rocket science, it just getting the landowners involved that's the hard part.
And there is no "TAKING" landowners once they are educated get it. They really want to do what's right. For the most part we get money through grants and stay away from expensive projects that involve hiring contractors to do work because the money's harder to find.
We've partnered with PFBC, PGC, and various watershed groups to get it done and the Soil Conservation folks.

 

[barbless]

Chaz, I think that to do it at the scale required to achieve the results that I have in mind, a lot of money will be needed. And labor, and time.

With the utmost respect for the efforts of Trout Unlimited, riparian restoration in this country is needed for more than just a select few hundred miles of trout stream watershed.

To provide only one trenchant example, I doubt that the Chesapeake Bay- the largest estuary in the US- will ever be restored to health without a comprehensive riparian restoration effort that includes the Shenandoah-Potomac-Anacostia, Susquehanna, and Delaware watersheds to the river drainages of eastern Maryland, pretty near from their headwaters to the bay.

What would we get in return? The untold wealth of a sustainable protein source that doesn't require fertilizers, pesticides, or massive tracts of land and labor to cultivate. And a revived commercial fishing industry.

What if we don't do it? We get the continuing decline of the Bay, along with increasingly expensive and inadequate management of the decline; the loss of the resource, which will become more and more difficult, costly, and time-consuming to recover the more the process is delayed; and perhaps eventually an antibiotic-resistant bacteria epidemic. Or pandemic.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-19/health/ct-met-superbugs-cre-20130319_1_carbapenem-resistant-urinary-tract-infections-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria

Yes, I realize that thus far these problems are primarily confined to hospitals. But if we humans persist in "maintaining" so many miles of our watercourses as little more than de facto culture media for microbes- while simultaneously abusing the priceless tool of antibiotics for "prophylactic" purposes to support the dense animal populations in CAFOs- I think it's naive to expect that the situation won't grow more perilous.

I do take your point that the practical implementation of soil conservation, plantings, mycelial bedding, and stream restoration requires relatively little in the way of expensive equipment or technical knowledge. Maybe that partially explains why large-scale efforts have been so systematically deprived of funding. Erosion control and riparian buffer zones aren't new, exciting, digital, remote controlled, ten zillion gigabytes per microsec. The labor doesn't require "advanced degrees". It's an exercise in humility instead of hubris.

 

[osprey]

Wsender........when we kill a streamside plant the3 roots die and the soil that was held by those roots is now free to wash away , floods/high water causes damage , eroding banks for one. For everything planted , that much more soil is stabilized.

 

[Chaz]

Think globally act locally, that goes a long way. On a scale of the Chesapeake, yes you do need major funding, but you did talk about something that large. It's being worked on though, but the fact is it will take a major project and the commitment of Congress to ge tit done. I've no doubt that some day it will be done.