Project Spotlight: Campbell Valley Stream Restoration
WRV volunteers install post-assisted log structures (PALS) in Campbell Creek.
by Nathan Boschmann, Programs Director, Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV)
The Campbell Valley is located within the Laramie Foothills region of Northern Colorado which the Colorado Natural Heritage Program identified as “one of Colorado’s highest-priority landscape-level conservation sites", "containing one of the most extensive remaining high-quality foothills ecosystems along the Front Range of Colorado.” In the early 1900s, Campbell Creek was used to temporarily convey irrigation water to the farming communities in Northern Colorado while the long overdue canal was being finished. The elevation of the creek downcut over 40ft in eight years. This massive change caused gully formation in every tributary in the valley, resulting in the estimated loss of over three miles of riparian habitat and five million m3 of sediment. Continued canal leakage, and overgrazing, perpetuated the instability, continuing to send over seven thousand m3 of sediment into Campbell Creek each year.
PALS in action!
Mimicking beavers in the system with low-tech process-based solutions.
Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV) began working in Campbell Valley in 2010 after the Nature Conservancy secured a conservation easement on most of the 17,000 acre Robert's Ranch. Early efforts were focused on stabilizing the ongoing damage caused by leaks in the upper watershed and upland erosion but since 2015, we've refocused on Campbell Creek itself. Much of Campbell Creek had become incised due to the additional flows from the leak upstream. The riparian forest in these areas was nonexistent and has been replaced by more xeric species. WRVs volunteer community, Colorado State University, Front Range Community College and high school students, local business groups, and Youth Corps have installed over a hundred grade-control and induced meandering structures along three miles of the creek to mimic the action of beaver in the system.
Campbell Valley has been a site of experimentation and learning for WRVs volunteer community. Many of our early treatments were not fruitful but through ongoing monitoring of flows and sediment transport in Campbell Creek, our volunteers measured a 30% decrease in soil loss in the first five years and there appears to be a continued downward trend as the system begins to stabilize itself. Willows and cottonwoods are taking over from rabbit brush and sumac and once non-existent wetland sedges and rushes are now plentiful throughout the floodplain. Work in Campbell Valley has slowed to maintenance and monitoring in recent years. Still, WRVs community has taken the lessons learned to benefit other streams all over Northern Colorado and there are opportunities to join the effort by volunteering with our growing Healthy Rivers program.
Learn more about volunteering with WRV at: www.wrv.org/volunteer
