What are we Accomplishing or Not? Private Lands Restoration Supers and Bloopers
John Rizza1
1Colorado State University Extension/USDA-NRCS, Grand Junction, CO, USA; john.rizza@colostate.edu
In partnership with various members of The Desert Rivers Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder group whose mission is to protect, restore, and maintain native river corridor habitat, private lands are being targeted for restoration treatments. We understand the myriad of challenges faced by private landowners who have a desire to conduct restoration work that provides enhanced habitat, enriched recreational access, improvements in stream channel capacity, increased water quality, and the potential for reduced access to water due to increased consumption by invasives along the riparian areas of their property.
During the last 5 years, our efforts have yielded treatments over large acreages involving multiple landowners, in conjunction with various partners. Our program provides incentives to private landowners looking to improve their riparian areas in order to address a multitude of resource concerns.
Partnerships have ensured successful project implementation (well, mostly) and several years of working on these projects has had lasting desirable long-term control (usually) of the noxious weeds and native revegetation of sites (or something that is growing on the properties). These general overview statements are an indication of what will be discussed during the talk. I'll be focusing on specific examples that highlight the challenges and successes we have seen to help managers and coordinators to attempt to learn from our mistakes and complete projects in a timely manner. We have explored various “people management” techniques that we have found ensure (or not) project implementation. Our efforts in the social aspects of these types of projects, focusing on landowner outreach and education, has led to lasting long-term partnerships, and some folks who don’t like us all that much, and (mostly) have increased interest in establishing additional acreage for future treatment projects.