Rivers throughout the Southwest are stressed by invasive plants such as tamarisk, Russian olive, knapweed and tree of heaven, which rapidly displace native plants and degrade river systems by channelizing river banks, impairing natural river function, significantly reducing the quality of wildlife habitat value and forage for pollinators, decreasing biodiversity, increasing the risk of wildfires, and restricting access to scenic landscapes.

 

Consequently, the communities that depend on these rivers suffer from a diminished quality of life and a threatened economy. To facilitate the recovery of these rivers to a healthy state, local leaders have established collaborative partnerships, which are working to restore rivers by addressing the crisis of invasive plants.  Since restoration work is inherently long-term and requires ongoing maintenance, investing in the health of these partnerships is essential to realizing the lasting ecological, social, and economic benefits of this work.

 

To invest in the longevity of this work, RiversEdge West (formerly Tamarisk Coalition) teamed up with nine restoration partnerships working on six rivers throughout the Southwest, to spearhead Restore Our Rivers - a fundraising and awareness building campaign. Restore our Rivers was designed to raise funding for the planning, capacity-building and monitoring and maintenance components of river restoration work (underfunded, critical aspects of this work), as well as empower the participating partnerships to build their knowledge base in private fundraising and ultimately grow their relationships with private foundations, individual donors, businesses and local governments.

 

Through Restore our Rivers, RiverEdge West and the nine partnerships raised a combined total of $1.56 million from January 2016 – February 2018. With the funding and training made available through Restore our Rivers, the nine partnerships accomplished the following:

 

 

Restore Our Rivers represented an innovative approach to fundraising at a regional scale and building increased public awareness about the importance of riparian restoration work.  Through these efforts the Restore Our Rivers campaign created a lasting community of stewards for our rivers.