Restoration Activities
Restoration Research
Restoration research and implementation of demonstration projects are vital in supplying new information for more effective habitat creation projects to meet species-specific habitat requirements, and more efficiency in terms of overall cost. For example, ten years ago on the LCR the modern planting method for cottonwood and willow was planting one-gallon potted plants or bare root poles by hand in a pre-dug hole. This required a tremendous effort and typically only two hundred trees per day could be planted. After experimenting with various commercially available planters, the program partnered with local commercial greenhouse facilities and implemented a demonstration of mass transplanting. Mass transplanting is common in the agricultural community for growing produce, but had never been used to establish native riparian trees. After a successful demonstration, the program routinely plants over 50,000 trees per day on twenty acre plots with a small crew at a fraction of the cost of previous methods. Typically over 90% of the plants survive.
Additional information on the following restoration research projects can be found at:
Updated November 26, 2012