**National Interagency Riparian Initiative**

**BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**May 1, 1997**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona \"Implementing
Western Riparian Restoration\" an Interagency Workshop on Managing
Western Streams and Wetlands. And Now\... The Host of Your Program,
Wayne Elmore.

Elmore: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to Our Interagency Workshop on
Implementing Riparian Restoration and Management. Even Though We\'re
Focusing on Western Riparian Areas Today, The Processes We Will Present
Apply to All Streams and All Geographic Areas. Joining Us Today from the
Bureau Of Land Management Is Deputy Director Mat Millenbach. Welcome,
Mat.

Thanks. I\'m Glad to Be Here this Morning. Looking Forward to the
Program.

Elmore: Also with Us from Washington, D.C. Is Paul Johnson, Chief of the
Natural Resources Conservation Service, Previously the SCS. Welcome,
Paul.

Johnson: Good to Be Here. He Will and He Will Mike Dombeck, Chief of the
U.S. Forest Service. Nice to Have You with Us.

Dombeck: Thanks, Wayne. I Am Glad to Be Here. I Am Looking Forward to
the Day To Talk about One of My Favorite Topics, Streams and Riparian.

Elmore: I\'m Looking Forward To Hearing What You Have to Say. Jack Ward
Thomas Is Also with Us, and Jack Is the Boone and Crockett Professor
with the School of Forestry Is He University of Montana. Also Former
Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. During His Tenure, Jack Was One Of the
Principal Architects of This Initiative along with Other Members of the
Panel. Jack, We\'re Glad You Could Be With Us Today.

Thomas: Wayne, I\'m Tickled to Be Here and to Know That We\'ve Come this
Far and It\'s Good to Be Here with Old Friends, Too.

Elmore: Thanks. And to Give Us the U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service
Perspective From That Agency Weaver the Assistant Director for
Fisheries, Gary Edwards.

Edwards: I Am, Also Interested in the Session Today. It\'s a Service the
Service Is Extremely Supportive Of.

Elmore: Thank You. Before We Begin Exploring Riparian Recovery, I Would
like To Mention Throughout this Program Everyone at All Participating
Federal Agency Host Sites Will Be Able to Communicate with Us via
Telephone and Fax. Using the Numbers Provided to Your Offices. You Can
Send Us a Fax Question At Any Time. Use the Form Provided with Your
Written Materials And, Please, Print Your Questions with a Dark Marker.
You Can Call Us Whenever You Like. Our Operators Are Always Standing By.
In Most Cases, However, We Will Be Putting Calls on the Air Only During
Our Scheduled Interactive Segments. The First Thing We Would like to Do
this Morning Before We Visit With Our Panel Is Step Back and Take a
Quick Look at Just How We Got to Where We Are Today and Where We Are
Headed. Today We\'re Going to Talk about Riparian and Wetland Areas.
Those Green Areas That We Typically See along and Around Streams,
Rivers, Springs, Ponds, Lakes and Marshes. On March 20th, 1996, Mike
Dombeck, Then Director of the BLM, and Jack Ward Thomas, Then Chief of
the U.S. Forest Service, Signed in Cooperation With Paul Johnson, Chief
of the Nrcs, Previously SCS, a Letter To Accelerate Cooperative Riparian
Restoration and Management. The Focus of the Team Includes Several
Important Areas. First, Training and the Establishment of Interagency
State Training Cadres in the 11 Western States and in Other Places.
Second, to Provide Assistance Solving Problems at the Ground Level.
Third, the Sharing of Information from Successful Projects Through
Program Review. And, Fourth, and Probably Most Important to Act as a
Catalyst To Accelerate Riparian Restoration and Management from A
Watershed Perspective. We Were Also Asked to Develop an Atmosphere of
Coordination to Create Healthy Streams Through People Working Together.
We must Be Able to Communicate And Exchange Ideas and Feelings Before We
Can Ever Start to Receive the Potential Benefits From Our Riparian
Areas. A Common Vocabulary Based on Function and Process Should Let Us
Set Aside Our Biases for the Future Condition of Riparian Areas and
Focus on What it Takes For These Areas to Ever Produce The Values We
Want. On a Sustainable, Long‑term Basis. This Includes the Development
of Practical Monitoring and Implementation Plans Across the Entire
Watershed. One of the Most Important Charges That the National Team
Received Was to Work Towards Consensus Building by Helping Develop
Ownership in this Decision‑making at the Ground Level. That Consensus
Was to Come from The People Most Affected by Those Decisions. Without
Ownership, There Is No Dignity, and Without Dignity, There Are No
Feelings of Security for the Long‑term Maintenance and Sustain Bill Tea
Of Values. This Can Only Happen If We Work To Restore and Manage Our
Riparian Areas on the Entire Watershed and Begin to Fix Them One
Watershed at a Time. We Can Live off the Interest Produced by Our
Riparian Resources If They Are Functioning and Functioning Properly. We
Cannot Live off the Capital. There Are No New Ideas, as Jack Thomas Once
Said. The Difficult Thing Is Rediscovering Them. In 400 B.c., Plato
Wrote That \"The Hillsides Once Were Covered With Boundless Pasture for
Cattle and the Finest Trees for Building Large Homes and That The Water
Was Stored, Being Stored, in Mother Earth, and That Instead Today, as He
Wrote, He Said \"The Water Just Goes Rushing Back to the Ocean and Is
Not Stored in the Land Anymore,\" And He Said, in Closing, \"The Shrines
That Survive to the Present Day on the Sites of Extinct Water Supplies
Are the Evidence for the Correctness of My Present Hypothesis.\" To Keep
Water on the Land Longer We must Work Together Across All Ownerships, to
Fix the Entire Watershed in a Few Minutes We\'ll Be Opening the Phones
to Hear From You. So If You Have a Question or a Comment for Our Panel,
this Would Be a Good Time to Start Calling In. To Avoid an Echo Effect,
When You Call, Please Stand Away from Your Television Set Turn the
Volume down. Don\'t Get Frustrated If You End Up on Hold for a While. We
Will Get to You as Fast as We Can. I\'d like to Go Through Some Slides
Right Quick Just to Show Some of the Potential That We Have. This Is
down in Arizona on U.S. Forest Service Land and Before Picture and this
Is a Few Years Later of That Thing with Just That Same Stream with Just
a Change in Management. This Is from a Private Land Owner in Montana,
Bob Williamson, and Bob Sent Me this To Show ‑‑ this Is Private Land,
And to Show What His Area Looked Like Before He Changed to Management
and this Is Three Years Later on That Same Spot. This Is from the BLM
down in New Mexico, Tamarask on Both Sides Of the Stream with a Few Will
Owes and Cottonwoods but Mostly The Stream Is Way Too Wide and Not That
Good of a Condition. This Is Just a Few Years Later With a Change in
Management, a Raising of the Watt Table and a Dying out of the Salt
Cedar Along the Side. This Is the Private Land in Eastern Oregon and
Taken in 1900, and We Tend to Focus a Lot On the Streams, but a Good
Example of the Uplands Being an Important Part of this Whole Thing Is
Looking at this Now With Kind of a Restricted Riparian Area and Uplands
That Really Don\'t Have Much but Grass And a Few Juniper Trees to 1990
We See the Whole Entire Area Now Covered with Juniper, and Juniper
Infestation, of Course, Changes the Whole Way That Water Runs off and
into the Riparian Zone, but the Riparian Zone Has Changed a Lot with
Better Management and Is Much Wider and Has Recovered Dramatically. This
Is a Project That Was Done In Southern California with the Nrcs and a
Private Land Owner Down by Willows, and Wendell at The Nrcs Headed this
Project Up. This Was Nothing but a Dry Wash And Had Been That Way for
Many, Many Years. With a Change in Management, He Now Has a Perennial
Stream with Cottonwoods and as Wendell Told Me the Other Day, He Said,
It\'s Just Full of Neotropical Birds Now and All the Streams on this
Person\'s Private Property Have Turned Perennial Where They Were Once
Dry. So That\'s What We\'re Really Looking At. As Far as Potential, as
Far as What We Want to Talk about Today. So at this Point We\'d like to
Shift Our Focus to the Resource Aspects of Riparian Restoration And
Start with the Panel, And, I Guess to Start Off, I\'d like Mat To Have a
Few Opening Words.

Millenbach: Okay. Thanks, Wayne. I Wanted to Talk About, I Think, Where
We\'ve Been Within the Bureau of Land Management, and Then Talk about
Where I Think We\'re Going Here as a Result of The Setting up the
Interagency Riparian Team and What We in the BLM Are Doing. About 10
Years Ago the BLM Decided That Riparian Management Was an Important Part
of Our Mission and the Director at That Time Set out a Goal for the
Bureau to Inventory All the Streams under its Jurisdiction And to ‑‑ by
1997 to Have 75% of The Streams That Are on Public Lands Be in Proper
Functioning Condition. You Might Have Noticed Recently Here it Is 1997,
and We Decided Maybe We Ought to Sit Back and Take a Look at How We Have
Really Done Given That 10 Years Has Passed and this Has Been a Major
Initiative for Us. What We Find out Is That We Did Not Accomplish the
75%. We\'re Probably Going to Be at Around 40% Here at the End of The
Year. So I Was Trying to Think about The Problems and the Factors That
Go into That Kind of an Outcome. I Remember When I Was in the Field at
the Time I Was the District Manager in Miles City, Montana. A Lot of Us
Felt like That Was Too Ambitious of a Target and The Chances of Reaching
That Were Not Going to Be That Good, And We Were Right about That. I
Think There Are Really Two Factors That Have Contributed to That. One Is
That over the Years the BLM Budget Has Stayed Relatively Flat. Or, in
Some Years, It\'s Actually Declined. In 1996, for Example, the BLM Had a
10% Reduction in its Budget. So the Result of That Flat Budget Is That
Overall Within The Bureau We\'ve Had a Significant Diminishment in the
Number of People We Have Been Able to Put on These Kinds of Initiatives
And, You Know, You Can Find a Lot of the Field Offices Within the Bureau
These Days That Are Not as Staffed as Well as They Were 10 Years Ago.
The Other Problem That We Ran Into, and I Think this Team Is Going to
Help Us a Lot with That, Is the Difficulty of Coordinating among the
Various Federal, State and Local Agencies and with the Private Sector. A
Lot of Our Public Lands Are Intermingled with Private Lands And in Order
to Get These Riparian Areas into Proper Functioning Condition We Really
Need the Participation and the Help of Everybody That We Can. I Can
Remember Being at a Meeting Probably Five or Six Years Ago Behind Bud
and Betty\'s Bar in Terry, Montana, and We Were Talking about a
Recreational Reservoir the Community Wanted to Build \'One Of the
Tributaries to the Yellowstone River, and I Was Standing up in Front of
the Crowd and a Lot of Them Were Ranchers and Landowners from Around
There and I Said to Them, I Said, We\'re Not Going to Go Ahead and Get
Behind this Reservoir Unless We Have Some Assurance That the Streams
That Feed into the Reservoir Are Clean and Are Not Contributing a Lot of
Silt Load to the Reservoir That Would Be Built. We Don\'t Want to Build
a Reservoir and Have it Full of Mud in 25 Years. While I Was Sitting
There Talking to Them about That, There Was One Person in the Audience
Sitting There and Just Shaking His Head Back and Forth Like This, and I
Thought to Myself, You Know, this Is Going To Be a Real Problem for Us
If We Can\'t Get Everybody Here to Help Us with this Part of the
Project. So I Think It\'s Important. I Think Some of the Things We\'re
Going to Talk about Today Will Give You Some Ideas on How to Deal with
That as Far as Getting All Landowners Working Together To Try to Help Us
with this. I\'m Real Encouraged by the Formation of the Interagency
Team. We Set this up Several Years Ago Under Wayne\'s Leadership and
They Have Been Doing a Really Good Job of Taking a Look at the Different
Things That Need to Be Done to Put this Program Together. We\'re Real
Encouraged by What We\'re Seeing Here. Within the Bureau We\'re Also
Taking a Look at What Else We Can Do. For Example, the Problems That
We\'ve Had with the Funding of Our Field Offices, One of the Things
We\'re Doing Is Reorganizes Our Offices So We Have Flatter Organizations
and Are Able to Get More Resources Onto the Ground. In the Last Few
Years We\'ve Reduced the Size of Our Washington Office, for Example,
From 500 People down to Around 350. So It\'s Those Kinds of Things We
Need to Look at Internally to Try to Cope with Our Flat Budgets. We Look
at Our Budget Being Flat For the Foreseeable Future and In Order to Do
Our Really Resource Management Job We Need To Be Able to Put as Many
Resources on the Ground as We Can. The Other Thing I Think That\'s
Important Is this Collaborative Effort and Throughout the Day Wayne and
the Other People in The Program Will Be Talking About Collaborative Work
with Other Agencies and We Are Putting a Lot of Emphasis into This Idea
of Collaborative Leadership So We Can Bring a Lot Of Resources to Bear
from Throughout the Community to Try To Help Us Improve These Streams
And Improve All of Our Resource Management Programs. So I Think That
this Is a Good Day for Us. We\'re Really Looking Forward to
Participating in this Program And I Hope You Get a Lot out of The
Program. Thank You.

Elmore: Thanks, Mat. Next I Would like to Go to Mike Dombeck, Chief of
the U.S. Forest Service and You Give Us Some Comments, Pleads.

Dombeck: Thank You, Wayne. I Want to Say Thank You to All Of You Who
Have Been Part of This. Your Entire Careers. It\'s an Exciting Day for
Me to See All this Sort of Thing Come Together to Be Here with
Colleagues like Gary Edwards and Jack Ward Thomas and Paul and Mat and
Wayne. But ‑‑ I Also Want to Thank All Of You That Are out There. The
Agency Employees That Have Been Working on Riparian Issues An Entire
Career, and I Also Want to Thank the Many, Many Land Stewards That Are
out There Because You Are the Delivery System, and It\'s Very, Very
Important That We Work Together. I Want to Talk about a Couple of Thing
Here and Just Take a Few Minutes. First of All I Want to Say That I\'m
into My Fourth Month as Chief of the Forest Service and I\'m Delighted
to Be Sitting next To Jack Ward Thomas Here to Sort Of Help Me out. But
It\'s Significant Because on June 4th of this Year Is the 100th
Anniversary of the Organic Administration Act Which Basically Set Aside
the Forestry Reserves for Two Purposes, a Continuous Flow of Water and
Timber, and Our Focus Today Is Water. I\'ve Got to Say That about Three
Weeks Ago I Met with the National Leadership Team of the Forest Service
and Outlined Some Priorities and Those Priorities Were Water, Riparian
Management, Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecosystems or Keeping it Simple,
Watersheds, and Another Key Topic for Today And, of Course, Partnerships
and It\'s All about Partnerships and Back to the Delivery System. But I
Have a Couple Things I Would like to Ask All of You to Do in the
Dialogue, in the Importance of Education, in the Importance of Keeping
it Simple Because Sometimes I Think Those Of Us That Are Trained
Technically and One of the Things That Wayne Is So Good at Is Taking the
Message to the People on the Land, and I Remember Riding in a Pickup
with Wayne from Prineville to Burns And Looking at Some of Wayne\'s
Projects and I Said, Why Do We Manage Watersheds? Most Simply Put, It\'s
to Catch, Store and Release Water over Time. I Have Got to Tell You, of
the 191 Million Acres of National Forest Lands, 900 Communities Are
Dependent upon Those Lands For Their Water Supplies. That\'s Not to
Mention the Other Values Associated with It, the ‑‑ All the Things That
Water Does for Us, but Think about the Basics, and I\'m One That
Continually Likes to Get Back to Basics and Think about the Importance
of Water to People And Think about the Fishing and The Importance of
Clean Water And Why We Really Manage Watersheds. Think about Protecting
That Resource and Working Within the Limits of the Land over the
Long‑haul, Because That\'s What We\'re Really about. That\'s Why I Am in
the Business I\'m in and That\'s All of Those On the Panel Here, Wayne,
Why We\'re in the Business We\'re In, Because We Care and I Know All Of
You Care, and It\'s Important That We Take a Message in a Simple Way to
the People, Because Water Is One of the Most Significant Things That We
Can Manage. So Let Me Say We\'re about People, Knowledge and Land. And
We\'re Going to Be Talking About Partnerships and the Importance of
People Working Together, Because If We Don\'t Work Together, the Price
Can Be High, as We\'ve Seen. It\'s Important That We Work Together.
It\'s Important That We Share the Knowledge That We Have, and to Date,
One of the Reasons I\'m Excited about Today\'s Program Is Because We\'re
Going to Be Taking A Look at a Lot of the Technologies, a Lot of the
Techniques and a Lot of Ways That We Can Improve Management Of Riparian
Areas and Get at the Results We Need Right on the Land, and Then, of
Course, the Land Is the Something That\'s Increasingly More Important to
The American People. As Population Grows, as Society Gets More Diverse,
Our Dependence upon the Land Will Be Greater than Ever. I Want to Say,
Wayne, That I\'m Just Really Excited to Be Here, And You and I Have
Fished Together and Done a Lot of Interesting Things Together and I Am
Just Delighted to Be Here Today to Talk about this Important Topic and I
Hope We Get Lots of Good Questions and I Hope the Folks out There Enjoy
The Day. Thank You.

Elmore: Thanks, Mike. Next I\'d like to Go to Paul Johnson, the Chief of
the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Paul, You Guys Work with
Private Landowners and I Would like to Hear Your Perspective of this
Program and What We\'re Trying to Accomplish with It.

Johnson: Good. And It\'s Good to Be Here Today. We\'re Very Thankful for
Those Who Have Put So Much Work into This Effort to Bring Us All
Together Today. As Was Mentioned in the Opening Remarks, We\'re Really
about Sharing Ideas and Thoughts. The Fact That All of Us Are Here Today
and Have Built Our Careers, Built Our ‑‑ Are Where We Are and the Work
That We Do On Those Who Have Come Before Us, and It\'s Been Part of this
Idea of Sharing with Each Other What We\'ve Learned and Then Hopefully
Building a Healthier Land out of That. That\'s How Good Science Works,
And That\'s What We\'re about Today. I Think We\'ve Got a Lot to Be
Thankful for. I Would like to Take a Couple of Minutes and Share Some
Ideas on From People Who Have Come Before Us That I Think Are Very
Apropos To Where We Are Today, and I Think Probably Bracket Our Agency
in the Way We Think and The Way We Work with Landowners. As We\'ve Said,
We Work with Private Landowners. We Don\'t Have Our Own Land to Manage.
It\'s Farmers and Ranchers Across The Country Who Manage It. We Provide
the Technical Assistance to Do That. But as I Look Back over the Ideas
of Water and Rivers and Streams and So On, There Are Two Or Three
Authors That Come to Mind. The First Is Loren Eisley. A Number of Years
Ago He Wrote a Book Called \"The Immense Journey,\" and He Talked about
Being out on the Plat River One Hot Summer Day and How He Stretched
Himself out in That River. As You Know, That\'s a Fairly Shallow,
Braided River. Then the Strong Feeling That Came over Him That in Lying
There Was Connected to Just About Everything, He Was Connected to the
Polar Ice Caps And to the Tropical Oceans, the Strong Emotions That We
Have About Rivers and Streams and About Water and How We\'re Connected
to Them. Our Agency for a Number of Years Was Called the Soil
Conservation Service and for the Last 60 Years We Have Tried to Get
People to Understand Soil, to Put Their Arms Around and it Realize the
Importance of It. I Sometimes Think That If We Had Started as the Water
Conservation Service We Probably Would Have Even More Soil Conservation
on the Land Today Because People Certainly Identify with Water. A Second
Writer from the past That I Think Brings Good Ideas To Us Was John Muir
When He Talked about How We Are All Connected and Things Are Connected
Together and You Can\'t Pull at One End of Our Ecological System and Not
Expect To Impact Another, and I Think The Lesson There and the Lesson
We\'re Going to Talk about Today Is That You Can\'t Separate Rivers from
the Landscape, and That What We Do on the Land Impacts Rivers and Vice
Versa, And So the Importance of That, That You Cannot Deal with Just One
Resource and Look at Only One Resource. The Third Idea Is an Idea out of
Leopold, and I Think it Takes it All in Perspective for Us, the Idea of
Conservation Being Harmony Between People and Land. That\'s What We Are
Going to Be Talking about Today as Well. Leopold Talked about it in
Terms Of People Living on the Land, People Being in Partners with The
Land. When the People Do Well for the Land and Land Do Well for the
People, When Both End up Upper, Then You Have True Conservation And
That\'s Certainly What We Are Talking about Today. This Is Exciting.
It\'s Ranchers and Farmers Coming Together with Ideas. It\'s Various
Agency People Coming Together and Sharing Those Ideas. It\'s Not All of
Us Changing Our Roles, But, Rather, Sharing Ideas So That as We Carry
out Our Roles and Work Together for A Healthier Land We\'re Able to Do
it by Bringing All the Good Knowledge and All the Good Ideas To Bear on
It. The Last Idea I\'d like to Leave With You Is the Idea of Where We
Are Go with this Knowledge When We Have it and the Importance of Sharing
it and Teaching. Leopold Wrote about Learning to Read the Land and When
You Do, I Have No Fear of What You Will Do To It, and I Know of Many
Good Things That it Will Do for You. What We\'re Talking about Today Is
Learning to Read the Land and Sharing Ideas So We Can Read the Land
Better. In Fact, Today We\'re Learning to Read the River and I\'m
Looking Forward to the Rest of the Day.

Elmore: Thanks Very Much, Paul. Next I\'d like to Go to Gary Edwards.
Gary Is the Deputy Director for Fisheries for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and Has a Little Bit Different Perspective From Their Agency. I
Mean, You\'re in a Little Different Situation than Everybody Else, but
Still Very Important in Rivers and Streams And You Guys Manage a Lot of
Marshes and Things like That. So I\'d like to Hear from You.

Edwards: Wayne, I Would like To Think That We\'re Not All That
Different. I Think We\'re about What Everybody Else Is about Here on
This Panel, and Certainly in My Capacity as Assistant Director Of
Fisheries I Am Very Interested in this Topic of Riparian Restoration
Because It\'s Really Going to Be a Key Element in Trying to Really
Restore this Nation\'s Fishery Resources. In Today\'s Session I Hope
That It Will Go a Long Ways to Furthering Our Understanding of ‑‑ an
Appreciation for the Many Multiple Disciplines and the Multiple
Partnerships That Are Going to Be Required If We\'re Truly Going to Try
to Make a Difference with Regards Restoring Many of Our Depleted
Riparian Corridors. Although I Think We Can Point to A Lot of Current
and past Successes, in My View, We Have Been Mainly Fighting a Losing
Battle Given That Many of Our Important Aquatic Resources Are Continuing
to Decline. We Got to Be Willing to Abandon, I Think, or Modify Many of
Our Previous Management Approaches And Regulatory Approaches and Do As
My Boys Tell Me, Dad, You Have to Be Willing to Color Outside the Lines.
We Have to Be Willing to Look Beyond the Streambank and Focus On a
Broader Ecosystem, Health Of the Watershed. But Most Importantly We Have
to Be Work More Positively with a Much Broader Array of Interests, And
Particularly Partnerships, And the Private Landowners Are a Critical
Element in That. We must Be Willing to Work More At the Grass Roots
Level with Local Cultures So We Have a Better Understanding of Where
Folks Are Coming from. Certainly this Is the Approach The Fish and
Wildlife Service Has Done with its Partners for Wildlife Program Where
We Have Engaged since about 1987 in over 16,000 Cooperative Restoration
Agreements with These Private Landowners That Have Resulted in The
Restoration of over 930 Miles of Riparian Corridors and 90 Miles of
In‑stream Aquatic Habitat and this Approach That We Have Used in Trying
to Address Issues Surrounding the Endangered Species Act. The Current
Issue of \"Fisheries,\" Which Is a Very Timely Issue for Those of You
Who Have Not Read It, Because it Deals Extensively with this Subject
We\'re Talking about Today, but in That That There Is An Article about
the Need to Enter the Age of Synthesis in Order to Make a Benefit to
Aquatic Resource Management. I Am Hoping this Program and Others to
Follow Will Help Us All Go Collectively into this New Age and Certainly
the Service Is Looking Forward to That and Looking Forward to Working
with Many of Our Federal Partners as Well as Our State And Tribal
Partners and Particularly Working with the Private Landowners out There
Who Can ‑‑ Where Really the Difference Can Be Made. Thank You.

Elmore: You\'re Right about The Unique. It Reminds of a Quote. Everybody
Is Unique Just like Everyone Else. Before We Go to Jack Thomas, in A Few
Minutes We\'ll Be Opening The Phone Lines to Hear from You. So If You
Have a Question or a Comment for Our Panel, this Would Be a Good Time to
Start Calling In. To Avoid an Echo Effect When You Call, Please Stand
Away from Your Television Set or Turn the Volume down. Don\'t Get
Frustrated If You End Up on Hold for a While. We\'ll Get to You as Fast
as We Can. And Now I Would like to Go to Our Last One, Jack Ward Thomas.
Jack?

Thomas: Wayne, Thanks. This Particular Subject Has Been Of Interest to
Me for a Long Time Having Started Some Research in this Area about 25
Years Ago When I Was a Field Biologist, and I Know from That Firsthand
What Can Be Done. In Later Years of That Research We Literally Had
Thousands of People Visit Our Experimental Sites. They Went Away Knowing
What Could Be Done with a Coordinated Effort, and to See Their Concern
And Caring for the Land Restored My Faith. When I Was Honored to Become
Chief of the Forest Service, it Was a Primary Intention of Mine To
Spread That Success Across The Lands of the West. Hence, the
Establishment of the Interagency Team That We Hear From Today to Raise
Visibility And Encourage Action. It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here on This
Panel Today with My Friends Paul Johnson and Mike Dombeck, Who Helped
Kick off this Effort. I Would like to Begin with a Quote from Norman
Mclane from His Book \"A River Runs Through It.\" He Said Eventually All
Things Merge into One. And a River Runs Through It. I Am Haunted by
Waters. An Old Professor of Mine Once Said That the Streams Were the
Integrator of the Entire Lands System And, Thus, the Health of Those
Streams Could Be Considered as an Indicator of The Health or Status of
the Land. When We Look Across the Western Landscape There Are Too Many
Streams That Indicate That Improvement Often Dramatic Improvement, Is
Demanded. Until All Land Managers, Public And Private, Can Demonstrate
Healthy Streams as a Result of Their Stewardships, We Will Not Have
Fulfilled Our Responsibilities. To Bring Our Streams and Associated
Riparian Zones into Acceptable Condition Will Be an Acid Test of
Responsible Stewardship. The Sad News Is That We Have Much to Do to
Achieve That Objective. The Good News Is That We\'ve Made A Good Start.
That We Have a Capable Set of Folks, Both Public and Private Sector,
with Experience and Knowledge to Provide That Guidance and Assistance.
And We Have Examples in Every Part of the Country That Demonstrates What
Can Be Done When People Work Together to Achieve a Common Objective. The
next Bit of Good News Is That Things Move Downhill and in Riparian Zones
Maybe a Reservoir Of Soils, Nutrients and Diverse Vegetation That
Frequently Responds Quickly and Dramatically to Appropriate Management
Action. It\'s Simply Pointless to Moan About Budgets or about Too Much
To Do. Improving Our Streams and Riparian Zones Is an Integral Part of
Our Job as Land Stewards. We Will Be Judged by the People On How Well We
Do. I Would Suggest That It\'s Pointless to Look Backwards Except to
Learn from the past. We Are Where We Are. We Can Be Nowhere Else. I Hope
We Will Affix Our Attention on the Future and Where We Are Going. Some
Have Already Done Marvelous Things for Streams and Riparian Zones Using
a Number of Approaches Dictated by Circumstances. They\'ve Pointed the
Way. The Journey Has Begun. We Now Turn to the Future. That\'s What
We\'re about Today. I\'m Excited. Let\'s Go. Else, We Are Condemned
Forever To Be Haunted by Waters. Thanks.

Elmore: Very Good, Jack. One Thing I\'d like to Mention Is That There
Are Several Agencies And Groups That Aren\'t Represented Here Today on
the Panel, Only Had So Much Room. That Does Not Indicate a Lack of
Involvement by Those Agencies, Because They Are Very Much Involved in
this at the Ground Level, and So I Don\'t Want That Lack of Presence to
Represent a Lack of Interest or Dedication. So I Think That\'s Important
to Realize That There Are a Lot of Other Things Going on That Are Good
by Other Groups, and I Just Wanted to Recognize That. I Would like to
Finish up this First Part Before We Go to the First Phone Call, and
It\'s ‑‑ it Was a Quote from Einstein, and He Said, \"We Cannot Solve
the Problems of Today with the Same Thinking That Created Them.\"
That\'s What We\'re Talking about Doing with this Program and this
Emphasis and this Thinking That You\'re Going to Hear about Today, and
from Had Panel Again This Afternoon, plus Some People, Other People That
Will Come in and Join Them, Is How Are We Going to Get this Done? So
with That I Would like to Go To the First Phone Call and We Have Chris
from Aberdeen, Washington, and Wanting to Talk About Reducing Sediments
from Roads. Chris, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Thank You. I Work for a Private Organization Which Implements
Watershed Restoration Projects. So I\'m Really Glad to See this Program
Happening and I Am Excited and Want to See this All Go Forward. I
Appreciate the Commitment of Your Agencies Have Made to Restoration of
Our Watersheds But I Would like to Question How Our Collaborative
Efforts Can Be Effective When the Agencies Continue to Carry out Actions
That Degrade Clean Water, Fish Habitat, et Cetera. For Instance, Let\'s
Look at Roads. The Single Largest Contributor To Sedimentation and
Erosion in Our Watersheds Are Erodes. In the Pacific Northwest, Where
I\'m From, National Forests Have A Road Density of 3.5 Miles per Square
Mile, More than Twice the Road Densities That Cause Wildlife Populations
to Decline. At a Recent Appropriations Committee Hearing, Chief Dombeck
Stated That There Was a Backlog Of Road Maintenance Needs Worth \$440
Million on Thousands and Thousands of Miles of Forest Service Roads. Yet
the Chief Also Stated That His Agency Is Planning to Build 300 Miles of
New Roads and Reconstruct 2,000 Miles in Fiscal Year 1998. It\'s Much
More Expensive to Build and Reconstruct Roads than It Is to Stabilize
and Decommission Roads. If We Are to Be Spending Millions of Dollars to
Restore Riparian Habitat, How Can the Forest Service and Other Agencies
Justify Spending So Much on New Road Construction Which Often Will Enter
Roadless Areas That Are So Critical for Salmon and Other Fish Habitat
And Wildlife.

Elmore: Thanks for That Question. Mike, Do You Want to Answer That.

.

Dombeck: Yes. Chris, First of All, Let Me Say That the Importance of
What You Say We Take Very, Very Seriously, and of the 2300 Miles Of
Roads That We Mentioned and That You Referred to in My Testimony of
Congress, of Those Only 300 Miles Are New Roads. But I Want to Point out
the Other 2,000 Miles That We Talk About, the Activities Are Actually
Focused at Bringing Roads up to Standards, Roads That Are Part of a
Transportation System That Goes Well Beyond Their Uses as Maybe A Decade
or Several Decades Ago, And Doing the Appropriate Engineering and
Getting Them This in a Shape to Reduce Sedimentation Is One of the
Primary Focuses That We Have. I Think Our Technologies Today Are Better
than Ever from the Standpoint of Engineering, of How We Deal with Roads,
but We Also Are Very, Very Sensitive to The Fact That Roads Are a Major
Impact on the Land, and You\'re Going to See Our Focus More and More to
Improve the Technology, Reduce Sedimentations, and We Don\'t Need Roads
in Areas That They Shouldn\'t Be. Jack, I Don\'t Know If You Want To Add
Anything to That in Your Long History of this Not Only as A Researcher
but Also in the Job As Chief Preceding Me.

Thomas: I Would Be Happy to Respond as Well. I Think Our Road‑building
Program Has Been Significantly Reduced over the past Decade. 300 Miles
of New Road on 192 Million Acres of Land Is Pretty Small. I Would Also
Point out That I Think We\'re Putting Roads to Bed Far Faster than We
Are Either Reconstructing or Building New Roads. Very Obviously the
Speaker Is Quite Correct When He Says That A Primary Source of
Sedimentation Is Roads. I Would Also Point Out, Though, That If One Will
Look at a Map Across the West, Every Primary Stream, and Many of Those
‑‑ Most of Those Not Having Anything to Do with Public Lands, Have a
Railroad along One Side and a Highway along the Other. So These
Conditions of Dealing With That Sedimentation Are Certainly Not
Constrained to Public Lands.

Dombeck: Chris, Let Me Add One Other Thing. If You Fax in Your Address
or Something like That, We Would Be Happy to Send You the Information on
Also the Miles of Roads That Are Being Decommissioned and Put to Bed.

Elmore: Okay. I Have a Fax Here ‑‑ Let\'s See ‑‑ Mat and Paul, Would You
Guys Like to Answer That One? Are You Going to Take this Effort
International?

Johnson: Well, Sometimes We Are Very Frustrated as an Agency, Our Agency
Is, That We Don\'t Have a Strong International Program Right Now, And as
a Nation, of Course, We Seem to Be Looking Inward, but I Would Challenge
Us All to Look At Ways in Which We Can Share Ideas. We Have So Much to
Learn from Other Countries, and I Think That this Conference Today, in
Fact, Is Being Shared Around the World, and I Would like Forward To an
Opportunity to Continue to Share What We Know and to Learn From Others
Across the World.

Millenbach: I Would like to Add to That on the Part of the BLM. We Have
Done a Lot of Work over The Last Few Years to Expand Our Activities with
Particularly Latin American Countries. We\'ve Had Representatives from
Our New Mexico State Office, for Example, Bill Calkins and Linda Rindel,
Have Just Been in Mexico Talking about the Integration of Some of Our
Programs Across the Border, You Know. We\'ve Had Agreement with the
Hispanic Serving Colleges to Take a Look at Educational Kinds Of Things
That We Can Do in Conjunction with Some of Those Latin American
Universities and So Forth to Share Information And Resource Expertise
That We Can Use to Benefit Both Ourselves and to Benefit Those Countries
in Latin America. So There Is a Fair Amount of Stuff That Is Going on in
an International Way.

Johnson: I Would like to Back Up Just a Minute and Make One Additional
Comment on the Roads Issues. We Tend to Focus on the Federal Agencies
and Their Lands, but All of Us, Wherever We Live, I Think Ought to Get
Engaged with Our Local Departments of Transportation and Look at Ways In
Which We Can Do a Better Job Of Buffering Roads from Rivers And Streams
and the Rest of the Landscape. There\'s Some Exciting Work Going On
Today in Alternative Kinds of Vegetation, Looking at Other Natural
Vegetation, Native Vegetation, and So Let\'s Not Look Just at the
National Forests or the National Parks. Let\'s Look at Our Communities
And Work Together with Departments of Transportation to Improve That
Part of the Landscape.

Elmore: All Right. I Will Answer this next One. It\'s from the Yuma
Field Office, And it Says: Isn\'t the Figure Of 40% of BLM Riparian
Areas in Proper Functioning Condition Exclusive of Alaska? The Answer
Is, Yes, That\'s True. And How Would the Figure Change If Alaska Were
Included? We Would Have Met Our Goal. All of the Streams, about 98% of
The Streams in Alaska, Are in Proper Functioning Condition. As Far as
the Percent of Riparian Areas in Alaska, I Don\'t Have That Figure Right
at The Tip of My Fingers, but It\'s A Large Amount. We Have Around
50,000 Miles in The Lower 48 States but I Forget How Many Thousands of
Miles We Have above That. The next Fax, and If You Wouldn\'t Mind, Gary,
Reading Who It\'s from and Acknowledging That Person.

Edwards: Sure. This Is from Don Duff, and He Writes About: How Do We
Envision Using Our Collaborative Partnerships with Groups Such as Trout
Unlimited to Try to Bridge The Gap in Trying to Address These Issues,
and I\'ll Take an Initial Stab at Trying to Answer This. I Mean, My
First Answer Would Be That They Play a Critical Role In This, Not Only
Groups like Tu, but the Isaac Walton League And Bass and Groups Such as
Ducks Unlimited. I Mean, These Are the Kinds Every Partnerships We Are
Going To Have to Build If We Are Going To Bridge the Gap. I Think These
Are the Kind of Partnerships That the Article in Afs Talked about in
this Age of Synthesis, Is We Have to Be Willing to Bring These Folks
With Us in this Effort Because We Certainly Are ‑‑ Our Success Of Trying
to Do it Alone or in a Small Group of Federal Agencies Have Not Got Us
the Kind of Gains We Needed. I Guess My Answer Is That It\'s Going to Be
a Critical Element And We Should Do Everything We Can to Ensure That
These Folks Are Involved in this Process, Particularly Working at the
Grass Roots Level.

Elmore: Thanks, Gary. I Would like next to Go to Mike And Jack. We Have
a Fax from Wedge Watkins Addressed to Both of You.

Dombeck: Let Me Read the Question ‑‑ the Fax for the Rest Of the Folks
in the Audience, And That One Was: I Was Interested in Chief Dombeck\'s
List Much Priorities. My Question Is, How Do You Propose to Get the
Message out To Forest Supervisors and District Rangers? First of All,
Let Me Say That We Spent a Significant Amount of Time at the National
Leadership Meeting of the Forest Service Just Three Weeks Ago Talking
About Priorities, Talking about Budgets, Talking about the Variety of
Things, the Way We Have to Go. The Most Important Thing We Need To Do Is
Build a Support Base, And We Can Build a Support Base Within the Agency
and That\'s Already Started. In Fact, What I Believe I\'m Doing Is
Carrying on with Some Of Jack\'s Priorities Because What\'s Right for
the Land Is Right for the Land. It Doesn\'t Matter If It\'s a National
Forest, a National Park, a Wildlife Refuge, BLM Land or Private Land and
We Continually Need to Keep That in Mind. But One of the Challenges That
We Have in Agencies like the Forest Service Is We Have to Realize That
We Sometimes Need To Make Investments in Watersheds, and Once the Big
Saw Logs Are Gone, the Dollars Are Not There, and We Have 39 Million
Acres in High Risk of Catastrophic Fire. Some May Be Wondering Why I\'m
Talking about this Relation to Watersheds. The Fact Is, It\'s All Tied
Together. What I Will Continue to Do Is, You Know, Continue to Focus on
These Priorities Because as We Build a Support Base, the Authorizing
Environment for the Agency Activities, the More Successful We Will Be.
Assuming That ‑‑ I\'m Assuming You\'re a Forest Service Employee. I
Would Encourage You to Continually Work and Take the Message of Working
Within the Limits of the Land Because That\'s the Most Significant Thing
That We Can Do, and as Jack So Appropriately Said in His Closing, It\'s
Future Generations That Are Going to Pay the Price for Our Inaction
Today and the Streams Are, Indeed, the Circulatory Systems Of the
Watersheds. What You Will See Me Continue to Do in this Job Is Continue
to Take a Positive Message of the Importance of What We Do and Then Make
Adjustments in Our Programs and Try to Work with Local Communities to
Build Support for Doing the Right Things, and I Think the Challenge That
All of Us Have Is To Continue to Take That Word to Local People, and Let
Me, Jack ‑‑ If You Want to Comment More On That, I Think One of the Key
Roles That Both You and I Have, You in Your Job and Mine in this Job,
and the Reason the Panel Is Here, Is to Continue to Get the Word out to
Focus on the Priorities of Working Within the Limits of the Land, the
Importance of Streams.

Thomas: I Would Make One Point\... In Talking to My Students, They Ask
about What Are the Differences over the Years and I Think If One Thing
In the World That We Have Slacked off on Is That Everybody That\'s in
Natural Resources Has To Be a Salesman. We Can\'t Leave That to Public
Affairs Officers or to Press Officers. We\'re the People Have That to
Get out There and Sell That. Most of Us Don\'t like That. We Would
Really Prefer to Be Dealing with the Birds and the Bees and the Plants,
but upon Our Shoulders Rests the Capability and the Responsibility to
Talk to People, to Sell People, to Bring People along. That\'s Probably
the Most Important Thing That We Do and I Tried to Give the Advice When
I Was Chief. I Give Tight My Students Now. \"If You\'re Not Spending a
Third Of Your Time Selling, Cajoling, Cooperating, Facilitating,
Providing Help to People on the Ground to Do Some Particular Objective,
We\'re Just Simply Going to Fail.\" We Have More Natural Resources
Experts in the World Now than We\'ve Ever Had Before but I\'m Not Sure
That We\'re Doing Nearly As Good a Job of Spreading the Word as We Ought
To. We Can Do Better.

Dombeck: One Other Thing, Wedge, That I Want to Mention Is The Fact
That, You Know, There\'s A New Piece of Legislation That\'s Been Passed
Called the Government Performance and Results Act, and That Act, I
Think, Holds All of Us in Agencies More Accountable than Ever. What We
Are Doing in the Forest Service, and I Know Mat, BLM\'s Involved in
This, I Know Natural Resource Conservation Service Is Involved in This,
Paul, and So Is the Fish and Wildlife Service, Is Our Measures Are Going
to Be Land‑based Measures Where Line Managers Will Be Held Accountable
for Trends in Land Condition, Things like Water Quality, Making Progress
Toward Endangered Species Recovery, Dealing with Noxious Weeds with
Forest Health Problems, All Those Kind of Things. What Would Say Is Stay
Tuned Over the next Couple Years Because I Think You Will See an Effort
from the Standpoint of Accountability in What We Do and What Resource
Managers Are Basically Rated on as Tied to Land‑based Measures and I
Think That along with the Points That Both Jack and I Tried to Make of
Taking a Positive Message to the People Are Probably Some of the Most
Effective Things We Can Do.

Elmore: All Right. I Would Just like to Mention Once Again That Our
Phone Lines Are Open, and We\'re Going to Take Another Phone Call Right
Now. Call in If You Would like. Right Now We Have Kathy from California.
Kathy, You\'re on the Line. What\'s Your Question?

Caller: My Question Is for Mike and Jack. The Question Is, What Is the
Best Way to Manage Adjacent Stream‑side Buffer Zones, Particularly, Is
it Recommended To Harvest Timber from Those Zones to Help to Fireproof
Those Areas and to Get the Desired Conditions of Large Trees More
Quickly? Or Would You Recommend That Those Zones Remain Buffers and Not
Have Management?

Elmore: Thank You Very Much. Jack, You Want to Start with That One, and
Then Mike?

Thomas: I Would Be Happy to Start. I Think, Kathy, You Get the Age‑old
Saw, it All Depends. But We Moved in the Pacific Northwest and Are
Spreading That Across the Country That as Quickly as We Can We Should
Deal With Full Watershed Assessment As We Move Forward with Management
Decisions. And Part of That, We Put in in Violet Buffers but Those Were
Only to Stay There until We Had The Full Assessment. At That Point You
Have to Make Up Your Mind What You Do Within Those Riparian Zones, and
in Some Cases They Should Remain Buffers. In Other Cases, They Should Be
Subject to Management to Achieve A Mix of Objectives with the Foremost
Objective Being the Health and Condition of the Riparian Zone and the
Associated Stream. I Do Not Look at Buffers as Something That Are
Totally Removed from Management. In Fact, Just the Opposite. I See No
Reason in Some Cases That Appropriate Timber Harvests Could Not Occur
There, or Grazing, or Some Other Management Activity, Provided It\'s
Done in Such a Way and Carefully Considered to Protect That Stream and
for That Riparian Zone to Serve its Function.

Dombeck: Yes, Kathy, Let Me Just Add That What We Have Is a Whole
Variety of ‑‑ as You Know, A Whole Variety of Human Intervention over
the Last Couple Centuries and Maybe Longer than That to Take a Look At
and If You Just Take a Look At the Example of the Exclusion Of Fire and
the Fact That in Perhaps in Nevada a System That You May Be Familiar
With, and Given That I Don\'t Know the Watershed That You Are You\'re
Talking About, You Might Have Had a Fire Regime of a Low Intensity Burn
Much 5 to 15 to 20 Years or So and Perhaps We Have Excluded Fire for a
Long, Long Time Now, as Many as 70 or 80 Years. So off Complete Shift in
the Vegetation Type in That. What\'s Going to Happen If We End Up with a
Catastrophic Fire from The Standpoint of Sedimentation, Of Erosion and
That Type of Thing in the Stream, and ‑‑ One Of the Things I Think We
Need to Take a Look At, and Some of the Progress That Jack Mentioned in
Watershed Analysis That I Think We\'re Doing a More Thorough Job Than
Ever in the Technologies We Are Applying Are Some of the Best
Technologies That Have Ever Been Applied, and We\'re Continuing to
Develop New Technologies, and the Most Important Thing Is to Use All The
Tools That Are Available From the Standpoint of Roads to Vegetation
Management, Because When Wayne Is Talking about Proper Functioning
Condition, We\'re Talking about the Interaction of Soil, Water and
Vegetation, and Every Case Is Different. So to Say That One Rule or One
Method Can Work Is Something That We Need to Continually Remain Open to
Use All the Tools That Are Available, but the Most Important Thing Is to
Include People in That, Because to Build A Support Base of Working with
Local People and Local Landowners, and I like the Saying \"You Don\'t
Manage a Stream on 40 Acres,\" Because the Importance of the Private
Landowners and the Natural Resource Conservation Service Being Part of
this Is to Where We Have Private Lands, State Lands, Federal Lands,
Maybe BLM, Maybe Forest Service Lands, Whatever, to Take a Look at the
Whole Watershed Is One of the Most Important Things We Can Do.

Elmore: Thanks, Mike and Thanks, Kathy. I Would like to Take the next
Call. It\'s Ken from Little Rock. Ken, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Yes, Thanks. This Would Be for Any of Your Panelists, Perhaps
Paul, but We See Many Impacts to Riparian Areas Both Rural and Urban,
That Are Result of the Traditional Fire Control, Engineering Design,
Construction Methods and I Am Wondering from ‑‑ How from A National
Programmatic Perspective Could You See Linking with the Private Sector
In Incorporating Some of the Natural Stabilization Techniques For
Riparian and Streambank Stabilization and Do You See Demonstration
Projects Perhaps As a Way or Do You Consider Those an Effective Way to
Build A Knowledge Base and Confidence In More Natural Vegetative Type
Stabilization Methods?

You Bring up a Very Good Question and I Think as We Go Through the Day
Today You Are Going to See a Number of Ways in Which We Are Sharing with
the Private Sector and Others Looking at the New Techniques to Do
Restoration Work. You Bring up an Age‑old Problem That We Have Between
Engineers And Ecologists and It\'s One We Have Talked about and Written
About for a Long, Long Time, How You Can Bring the Good Skills of Both
of Those Disciplines Together, and I Think Once You Do, We\'ll Really Be
on a Roll. There Is a Lot of Good Work Going on Now. There Are
Demonstrations Around The Country. And I Know as I Talk to Our District
Conservationists out Across the Country They Are Very Excited about Some
of the New Bioengineering Techniques to Work with Rivers and Streams. So
I Think as We Look Future We Are Going to See a Lot More of It and You
Are Going to See a Lot More of it in the next Few Hours.

Elmore: Thanks, Paul. The next Call Is Bruce in Planned. Bruce, You\'re
on the Air.

Caller: Hi. This Is a Question Directed to Paul Johnson, Primarily. The
New Farm Bill Has Many New And Interesting Programs Directed Towards
Conservation. I Am Wondering What We\'re Doing To Target Those Resources
Towards Riparian Areas and How We\'re Ensuring That We Target Them
Towards the Highest Priority from a Technical Viewpoint and Resisting
Some of The Political Pressures That Have to Do with the Distribution Of
Those Funds.

Elmore: Good Question.

Johnson: There Are a Couple Of Ways in Which We\'re Going About It.
First of All, We\'re Putting a Lot More Emphasis on Locally‑led
Conservation, Trying to Get Interest Groups Together at the Local Level
to Assess Their Needs and Then to Use the Programs as Tools to Achieve
the Goals That They Set for Themselves. At the State Level We\'ve Now
Established in Every State in The Country State Technical Committees
Trying to Bring Together All of the Agencies and All of the Interest
Groups That Have Some Expertise in this to Look at the Programs, to Look
at The Needs Within Our States, and This Includes State Agencies. It
Includes Conservation Groups. To Try to Identify the Needs and Then to
Use These New Programs As Tools. One of the Most Exciting Tools We Have
in the New Farm Bill Is The ‑‑ in the Conservation Reserve Program the
Opportunity For a Continuous Sign‑up for Riparian Buffers and Other
Kinds Of Vegetative Buffers on the Landscape and the Secretary Is ‑‑ Has
Called for a Goal of Perhaps Two Million Miles of Vegetative Buffers by
the Year 2002. That\'s a Terrifically Ambitious Goal but to Look at
Using Vegetation in Riparian Areas, Around Wellheads, on Contours on The
Landscape, It\'s Going to Call upon All the Good Science That We Have,
All of Our Agencies Have, and the Private Sector as Well to Make it
Work, But We Think It\'s Really Exciting, and You Certainly Hit On a
Good Point, That There Are A Lot of New Tools in this Farm Bill and
Through Our State Technical Committees, Through The Locally‑led
Conservation That Everybody Has to Get Involved In, We Hope to Share The
Tools and to Bring Them All To the Table to Identify Needs To Set Goals
and to Really Solve Problems.

Elmore: Thanks, Paul. Before We Get into Some More Facts, I Am Going to
Answer One Here. It\'s from B. Ralston, And: What Do You Think the Most
Important Management Change Is to Enhance Riparian Habitat in the West
and What Is the Change in Management You Referred to in the Photos? The
Riparian Management That I Referred to in the Photos Were All Different,
and What We Have To Do Is Design Management That\'s Based upon the
Individual Characteristics and Attributes Of Each Stream and We\'re
Going To Get into That this Afternoon During Our Grazing Segment Where
We\'re Going to Talk about Those Very Things, How to Design Grazing
Management Practices That Are Compatible with Riparian Restoration, and
So There Is No Set Way to Just Go Out and Say \"This Will Work
Everywhere,\" Because as I Have Said Many Times, I Have Seen Every Kind
of Grazing System There Is Work and I Have Also Seen Every Type of
Grazing System There Is Fail. It All Depends on What Stream You\'re
Putting it On, How You Have Designed It, How it Fits Into the Whole
Watershed and How Much of That the Needs and the Attributes of That
Stream Are Being Met. Next on the Fax List, I Think You Got One, Didn\'t
You, Mat?

Millenbach: I Don\'t Have Any More.

Elmore: They Took it Away From You? Okay. I Know Someone Else Had One.
I\'ve Got a Whole Bunch and Not Getting Them out. Jack, You Have One?

Thomas: I Have a Fax Here From Mr. Delusio from the Blackland Research
Center. He Asks about the Role of Hydrological Models, the Role of Gis,
What\'s the State of the Art And How Do We Calculate the Effectiveness
of the Nutrient Trap Width of the Buffer Riparian Zone. Well, I Think
the ‑‑ in Terms of The Hydrological Models in Gis, I Think That We Do
Need to Consider That this Is ‑‑ We Can\'t Talk about Riparian Zones In
Isolation from the Upland, And One of the Things That We Have Learned to
Do Very Quickly, We\'ve Done it in the Northwest, We\'ve Now Completed a
Full Ecological Assessment of the Columbia Basin in Which We Did Look at
Hydrological Models That Integrate Questions about Vegetation, Status of
Vegetation, Soils, Types, Grazing Regimes, Roads, et Cetera, and
Certainly Gis Gives Us the Capability of Looking at Things at Very Large
Scale and Bringing it on down to Smaller Scale. The State of the Art in
Riparian Zone Management Is a Very Interesting Thing. In the Sense That
One of the Things That I Think We Have Discovered Is That There\'s No
Manual for This, and There Probably Should Not Be a Manual For It,
Because Every Set of Circumstances Will Involve Various Kinds of
Landowners, it Will Involve Different Kinds of Terrain, Different Sorts
of Circumstances, Different Amounts Of Money. So Basically Each One of
These Things Is Really an Art Form of Being Able to Look at Them, Look
At the Circumstances That Surround Them, Social, Economic And Ecological
and Figuring out An Appropriate Approach. One of the Neat Things about
Dealing with Riparian Zones, as I Said Earlier, in Most Cases You Are
Apt to Get a Response And a Very Quick Response Because of the
Circumstances. In Fact, It\'s One of the Most Encouraging Places for Any
Land Manager to Operate, Because of The Fact it Can Show Rather Quick
Results. In Terms of the Effectiveness of The Nutrient Trap, That\'s
Going To Be Related to a Number of Site Factors. If You\'re Looking at a
Flat Floodplain Versus One That Has a Very Steep Pitch Coming down
Directly into the Stream, You\'ll Get Very, Very Different Results.
However, It\'s Fairly Obvious From Watching the Response of Riparian
Zones, or Many of Them, To Management, That There Is a Nutrient Trap
Effect That Goes On with a Riparian Buffer.

Elmore: Thanks, Jack. We Have a Phone Call That We\'re Going to Take
Now, and It\'s Sonia Is Portland. You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Hi. This Question, I Think, Is Probably Directed Mostly at the
Bureau of Land Management and The Forest Service. I Know That Your
Missions ‑‑ it Seems like Your Missions Have Changed Dramatically in the
Last Decade or So from Being Mostly Focused on Resource Extraction To
Being More Focused on Resource Conservation, but the People You Have
Working for You Are Probably Mostly the Same People You Had Working for
You 10 Years Ago, and So I Was Wondering, What Are You Doing to Update
Their Skills and Change Their Orientation since They Were Trained in ‑‑
under One Mission So That They Can Adapt And Be Productive under Your
New Mission?

Elmore: Mat, Would You like To Answer That First?

Millenbach: Well, I Will Try. That\'s a Good Question. You Know, I
Myself Am an Example Of That. I\'m a Forestry Graduate from Michigan
State University in 1972 and Probably Fit the Profile of the Kind of
Person You\'re Talking about. A Lot of the Education Back Then Was
Oriented Toward Commodity Development and We Also Had Courses and Things
Such as Recreation, Watershed Management And Wildlife Habitat, but it
Was Mostly an Orientation Toward the More Economic Timber Removal Kind
of Forestry Back ‑‑ Things That We Do. What We Do in Our Bureau, Anyway,
Is We Have a Very Good Training Center Here. That\'s Where We Are Today
in Phoenix. What We Do Is We Try to Keep up With the Different Changes
in The Mission, the Different Emphasises That Our Agency Is Putting
Towards Things Such as Endangered Species Management, The Riparian
Management We\'re Talking about Today, and Trying To Keep Our People up
to Date on The New Things That Are Going on In Resource Management.
You\'re Absolutely Correct in Your Observation That Things Have Changed
over the Last 10 Years. I Would Argue They Have Changed A Lot over the
Last 20 Years as Well. And It\'s Important That We Bring Our Employees
along to Keep Their Skills up to Date and to Be Sure That We\'ve Got a
Good Trained Work Force That\'s Able To Meet the Demands of the Agencies
in 1997 and Beyond. Speaking for the BLM, We Feel Like We Have a Good
Training Program Here. We\'re Able to Use Sessions Such As this to Talk
about the Things That We Believe Are Important And the Things Our Folks
Need to Do. Within the Bureau We\'ve Got Satellite Downlinks to Almost
All Our Offices These Days, and We Very Frequently Have Have Courses on
All the Aspects of The Things That We\'re Working On, and I Think
You\'ll See a Lot More of That as Time Goes On.

Elmore: Thanks, Mat. Mike, Would You like to Follow Up on That Also?

Dombeck: Yes, I Would like to Follow up on That. In Fact, I Have a Fax
Here from Paul Butler of the Caribou National Forest in Pocatello,
Idaho, That Basically Asked the Same Kind of Question, and Let Me Just
Read That and Then I\'ll Get Back to Sonia\'s Point as Well, and It\'s a
Fairly Long Question So I Will Read the Key Points: Streambank and
Riparian Degradation Have Often Been Caused by Livestock in Some Areas
Across the West. Then He Goes on to Say, Why Is So Little Effort Put
Forth in Educating Our Range Conservationists in the Art of
Communications So That We Have As Resource Managers Become Leaders in
Grazing Management as Well as People Management, Rather than the
Heavy‑handed Bureaucrats Who Administer Grazing Permits from Behind the
Desk. You Know, We\'re Part of ‑‑ Part Of this Whole Effort We\'re in
Here Today Is Education and Getting the Word out to People, And I Think
this Is in a Sense The First Kind of Effort like This and I Applaud the
People That Put it Together Because We\'re Already Applying New
Communications Methods and That Sort of Thing. The Resource Manager of
the Future Is Going to Be a Person That\'s a Catalyst in Bringing People
Together, Someone That\'s A Facilitator, a Negotiator, Someone That
Knows Where to Get The Best Information Possible, And in Fact I Was at a
Training Session, a Course on Water in Durango, Colorado, Earlier this
Week for Forest Service Line Managers, and the Very Topic of A Three or
Four‑day Session Is Water. But One of the Things We Focused On Is Soft
Skills Is What We Need to Be Better At, and That\'s The People Skills
That Paul Refers To, the Fact, You Know, When We Have a Divergence of
Opinion as We Often Have in Resource Management, We Need to Make Sure
That People Respect One Another\'s Opinions, That They Understand One
Another and That We Then Focus on Common Goals and Move Forward. So,
Paul, Your Point, Just the Fact That You Asked That Question, I Think,
Is Telling The World We\'re Aware of Some of The Skills We Need to
Enhance. Sonia, from the Standpoint of Skill Mix, I Think Training Is
Increasingly Important in Agencies, and I Know in Talking With Deans and
Department Chairs And Professors at Universities, And Part of What Jack
Is Doing In His Current Job as Boone and Crockett Professor, Is Working
With Students and Helping Them Understand the Importance of
Communication and Getting Support and Buy‑in for What We Do. I Think it
Was ‑‑ the Reason This Is So Important, I Think of What Abraham Lincoln
Said One Time, and That\'s \"If the People Are for Us, We Can\'t Lose,
but If They\'re Against Us, We\'ll Never Win,\" and So These
Communication Skills and People Skills Are Paramount and Also Being
Aware That We Have to Apply the Best Technical Knowledge Available. I
Think We Are Taking ‑‑ Making Progress, as Mat Indicated. I Think We\'re
Getting Better at It but We Have a Long Way to Go.

Elmore: Okay. I Want to Thank Everybody for The Ton of Faxes That Came
in And for the Phone Calls. We\'re Going to Have to Close This
Interactive Segment Right Now, and this Panel Will Be Rejoining Us Later
on in the Evening. At this Point We\'d like to Shift Our Focus to
Resource Aspects of Riparian Restoration Starting With Hydrology,
Recognizing the Relationship Between Water and Land Form Is Critical to
Understanding the Functions of Riparian Areas. While All Streams Exhibit
Their Own Unique Character, Understanding How Channels Change over Time
Allows Us to See Broad Commonalities in Strong Types. Relationship to
the Stream as to How Sediment Is Transported or Stored, What Kind of
Vegetation Might Grow, How Susceptible the Channel and Banks Are to
Degradation and How Quickly We Might Expect the Stream to Recover from a
Disturbance. To Give Us Some Background for Our Discussion on Hydrology
We\'d Like to Begin by Presenting a Video on Channel Evolution. This
Program Not Only Categorizes the Types of Stream Channels but it Also
Examines The Forces That Cause Riparian Areas to Change.

Stream Channel and Floodplain Changes Are Part of All Riparian Systems.
What We Want to Do Is Understand How These Changes Influence Riparian
Conditions. We Want to Understand Where These Systems Have Come From,
Where They Might Be Going and What Kind of Adjustments Are Required to
Get These Systems to The Condition in Which We Want Them. Probably the
Most Importantly of All, We Want to Understand How To Manage in Harmony
with These Channel Adjustments.

Some of the Most Valuable Habitats in the Arid West Are Located along
the Riparian Zones, the Land Areas along Streams and Other Water Bodies
Where Soils Are More Moist than The Surrounding Uplands. Abundant
Vegetation and the Presence of Water Create Highly Productive Habitats
for Aquatic And Terrestrial Wildlife. Vegetation Also Shades Streams And
Provides Structure to Floodplains and Banks. Protecting and
Rehabilitating These Fragile Habitats Is an Ongoing Goal of the Riparian
Initiative in BLM. But for Rehabilitation to Be Effective, We Need to
Know the Natural Adjustments Which Occur Both in the Stream System and
Its Interrelated Riparian Habitats. In this Program, We Will Discuss The
Relationship Between the Hydrologic Changes That Occur in A Stream over
Time and Surrounding Riparian Vegetation And Habitats. We Will Also
Examine How Rehabilitation Plans Should Consider These Interactions
Using Input from a Variety of Resource Specialists. Understanding the
Interactions Of Water, Vegetation, Land Forms And Erosion Is Important
in Evaluating Riparian Conditions And Formulating Rehabilitation Plans.

When You Are Evaluating an Upland Range Site, for Example, Most of the
Elements of Productive Potential under Place, the Soils, the Moisture,
Which Comes Primarily from Rainfall, Are in Place. When You\'re Trying
to Evaluate The Potential of a Riparian System, Some of Those Elements
Of Productive Potential May Not At this Point in Time Be in Place. For
Example, the Water Table May Be Gone. Soil Resources May Be Gone. The
Channel Itself May Be Obliterated or Highly Impaired. So There\'s a Need
to Be Able to Think in Terms of Adjustments.

Most Major Riparian Systems Occur on Alluvial Deposits, the Sediments
Depend by Streams. Where the Valley Floor Is Flat And Wide, Alluvial
Deposits May Support Large Riparian Areas. One Role of Riparian Zones Is
to Reduce or Buffer the Stream Energies of High Flows. By Spreading
Floods and Slowing Down Flowing Water, Riparian Zones Allow Sediments to
Be Deposited. This Is the Natural Mechanism That over Geologic Time
Allows Alluvial Valleys and Floodplains To Develop. Other Stream Channel
Features Such as Pools, Riffles, Meanders, Banks, Rocks, and Small Log
Steps or Debris Barriers Serve to Dissipate the Energy of Flowing Water,
Energy That Could Otherwise Cause Destructive Erosion. Riparian Zones
Also Serve as Shallow Aquifers or Groundwater Reservoirs That Recharge
During High Streamflows and Drain and Prolong a Stream\'s Base Flow
During Dry Periods. The Base Flow Is the Water That Flows into a Channel
as a Result Of Groundwater Seepage. Riparian Conditions Are Influenced
by Three Types of Channel Adjustment or Change: Channel Evolution;
Normal Channel Dynamics; and Rapid Channel Adjustment.

Channel Evolution Involves Changes over Geologic History, Changes That
Are Part of the Evolving Landscape. In Determining the Rehabilitation
Potential of Riparian Zones, We must Evaluate Channel Features and the
Adjacent Topography to See Their Role in Channel Evolution. Evolutionary
Processes Are Seen In the Way Stream Energy Is Being Dissipated Through
Features Such as Meanders, Waterfalls and Floodplain Terraces. We Can
Then Understand Major Changes When They Occur.

Stream Channels and Riparian Zones That Are Healthy Generally Exist
under Conditions of Dynamic Equilibrium. While Adjustments in Channels
Regularly Occur, the Overall Riparian Conditions Will Remain Within a
Stable Range, Reflecting the Geology, Climate And Hydrology of the
Watershed. During High Flows, Normal Adjustments May Involve Some Bank
Cutting and Changes in the Meander of the Stream Channel. There Can Be
Cycles of Streambed Scouring and Filling and Periods During Which Large
Organic Debris, Such as Logs or Branches, Fall into the Channel Or Are
Moved Around by the Stream. Also, Sediments Can Be Deposited Throughout
the Floodplain. Remember\... Riparian Zones in Good Condition Often Need
Channel and Floodplain Changes To Maintain a Healthy and by Logically
Diverse Ecosystem. We must Be Careful in Trying to Rehabilitate Systems
Undergoing Normal Channel Adjustments So That We Don\'t Temporarily or
Permanently Interfere with Changes Which Are Good in the Long Run. For
Example, Installing Structures at the Wrong Time or In the Wrong Place
May Actually Cause Changes in the Stream Channel That Are Undesirable or
Restrict Changes That Are Normal And Beneficial.

We Should Not Equate Stability, Which Is a Dynamic Condition, with
Rigidity, Which Is a Static Condition. It\'s Actually Possible to
Engineer a Stream into an Overly Stable Condition. We Need to Remember
That We Want Thing like Banks Being Undercut, Pools and Riffles Scouring
and Refilling and Meanders Migrating And Adjusting.

the Third Type of Adjustment Involves the Rapid Deterioration Of
Channels as a Result of Sudden Changes in the Watershed. These Changes
Can Occur When a Stream System Has to Respond to A Sudden Increase in
Flow or Sedimentation. For Example, after a Fire, High Run‑off and
Severe Erosion Often Occur, Which Radically Change The Stream\'s
Equilibrium. Changes in Flow, Sediment Delivery or Channel and
Floodplain Conditions May Begin Periods of Dramatic Change Such As
Downcutting.

it Would Be Awfully Easy to Fail to Recognize How Dynamic And How
Adjustable These Systems Are and to Fail to Appreciate The Magnitude of
the Forces and The Energy Involved in Some of These Systems, and in
Particular, the Energy Associated with Large Run‑off Event or Floods.

Degraded Riparian Conditions Are Commonly Associated with Two Types of
Rapid Channel Change: An Excessively Incised or Cut Channel or Excessive
Lateral or Sideward Expansion of the Stream.

Incised Channels Known as Gullies or Arroyos Occur in Arid Or Semi‑arid
it Regions. They Usually Occur in Fine‑grain Sediments Such as Silt or
Clays. These Channels Are Incised by Increased Run‑off, a Lowered
Resistance to Erosion or by the Lowering of the Stream\'s Base Level.
This Is the Level Toward Which Erosion Constantly Tends to Reduce the
Land. Riparian Systems Change in Two Ways When Their Channels Are
Incised. First, Flood Flows Are Confined And Peak Flows Increase, Which
Allows a Stream to Erode its Beds and Banks, Therefore, Removing More
Sediment. Secondly, the Water Table Is Lower, Which Causes the Death of
Plants That Depend upon a Higher Water Table. It Is Then Common to See
an Increase of Plants Such as Sagebrush That Don\'t Need a Higher Water
Table. Incised Channels Typically Evolve Through Four Stages: In the
First Stage, an Unincised Channel Supports Good Habitat Conditions. The
Second Stage Is Seen as a Narrow, Raw, Vertical Cut. In the Third Stage,
the Cut Undergoes Active Widening until The Fourth Stage Is Reached
Where the Channel Width Is Adequate for the Development of A Mature
Blood Plane and Healthy Riparian Vegetation. During the First Stage, the
Key To Maintaining the Riparian Habitat Is to Properly Manage Land Use
Activities. Our Goal Should Be to Provide For Healthy Riparian
Vegetation And to Prevent Downcutting. Intensive Land Uses, Such as
Concentrated Livestock Grazing, Should Be Properly Managed in The
Riparian Zone and in Upland Areas. Incision May Also Be Prevented By
Installing Headcut or Base‑level Control Structures. While These
Structures May Have A Role in Preventing Headcuts From Growing in Size
and Destroying Valuable Riparian Habitat, They Should Not Be Used
Routinely to Compensate for Poor Land Use Practices.

Headcuts Are Often Symptoms Of Larger Problems. It\'s Very Important to
Try to Understand and Manage the Causes Of Downcutting and Not to Simply
Treat the Symptoms Such as Headcuts. The Key to Management in a Stage 1
Condition Is to Prevent Incision into Areas Which Are Susceptible to It.

During the Second Stage of Channel Incision, When the Channel Becomes a
Deep Gully, a Decision must Be Made Whether or Not to Return the Channel
to a Stage 1 Condition. If the Gully and its Associated Peak Flows Are
Small, Proper Management May Allow the Channel To Recover to a Stage 1
Condition on its Own. Installing Gully Plugs or Other Structures to
Speed up the Recovery of Small Cuts May Be Expensive but Justified Is
Lost Riparian Values Are Large and Natural Healing Processes Are
Expected to Be Ineffective. Natural Structures Such as Beaver Dams or
Fallen Trees May Also Help to Restore Conditions.

If You\'re Thinking about Using Gully Plugs, You Need to Think in Terms
of Creating Riparian Conditions Which Can Ultimately Be Sustained
Without The Plug.

If the Gully Is Large, Has a Steep Gradient, and Has Not Reached a Firm
or Stable Bed Level, Proper Structures Would Be Expensive to Install,
Prone To Failure, and Might Not Return The Channel to an Unincised
Condition. Improved Management of the Area May Also Improve Ineffective
in Earn Returning the Gully to the Pre‑incision State. In the Third
Stage of Channel Incision the Banks Begin to Widen and Floodplains Start
to Form. Though Ultimately Channels at The Third Stage Need to Be Widen,
They Can Become More Stable If Riparian Vegetation Is Allowed to
Establish. Livestock Grazing Should Be Controlled to Allow Riparian
Vegetation to Thrive, but Flooding Will Still Erode the Upper Banks
until a Stable Flood Flow Channel Is Established. Expensive Bank
Controls Such as Riprap, Anchored Juniper, or Loose Rock Should Not Be
Used During this Stage Because They Would Keep the Stream from Widening.
It Is Very Important Not to Artificially Stop the Widening Of a Stream
When it Is Part of The Normal Healing Process. In the Last Stage, the
Channel Further Widens and Develops into A Stable Riparian Zone at a New
Base Level. Floodplains Become Fully Developed, and Sediment Is
Deposited, Which Helps to Build And Maintain a Healthy Riparian
Ecosystem. In this Last Stage, Structures Would Not Normally Be Needed.
However, Natural Structures Such As Beaver Dams and Fallen Trees, May Be
Important in the Evolution of Stage 3 and 4 Channels. They Are
Preferable to Man Made Structures Because They Change And Evolve along
with the Channel. The Best Overall Management Strategy During These
Stages Is To Encourage the Growth and Reproduction of Riparian
Vegetation. It Is Difficult to Predict If an Incised Channel Will Refill
on Its Own. If Filling Occurs, it Will Require Adequate Floodplain Width
and Dense Riparian Vegetation. For Example, at Big Creek Utah There Was
a Dramatic Recovery of The Stream and Riparian Zone When Stream‑side
Vegetation Was Allowed to Thrive. All Management Activities Should Be
Evaluated in Terms of Their Effectiveness in Improving the Establishment
of Riparian Vegetation and its Long‑term Survival.

the Second Type of Degraded Riparian Condition, the Laterally Unstable
Channel, Occurs in Streams with Coarse Alluvial Beds, That Is, Beds
Consisting of Gravels, Cobbles Boulders, or Bedrock. Very Low Gradient
Sand Bed Channels May Also Adjust Laterally, Cutting into Banks Rather
than Cutting down Vertically like an Arroyo. Channels Which Adjust Side
Ways Tend to Become Wider and Shallower as They Degrade. Livestock
Grazing and Road Building Can Cause or Contribute To this Condition by
Reducing Bank and Floodplain Vegetation. A Laterally Unstable Stream Is
Less Able to Carry High Flows And May Damage Riparian Areas by Cutting
into Banks or Realigning Its Course During High Flows. Habitat Features
Such as Pools May Be Obliterated When the Stream Adjusts Hydraulically
and More Sedimentation Occurs. If Floodplain Vegetation Is Washed Out,
the Force of Floodwaters Is less Effectively Dissipated and New Erosion,
Not The Deposit of Sediment, May Occur. Upland Watershed Disturbances
Can Also Contribute to this Instability by Causing Increases In Peak
Flows or Increases in Sediment Delivery to the Stream. If the Water
Table Has Not Been Lowered by Channel Incision, Laterally Damaged
Riparian Areas Can Often Be Quickly Rehabilitated by Revegetation.

When Taking a Look at a Riparian Area You Need to Think In Terms of the
Channel and Floodplain Adjustments Which Are Going to Be Required to
Meet Your Management Objectives. You Need Then to Manage in Harmony with
Those Adjustments.

the Key to Planning a Riparian Improvement Program Is To Determine the
Causes of Problems Within the Stream Channel and its Rehabilitation
Potential. Before an Improvement Project Is Begun, We must Examine Why
the Stream Is Degrading, and We must Consider the Entire Watershed as
Well as the Riparian Area. Upstream Watershed Disturbances Need to Be
Stabilized, and Land Use Conflicts May Need to Be Resolved. Many
Riparian Areas Damaged by Improper Livestock Grazing Will Recover
Rapidly When Grazing Is Properly Managed. We Have Seen Dramatic Recovery
Throughout BLM When Grazing Pressure Was Reduced along Riparian
Corridors. In Many Cases, Watershed, Wildlife Habitat, Livestock Forge
and Water Quality Values Have Improved. For Example, in BLM\'s Canyon
City District, Texas Creek Dramatically Improved over a Nine‑year Period
with Better Livestock Distribution. Strategies That May Be Used to Help
Riparian Areas Recover Include Deferred Grazing Systems, Adjusting
Grazing Season of Use, Livestock Herding, Creating Riparian Pastures,
Developing Off‑site Livestock Waters, and Building Drift or Corridor
Fences. Land Use Management Is the Best Method of Riparian
Rehabilitation in These Cases. However, Management must Be Tailored to
Specific Resource Conditions and Objectives. In Some Cases, Structures
and Mechanical Measures Such as Bank Erosion Controls and the Proper
Grading of Floodplains May Improve Conditions for Revegetation. Such
Cases Involve Areas Where The Soil Has Been Removed, Large Debris Is
Missing or the Stream System Is Too Unstable to Permit Successful
Vegetative Growth. The Purpose of Any Structure Should Be to Provide the
Conditions Needed for Natural Revegetation and Channel Evolution So That
the Stream System Will Stabilize and Function Properly on its Own.

You Need to Remember That Stream Channels Provide Important Insights
into Riparian Conditions. However, to Do a Good Job Evaluating Riparian
Conditions We Need Information from a Variety of Disciplines, Including
Range, Hydrology, Wildlife, Fisheries, Soils and Geology.

Rehabilitation Should Not Be Used to Avoid Dealing with the Real Causes
of Riparian Degradation. We Need to Understand and Work With the Natural
Changes Which Are Operating in the Riparian System So That the Physical
and Biological Conditions Needed for Rapid Recovery Can Occur. Once it
Is Decided That a Rehabilitation Program Is Needed, Objectives Should Be
Developed.

in Looking at a Riparian System, You Want to Go Through Some of the
Standard Elements That We Use to Evaluate Any Resource Condition. We
Want to Try to Understand the Existing Condition, We Would Want to
Understand It\'s Natural Potential, We Would Want to Formulate a
Management Objective In Terms of a Desired Condition, We Would Want to
Evaluate the Responsiveness of the System to Management.

We must Evaluate Whether the Benefits of the Structure Would Justify its
Cost, or That a Proposed Management Alternative Will Be Most Effective.
We must Also Decide Whether the Rehabilitation Achieved Would Be
Self‑sustaining or Dependent on The Structure. Effective Rehabilitation
Projects Involve Land Use Controls and Vegetation Management on
Laterally Unstable Channels Where Riparian Water Tables Are Intact. Or
on Incised Channels That Have Undergone Enough Widening to Establish
Effective Floodplains. Structures Should Only Be Considered in Certain
Situations, Generally to Prevent Damage or to Nudge a Stream into A
Condition Where Natural Changes Can Take over. An Economic Analysis Will
Help To Justify Structures for Rehabilitation.

One of the Pitfalls We\'re All Prone to If We\'re Apt to Become
Proponents of Our Own Favorite Solution to Riparian Management. We May
Be Proponents of Structures or We May Be Proponents of Riparian Pastures
Or Proponents of Riparian Exclosures. As Soon as You Fall into this Trap
of Being an Advocate of a Solution, You May Fail to Properly Evaluate
the Problem.

Stream Channels and Riparian Zones Are Naturally Dynamic. Healthy
Riparian Vegetation Is The Key to Effective Rehabilitation. Treatment
Methods Should Work With and Not Against the Forces Of Natural Channel
Change.

When You Are Trying to Evaluate Riparian Condition, How Easy it Is to Go
out and Evaluate What\'s There Now, How To, You Know, Measure the Angle
Of the Bank or the Width of the Channel or the Species Composition or
Cover, It\'s Very Difficult to Evaluate What Might Be There in the
Future under Proper Management.

If the Channel Is Evolving Toward a New Stage of Equilibrium, and the
Watershed Condition Is Static or Improving, Then Riparian Rehabilitation
May Involve No More than Waiting for Natural Healing to Work.

Elmore: as You\'ve Just Seen, Many Factor Affect How Riparian Zones
Change and Evolve. Chief among Them Is the Power of Moving Water. At
this Point We Would like to Take a 10‑minute Break and in Our next
Segment We Will Take a Closer Look at the Roles Hydrology and Soils Play
in the Function of Riparian Areas. Once Again, We\'ll Open up the Phones
to You and We\'ll See You In a Few Minutes. Thank You Very Much.

Elmore: Welcome Back to Our Workshop on Riparian Restoration. Joining Us
Now Is Janice Staats, Hydrologist on the National Riparian Service Team
and She Will Give Us More Information on The Team. Glad You Could Be
with Us Today.

Corzatt: Thanks, Wayne, and Hello, Everybody.

Elmore: Also with Us Is Lorena Corzatt, a Part‑time Member of the
National Riparian Team and Hydrologist on the National Riparian Service.

Corzatt: Nice to Be Here. I Get Excited When I Have a Chance to Talk
about Creeks.

Elmore: That\'s True. I Know That. Let\'s Start with Lorena.

Corzatt: as We Saw in the Video, Riparian Areas Need to Do A Number
Every Things to Be Able To Work Effective Live. They Dissipate Energy,
Filter Sediment, Store Floodwater, Capture Bedload and Build a
Floodplain. They must Store Flood Water to Recharge Groundwater and They
Must Develop Root Masses That Stabilize Streambanks Against Cutting
Action. Through Flowing Water Streams Transfer Tremendous Amounts of
Energy. Recent Events Otto Owe Valley, North Dakota and along the
Mississippi River Show this Transfer of Energy on a Large Scale. But
These Floods Were Large, Relatively Infrequent Events. A Fact, Three
Quarters of the Time When a Stream Has a Peak Flow Event the Event Is
Smaller Than the 25 to 30‑year Flood for That Stream. Put in Somewhat
less Technical Terms, Extreme Events Are Pretty Rare. So We Need to Be
More Concerned With the Flood Magnitudes That Are More Likely to Occur.
While the Floods That Are Likely To Occur Only Once in 75 to 100 Years
or less Often Have Huge Impacts Socially, Much Smaller Floods Shape and
Maintain Channels in the Long Run. On Average Every One and a Half To
Three Years Streams Fill up To the Top of Their Banks. The Not Very
Creative Name for This Small Flood Is the Bankful Event. Because Bankful
Events Happen Frequently They Shape and Define The Channel We See. As
the Channel Fills with Water, Its Energy Increases and along With it the
Power to Erode and Carry Sediment. If the Stream Is to Maintain its
Dynamic Equilibrium, the Stream\'s Energy must Be in Balance with the
Material Available for Transport. Once the Channel Fills to the Top of
the Bank, Water Moves Onto the Floodplain. On Some Streams the
Floodplain Is an Obvious Relatively Flat Area next to the Channel. On
Other Streams, the Floodplain May Be Very Small and Subtle or
Nonexistent and under Development. Often Geology Controls the Existence
of a Floodplain but We Must Recognize Where Management Has Influenced
the Extent of the Floodplain or the Stream\'s Ability to Reach It. On a
Large Scale, the Energy Managed Is Managed by the Shape Of the Channel,
the Shape of the Valley Bottom and the Relationship Between the Two.
Let\'s Look at a Broad Valley Bottom and the Slow Meandering Stream
Moving Through It. From High School Geometry, You Probably Recall That
Slope Is Calculated from Rise Overrun. As We See in this Graphic, to
Calculate the Gradient of this Particular Stream, We Would Subtract the
Elevations and Find The Change in Elevation Between Those Two Points.
And Then Measure the Distance Along the Stream Channel Itself. Dividing
That out Would Give Us The Gradient. If a Stream Is Straightened, as We
See in this Picture, the Gradient Will Increase, Giving The Stream More
Energy and More Power to Erode the Bed and Banks. The Farther a Stream
must Travel To Lose the Same Amount of Elevation the Lower the Gradient
Will Be. As We See in Our next Graphic, Where We Plot the Distance
Against the Elevation the Channel Has Actually Traveled a Much Greater
Distance than the Straight Line along the Valley. The More a Stream
Winds Around In its Valley, the More Sin with Us the Stream Is Said to
Be. To Measure Sinuosity, We Measure The Stream\'s Gradient to the
Gradient of the Bottom. As We Can See in the next Graphic, We Can Look
at a Stream In a Valley from Ground Level, Sort of a Fish‑eye View. The
Water Will Flow the Fastest In the Defined Channel. One Analogy Is to
Think about Water Flowing out of a Garden Hose onto a Sidewalk. The
Water Flowing from the Hose Has the Power to Move Stand and Debris off
the Sidewalk, but as The Water Flows down the Sidewalk, it Spreads out
and Loses the Power to Move Sediment. Rivers and Streams Work in Much
The Same Way. Where the Flow Is Concentrated, The Stream Maintains the
Energy To Transport Materials. Where the Flow Is Shalt or or ‑‑ Shallow
or Obstructed, the Stream Deposits Sediment. Every Channel Has a
Characteristic Width at Bankful. The Relationship of the Bankful Width
to the Depth in the Bankful Will Remain Relatively Constant Even Though
the River Is Moving Across the Valley. The Erosion on One Bank Keeps
Pace with the Deposition on the Opposite Bank and Maintains That
Characteristic Width. This Constancy in the Width‑depth Ratio Is a Sign
of Dynamic Equilibrium. The Channel Is Moving and Changing over Time but
the Fundamental Shape of the Channel Stays the Same. If, However, the
Relationship of Bankful Width to Depth Changes, Some Sort of Adjustment
Is Taking Place. When the Water Exceeds Bankful, It Moves onto the
Floodplain. Because the Flow Is So Shallow In the Floodplain Just as in
the Garden Hose Analogy, Much of the Energy of the High Flow Is Lost.
Water with less Energy Can Carry Less Sediment. This Fact Has Been Many
Plea Illustrated after Floods to Folks Who Live on Floodplains And must
Shovel out Tons of Mud. Sediment Depend by Overbank Flows in Extreme
Floods Can Be Several Feet Thick but It\'s Usually Much Shallower. By
Spreading out on the Floodplain, the Stream Has Managed to Lose Some
Energy, Filter Sediment, Improve Water Quality and Build a Floodplain.
Something Else Happens When the Valley Bottom Floods. Remember, the
Water on the Floodplain Is Moving Much Slower Than the Water in the
Channel. Because the Water Is Moving Slowly, Large Amounts Can Soak Into
the Ground and Be Temporarily Stored There. The Riparian Area Acts as a
Huge Sponge. Water from the Flood Isn\'t Lost. It\'s Merely Detained.
Water Will Move Through the Soil Much More Slowly than it Moved On the
Surface. Month Later this Water Seeps Into the Banks and Moves into The
Stream. Because the Water Was Stored Underground, It\'s Cool When it
Reenters the Stream. The Result Is Cool Water Entering the Stream in
August And September. If the Water Had Simply Run off The Surface During
the Flood Without Being Stored in the Soil, the Stream Would Carry Less
Water in the Late Summer Months and Would Be a Lot Warmer. Cindy Your He
Will Will Go into More Detail about Soils in a Few Minutes. Now Let\'s
Move to Much Different Type of Stream and Explore the Relationship
Between the Channel And the Valley. Obviously this Stream Has a
Tremendous Amount of Energy. If We Look at the Gradient of This Stream,
We See That It\'s Much Steeper than the First Type Of Stream We Looked
at And, in Fact, Is Close to the Gradient Of the Valley Bottom as Is
Shown In this Graphic. Remember Sinuosity? We Would Not Expect this
Stream To Meander Much. There Simply Isn\'t Room. If We Look at this
Type of Stream from the Air We See a Relatively Straight Channel. Let\'s
Take a Ground Level View Of this Channel. As the Water Reaches and
Exceeds Bankful the Channel Becomes Deeper but Not Much Wider. Where the
First Type of Stream We Looked at Had Plenty of Room To Spread out on
the Floodplain And Lower the Energy of the Water, this Stream Only Gets
Deeper and More Powerful. Because of the Shape of the Channel and the
Channel\'s Relation to its Valley, We Would Not Expect this Channel to
Function in the Same Way as the First Stream We Looked At. The Stream\'s
Potential Is Quite Different. We\'ve Seen How Small, Steep Streams
Depend on Obstructions And the Natural Toughness of the Channel Material
to Maintain Their Shape and a Balance Between Energy and Erosion. Other
Channels Through Their Geometry Can Dissipate Energy by Following a
Sinuous Path along The Valley Bottom and Spreading High Flows over a
Large Area. We Can\'t Greatly Influence the Shape of the Valley Bottom,
but In Many Cases We Have Influenced Floodplains and Sinuosity in Major
Ways by Channel Straightening, Urban Development, Building Roads and
Levees. Chances Are These Changes Will Remain Because of Social
Constraints, but Our Management Can Tremendously Affect Vegetation, and
as Bill Jackson\'s Video Pointed Out, Vegetation Is a Critical Part of
Riparian Management. Remember the First Definition of A Functioning
Riparian Area, a Functioning Riparian Area must Dissipate Energy, Filter
Sediment Store Flood Water and Develop Root Masses That Stabilize
Streambanks Against Cutting Action. We Have Seen the Importance of The
First Three Components. In a Sinuous Stream Large Amounts of Energy Push
Against The Banks. This Is Much like the Feeling You Get in a Car When
Turning The Corner. The Car Turns but the Bodies Inside Lean to the
Outside of The Turn until the Momentum Changes. We Can Illustrate this
by Looking at a Stream in Sort of a Stylized Way Where the Flow Is
Moving down this Way and Hitting Against the Bank and until it Turns the
Corner the Energy Is Directed Against this Bank. Unless Something along
the Streambank at These Pressure Points Can Withstand the Cutting Energy
of the Water, Bank Materials Will Detach and Move Downstream. Now,
Transporting Sediment Is The Business of Streams, and Streams Will
Always Carry a Certain Amount. This Is Another Component of That Dynamic
Equilibrium. Remember, We\'re Looking for Stability, Not Rigidity. Over
Time a Stream Will Occupy Every Position on its Floodplain. The Trick
for the Stream Is to Move Slowly Enough Across the Valley Bottom So as
Not to Tear Itself Apart. Vegetation Plays a Critical Role. Vegetation
Provides a Refuge for Sediment That Has Already Been Moved onto the
Floodplain to Stabilize in Place. Certain Types of Vegetation Stabilize
Sediment Better than Others. While a Meadow of Upland Plants May Be Able
to Trap Some Sediment, it Has Relatively Few Roots to Bind the Soil.
Flowing Water Can Easily Detach Soil Particles from Roots. In Some
Cases, Water Peels the Sod up like So Much Instant Lawn. Water‑loving
Plant, Though Have Dense, Thick Root Mats That Can Withstand the Energy
of the Water. As the Water Pushes into the Bank Around the Curve of this
Stream, it Runs into a Tenacious Mat of Roots and Plants That Tightly
Bind the Soil. Later on Today Mike Borman and Others Will Go into
Greater Detail about the Role Vegetation Plays in the Function of
Riparian Area. Wayne?

Elmore: Thanks, Lorena. I Was Kind of Wondering If You Would Mind Just
Kind of Expanding a Little Bit on the Difference Between Qualitative And
Quantitative Measurements.

Corzatt: Sure. A Lot of What I Do in the Field On a Day‑to‑day Basis Is
Qualitative, but It\'s Based on The Background That I Have in
Quantitative Hydrology. I Have Enough Experience and I Think Most of Our
Hydrologists Out There Have a Lot of Experience in Measuring Streams So
That We Can Take a Look at a Stream Now and Be Able to Assess
Qualitatively What\'s Going on With That Stream Without Having To
Measure Every Parameter.

Elmore: Thanks. Understanding Our ‑‑ Our Understanding of Floodplain and
Channel Stability Is Vital to Helping Us See the Present Condition of a
Stream and its Future Potential. Next Janice Will Continue to Talk about
Energy Dissipation And the Importance of Streams Being in Balance with
the Sediment Supplied by the Watershed. Janice Will Now Give Us the
Details of Those Interactions. Janice?

Corzatt: Okay. The Word Complex Is Defined in Webster\'s Dictionary as
Something Made up of or Involving an Intricate Combination of Elements.
This Definition Certainly Describes Riparian Areas Because They Are
Intricate Combinations Of the Interactions of Land, Water and
Vegetation. In the next 10 Minutes I\'m Going To Talk about How Despite
the Complexity of Riparian‑wetland Areas We Know How to Assess Their
Condition and Manage Them To Function Properly. Only a Small Part of the
Water Flowing in a Stream Comes Directly from Precipitation Falling in
the Channel. Most Streamflow Comes from Surface Runoff and Subsurface
Flow Which Result from Rain or Snow Melt on Upland Areas. So Upland
Condition Is Also Important to Streams. The Region from Which the Water
Strains into a Stream Is Called The Drainage Basin Catchment or
Watershed. Uplands Consist of All Catchment Areas That Do Not Lie Within
Riparian‑wetland Zones. An Important Characteristic of a Catchment Is
its Drainage Density. Drainage Density Is Calculated By Dividing the
Total Stream Length Within a Catchment by the Catchment\'s Area. The
Higher a Catchment\'s Drainage Density, the Faster Water and Sediment
Are Delivered To the Mainstream Channel. Precipitation Falling Between
The Streams on the Catchment With Low Drainage Density must Travel a Lot
Farther to Reach a Channel than Precipitation Falling on a Catchment
with High Drainage Density. Also Because Some of the Water Is
Infiltrating into the Soil And Moving into the Subsurface, More Time Is
Needed for That Water to Get to a Stream. A Road Can Change How Water
Makes its Way into a Stream in Two Ways. First, the Road Captures
Precipitation Falling Directly On it and Surface Runoff from Adjacent
Areas. Second, Subsurface Flows Can Drain out of a Road Cut Bank and
Become Surface Flow. When These Things Happen, the Road Can Start to
Operate like a Stream Channel Delivering Water And Sediments in Amounts
That Exceed What the Area Is Accustomed To. That\'s Why You\'ll Hear
Hydrologists Say That Roads Can Affect Drainage Density Even Though a
Road Is Not a Natural Drainage. When less Water Infiltrates into The
Ground for Any Reason, Such As the Interference of Roads, Parking Lots
or Soil Compaction, Peak Flows Can Increase. The Water Flows Faster from
the Catchment Area in the Stream System than If it Was Infiltrating into
the Ground. This Slide Shows a Hydrograph Which Is a Graph of Water
Discharge or Depth Against Time. This Hydrograph Shows Discharge From
Spring Through Fall. With Good Management, More Precipitation
Infiltrates into The Ground Where It\'s Slowly Makes its Way into a
Stream Channel as Late Summer and Fall Streamflow. Lorena Also Talked
about How Important Floodplains Are for Storing Groundwater, Releasing
During Late Summer and Fall and Thus Contribute to Go this Good
Management ‑‑ Good Watershed Management Scenario. Streams Can Be Stable
Yet Transport a Wide Range of Stream Flows, Sediment Sizes and Sediment
Volume Without Making Adverse Adjustments Such as Excessive Channel
Widening. Stable Streams Adjust Through What the Video Called Normal
Channel Dynamics Includes What Happens During Floods and Droughts.
Usually a Flood in a Low to Moderate Gradient Stream Slightly Widens the
Channel Because of the Energy of the High Water and Sediment Deposition.
Where Water Flows Year‑round, These Perennial Streams Should Get
Narrower During Droughts. Despite Droughts, Ground Water Is Still
Available to the Roots Of the Water‑loving Plants near The Stream
Channel. Because Stream Flow Energies Are Lower, Plants Can Take Hold
and Establish Themselves out Towards And Even into the Water. Here Are
Some Slides to Illustrate That Point. In 1987 There Was a Flood in the
Bear Creek Drainage and Sediment Was Deposited on the Banks. This Is the
Same Place after a Few Drought Years. Notice How the Vegetation Has
Narrowed the Channel. When Periods Every More Precipitation Return, That
Vegetation Will Be in Place to Slow the Water and Help Dissipate the
Energy. Even Though the Channel\'s Width Changes, it Should Fall Within
a Predictable Range for Different Stream Types. The Video Covered the
Rapid Channel Adjustment Process of Vertically Unstable Streams. I\'d
like to Emphasize the Important Points. Remember That an Alluvial
Channel\'s Form Is Predominantly Controlled by Stream Flow and Riparian
Vegetation. The Bed and Banks Consist of Materials Carried by the River
Under the Present Flow Conditions. In Other Words, Alluvial Channels Can
Go Through Periods Of Excessive Channel Instability And Adjustment
Easily If There Is a Big Enough Change Either in The Water and Sediment
Balance Or in the Riparian Vegetation That Holds the Alluvium Together.
When Assessing Riparian Areas, Be Sure to Note Areas with Fine‑grained
Alluvium Such as ‑‑ Because Those Areas Have the Highest Susceptibility
to Downcutting. If the Area Is in Stage 1 and Has Not Downcut, Manage it
for Healthy, Vigorous Root‑binding Riparian Vegetation That Will Protect
the Area from Downcutting During 20 to 30‑year Floods. Notice Ow Pearl
Creek in 82 Has The Valley Width to Allow for a Sinuous Channel. The
Streambank Vegetation Doesn\'t Have Dense, Resistant Root Mats That Can
Protect the Banks from the Energy of High Flows. Nor Is the Water
Flowing over a Restricting Layer Such as Bedrock. This Is the Same Place
in 1983. Now That this Stream Has Started To Downcut, Rehabilitating it
Will Be Much More Difficult than It Would Have Been to Manage the
Vegetation Differently. During Stage 2, the Stream Flow Energy Is
Confined Within the Channel. The Energy Is Not Dissipated by Either the
Slowing of Water on a Floodplain or Buying the Toughness of the Channel.
Channel Erosion, Therefore, Continues. Once Downcutting Has Already
Started, Land Managers must Decide Whether to Try to Return The Stream
to a Stage 1 Condition or to Continue to Let It Downcut and Widen to a
Stage 3 Condition. If the Gully Is Large, Steep, Has High Peak Flows and
Has Not Reached a Firm or Resistant Bed Level, Properly Designed
Structures Will Be Expensive to Install and the Feasibility of Returning
Such Gullies to an Unincised Condition Is Greatly Reduced. In Most Cases
it Makes Sense to Allow Them to Continue to Adjust Until They Have
Widened out Enough to Develop a New Floodplain. If a Stream Is Already
Flowing On a Resistant Layer and it Has More Energy than the Channel Can
Handle, the Energy Can Erode the Banks and Widen the Stream. Or the
Stream Can Realign its Course in a Different Location With Each
High‑flow Event. These Are the Laterally Unstable Streams with Gravel,
Cobble, Boulder, Bedrock or Very Low‑gradient Sand Beds. Often a Change
in Land Use Management Can Begin Restoring These Streams, Especially
Riparian Vegetation, Composition And Cover. Restoration Can Begin
Because The Ground Water Is Held Close To the Surface Where Plants Can
Get Tight N Low Fine Sediment Systems, Channel Shape Takes Longer to
Change Because These Systems Lack the Materials Need To Do Build
Streambanks. Determining Whether a Stream Is In Balance with its Water
and Sediment Load Is Not Always Easy. That\'s Why We Need an Experienced
Interdisciplinary Team to Make Sure That We Have All the Knowledge and
Techniques For Interpreting What We See. With Your Interdisciplinary
Team, Look at Depositional Features and Streambank Stability for Clues
about Sediment and Water Balance. The Depositional Features of This
Stream in Oregon Show a Cause for Concern. So Much Sediment Is Being
Deposited That the Point Bar Indicated by the Arrow Is Very Steep and
Mid‑channel Bars Are Forming in this Low Gradient Segment. In this
Situation it Was Recommended That the Bedload Sources Be Determined and
Steps Taken to Stabilize Them. Restoring Balance Will Take a Long Time.
Mid‑channel Bars Are Not Always A Sign of a Problem. Mid‑channel Bars
Form When Natural Erosion Rates Exceed the Stream\'s Ability to
Transport Material Such as below a Glacier. With Streams with Low to
Moderate Gradients Look to See If Streambanks Are Cutting in Between
Meander Bends. These Sections Should Not Normally Have Energy Affecting
Banks Such as on Curves. Bank Erosion on Straight Sections Could Be the
Sign of a Problem and You Should Further Investigate Such Erosion. Work
with Your Local Interdisciplinary Team to Determine the Right Sediment
and Water Balance for Your Stream Types and Examine All Possibilities
When Determining Cause and Effect. Given the Complex Nature of Riparian
Systems, How Do We Put This All Together ‑‑ All this Information
Together for Riparian‑wetland Area Management? We Need a Practical
Problem‑solving Approach to Help Us Know What Has Happened, What Is
Happening and What Will Happen under Different Management Scenarios.
Stream and Catchment Classification Can Help Us in That Regard to Assess
a Stream\'s Present State, its Response to Disturbance and its Ability
to Recover. Several Stream Classification Systems Have Been Devised.
Find out Which Ones Are Being Used in Your Area. You Can Improve
Communication If You Use the Same Systems as Others You Coordinate with.
Lorena, Let\'s Talk about the Classification Systems That We Know about.

Corzatt: Sure.

Corzatt: I Have to Do One More of These. The First System I Learned
about Is Shumm\'s Description of Source Areas That Produce Sediment,
Transfer Zones That Move Sediment Through the System and Response Zones
Where Sediment Is Deposited. Another One Is Montgomery and Buffington\'s
Channel Classification Prediction of Channel Response and Assessment Of
Channel Condition.

Corzatt: One More I Am Familiar with the Recent Book \"Applied River
Morphology\" and This Is a System Used by a Lot Of People, Particularly
in the Pacific Northwest.

Corzatt: Right. And One More to Show. Also BLM Reviewed Several Other
Riparian and Wetland Classifications and in 1990 Published this Review
as Technical Reference 1737‑5. Using These Classification Systems, You
Can Get an Idea of The Trends and Descriptions Your Stream Segment of
Interest Should Follow. You Need to Know Classification Systems and the
Attributes and Processes They Describe to Evaluate Riparian‑wetland
Systems. Classification Systems Break Down the Complexity of Riparian
Areas and Their Associated Uplands into Pieces That We Can Understand
and Work with.

Elmore: Thanks, Janice.

Corzatt: You\'re Welcome.

Elmore: You Guys Talked about Those References. What about Somebody out
There, Some of Our Viewers, Who Are in Isolated Areas or Maybe Not Have
Access to Those, What Are Some Other Sources That People Could Go to Get
Other Information About Hydrology and How Water Works in Stream Systems.

Corzatt: I Would Start out by Going to Their Local Forest Service, BLM,
Nrcs, Fish and Wildlife Service Office or Contact Their Extension Agent
And They Could Start There and Tell Them That They\'re Interested in
Learning More About Stream Classification Systems, Ask for Their
Hydrologist or Fish Biologist.

Elmore: All Right. Thanks. As You\'ve Seen, Our Ability to Detect the
Way Water Behaves Both above and below the Surface Is Vital to Our
Understanding of A Stream\'s Present Condition and What We Expect to See
in the Future. The Soil Associated with Stream Types Is as Important as
the Stream\'s Hydrology. An Important Part of the Overall Riparian
Picture Is Our Ability To Understand Soils Not Only in The Floodplain
and the Stream Channel but Also in the Uplands. With Us Now to Provide
an Overview of Soils Is Cindy Correll. Cindy Is the Soil Scientist on
The National Riparian Service Team and She Will Talk about the
Relationship Between Soils and Riparian Systems. We\'re Glad You Could
Be Here Today.

Correll: I\'m Glad to Be Here Also. You Know, Soils Are Really Our
Hidden Resource, and One That I Think We Tend to Overlook Sometimes. So
I\'m Really Glad to Be Here to Talk More about Then.

Elmore: True. It\'s Amazing How Much We Don\'t Know about What\'s Just
under Our Feet. Perhaps You Could Begin by Explaining Some of the
Important Soil Characteristics We Should Understand When We\'re Looking
at Riparian Areas.

Correll: Thank You, Wayne. What I\'d like to Do Today Is Give You a
Feeling for the Importance of Soil as a Resource In Riparian Restoration
and Management. I\'ll Start with an Overview of Some Basic Soil
Characteristics And Then Discuss How Those Characteristics Are Important
For Understanding and Managing Riparian Areas. All Terrestrial Life
Depends on The Soil, the Water That Falls On the Soil and the Air above
And Within the Soil. Located at the Interface Between Earth and
Atmosphere, Soil Plays An Important Role in Determining The Amount of
Precipitation That Runs off the Land and the Amount That Enters the Soil
for Storage And Future Use. Soil Also Plays an Important Role in Storing
Nutrients, Filtering Pollutants, and as a Medium for Plant Growth. The
Type of Soil That Develops Is Determined by Climate, Geology and
Geomorphology or the Processes That Shaped the Land We See Today and Is
Influenced By Vegetation. These Soil Forming Factors Are Also Important
to Understanding The Potential of a Riparian Site. Soil Type Can
Influence Bank Stability, Vertical and Lateral Channel Stability,
Vegetation Composition and Other Factors Important to Riparian Area
Management and Restoration. Management must Also Consider Specific Soil
Characteristics Such as Texture as They Relate To Soil Compaction,
Surface Runoff and Erosion. So What Is Soil and How Is Soil Formed? Soil
Begins as Unconsolidated Mineral and Organic Material on The Earth\'s
Surface. Riparian Soils Begin as Sediments, Such as Sands, Silts And
Gravels That Are Deposited Over Time by Running Water. These Sediments
Are the Parent Material or the Raw Material From Which Soils Form.
Exposure of this Parent Material To Weather under Favorable Conditions
Results in Plants Being Established. As Plants Grow and Die, Organic
Residues Begin to Accumulate on The Surface. Animals and Microorganisms
Break Up and Feed on the Organic Residues and Release Nutrients For
Another Cycle of Plant Growth. The Microorganisms Themselves Are
Eventually Incorporated into The Soil Organic Matter. Because the Raw
Material of Riparian Soils Includes Soil, Sediments, and Organic Debris
From Uplands, Riparian Soils Provide a Fertile Medium for Plants to
Become Established and Grow. The Soil, Therefore, Is More Than Just
Simply Weathered Rock Or Dirt. It Is a Dynamic Layer of Living And
Nonliving Constituents. It Is Host to a Tremendous Variety of Organisms
Such as Animals, Insects and My Your Organisms That All Play a Part In
Soil Development. One Ounce of the Soil May Contain over a Billion
Bacteria, The Most Common Microorganism. Soils Serve as a Medium for a
Complex Set of Physical, Chemical and Biological Processes and
Interactions Important to Riparian Function. I Would like to next Focus
on Some of the Basic Soil Characteristics That Are Important to the Way
Soils Function in Riparian Areas. Soil Exists as a Three‑phase System of
Solids, Liquids and Gases. In Most Soils, the Solid Phase Consists of
Mineral Particles That Form a Framework onto Which Organic Particles
Adhere. Pore Spaces of Various Sizes Exist Between Particles. Pore
Spaces Are Important Because They Influence the Way Water, Air and
Nutrients Move Through the Soil And, Thus, Influence Plant Growth. Pore
Spaces Are Also Important For Root Growth. Pore Spaces in a Soil Are
Filled With Both Liquids and Gases. The Liquid Phase Consists Mainly Of
Water, Which Occurs as a Film Surrounding the Soil Particles And
Occupies a Smaller Pore Spaces. The Larger Pores Are Filled with Gases
Unless the Soil Is Saturated. Biological Activities Such as Root
Respiration and Organic Matter Decomposition Consume Gases Such as
Oxygen and Form Products Such as Carbon Dioxide. These Activities Result
in a Continuous Exchange of Gases Between Soil and the Atmosphere.
Texture Is Perhaps the Most Permanent Soil Characteristic. Texture
Refers to the Mix of Sand, Silt and Clay Particles in A Soil. Sand, Silt
and Clay Are Distinguished Mainly by Size With Sand Being the Largest
Particles and Clay the Smallest. A Soil with a Texture of Clay Loam Has
Equal Percentages of Sand, Silt and Clay. Rock Fragments Such as Gravels
Found in a Soil Modify Texture As in a Gravelly Clay Loam. As We Will
See, Texture and Rock Fragments Play an Important Role In Physical and
Chemical Activities in the Soil. Structure Is Another Important Soil
Property. Structure Is the Aggregation of Sand, Silt and Clay Particles
Into Larger Particles Called Peds. Soil Particles Are Held Told in Peds
by a Variety of Substance Such as Clay Minerals or Organic Matter.
Structure Is Important Because It Modifies the Influence of Texture.
Spaces Between Peds Are Much Larger than Spaces Between Sand, Silt and
Clay Particles. These Larger Spaces Ease the Movement of Air and Water
and Serve as Corridors for Roots and Pathways for Small Animals and My
Your Organisms. So Now That We Have a Basic Understanding of Soil
Texture And Structure, Let\'s Talk More About Why They Are Important.
Texture Is Important Because it Influences Important Soil
Characteristics, Including the Surface Area of Soil Particles. Surface
Area Is Important Because Most of the Nutrients in Water Needed for
Plant Growth Adhere to the Surfaces of Soil Particles. So the More
Surface Area, the Greater the Ability of a Soil to Act as a Reservoir
for Water and Nutrients. As an Example, One Ounce of a Soil Consisting
of Very Coarse Sand‑size Particles May Have a Surface Area Equal to
about 50 Square Inches. But an Ounce of a Silt or Clay May Have a
Surface Area Thousands or Millions of Times Greater than That of Sand,
And, Thus, Have a Much Greater Ability to Hold Water and Nutrients. As
We Have Just Seen, Sandy Soils Have less Surface Area and Less Volume
Occupied by Pore Spaces. Because Sand Particles Are Also Relatively
Large, the Spaces Between Particles Are Relatively Large. Large Pores
Allow Water to Efficiently Move Through the Soil. But since Water Moves
So Easily Through Them, Sandy Soils Have The Lowest Capacity to Hold
Water. Clay Has a Much Greater Surface Area than Sand. More Total Pore
Space And, Therefore, the Highest Total Water‑holding Capacity. But
Because the Pores in Clay Are Relatively Small, Water Moves Through the
Soil with Difficulty, and Clay Soils Generally Do Not Have the Highest
Available Water Capacity Or Water Available for Plant Growth. Silty
Soils, on the Other Hand, Are in Between Sands and Clays. Silt Has a
Smaller Total Water‑holding Capacity than Clay, but the Most Water
Available for Plant Growth. Clay and Silt Soils Remain Wetter Longer
than Sands and Release Water More Slowly over a Longer Time to Sustain
Growth. Now, Let\'s Apply These Concepts Of Texture and Structure to
Water Movement in Riparian Soils. Because Most Riparian Soils Develop in
Stratified Layers, We Must Understand How Water Moves Between Layers of
Different Textured Material N this Example, a Layer of Sand Is
Sandwiched Between Two Layers of A Finer Textured Material. When Water
Moving down Through The Soil First Encounters the Coarser Textured Sandy
Layer, it Will Temporarily Stop. The Sandy Soil Has Large Pores Which
Should Transport Water Easily, but Sandy Soils Also Have a Very Low
Capacity to Pull The Water out of the Finer‑textured Material with Small
Pores That Hold the Water Tightly. As it Continues Downward, it
Encounters Another Finer Textured Layer, the Water Will Continue to Move
as the Smaller Pores Pull the Water Downward. But Because of the Low
Transport Capacity of the Smaller Pores, Water May Build up above the
Finer Textured Layer and Move Laterally in the Coarser Textured
Material. This Lateral Movement Will Continue until the Water Is
Intercepted by a Stream Channel Or until it Returns to the Surface at
Some Point Downstream. Now That We\'ve Completed a General Discussion of
Some of The Basic Characteristics of Soils, Let\'s Focus More
Specifically on Riparian Soils. As Sediments Are Deposited, Riparian
Soils Are Continually Being Built. Soils Are Also Moved and Redeposited
as They Are Eroded By High Flows and End up as New Soil Material
Downstream. The Type of Material Deposited At Any One Point Will Change
Over Time, Resulting in Layers Of Sand, Silt, Clay and Larger Rock
Fragments. Riparian Areas Represent the Transition of Land to Water.
Reflecting this Change, Riparian Soils Are Generally Wetter than
Surrounding Uplands and Have Characteristics That Reflect Permanent
Surface or Subsurface Water Influence. Riparian Areas Often Have Soils
That Remain Inundated for Extended Periods, or Soils in Which the Water
Table Fluctuate Throughout the Year. This Presence of Water in the Soil
Profile Produces Persistent Features That Help Characterize Riparian
Soils. Riparian Areas Inundated for Extended Periods Have Saturated
Soils in Which All the Pore Spaces Are Filled with Water. Within a Few
Days Soil Microbes Have Depleted the Oxygen Supply In the Soil Water and
the Process of Decomposition Slows. As a Result, Organic Matter
Accumulates on the Soil Surface And in the Upper Soil Layers as Seen in
this O and a Horizon. Soils Inundated for Extended Periods or with a
Fluctuating Water Table Have Another Characteristic of Saturated Soil
Conditions, a Gray Color That Dominates the Soil Layers. As Oxygen in
the Soil Is Depleted, Microbes Use Oxygen‑containing Iron Compounds For
Respiration. In the Process, Iron Compounds Are Converted to a Soluble
Form. They Move out of the Saturated Zone and Leave a Gray Background
Color as Seen the Sea Horizon. ‑‑ C Horizon. When Enough Iron Has Moved
out The Gray Color Predominates and The Soil Is Considered to Be
Anaerobic or Functioning in the Absence of Oxygen. Fluctuating Water in
the Soil Allows Air to Fill the Larger Pores as the Water Level Lowers.
Pores Then Trap the Air as the Water Level Again Rises. When Dissolved
Iron in the Water Encounters These Pockets of Trapped Air, the Iron
Precipitates and Leaves a Red‑yellow Color or Mottle in The Soil. The
Level of Mottles in a Soil Show the Level of Fluctuating Water. This
Red‑yellow Coloration in Anaerobic Soils Is Often Seen as Vertical
Red‑yellow Streaks in The Rooting Zone of Plants Where Dissolved Iron in
the Soil Interacts with Oxygen from the Plant Roots. Now We\'re Going to
Switch Gears And Apply Some of the Concept We Have Been Talking about to
a Discussion of Some of the More Important Functions of Soil in Riparian
Areas. I\'ll Be Focusing on Three Functions: the First Is the Ability of
Soils to Intercept And Store Water for Future Release into Streams and
Groundwater. The Second Is the Role of Soil As a Medium for Plants and
Microorganisms to Cycle Nutrients. And the Third Is the Royal of Soil in
Storing Nutrients and Filtering Pollutants. Soils Are Critical in
Regulating One of the Most Important Parts Of the Hydrologic Cycle, the
Interception and Retention of Water on the Land. In this Regard, Soils
Act as a Sponge by Capturing Precipitation, Flood Flows and Surface and
Subsurface Runoff From Adjacent Lands. Water Enters the Soil Through
Infiltration. Water That Filters into the Soil Becomes Soil Moisture
Available For Plant Growth. If Enough Water Infiltrates the Soil, the
Water Thoroughly Saturates the Soil and Reaches The Water Table to
Recharge the Groundwater. The More Water That Infiltrates, The less
Water Becomes Runoff And the Lower the Potential for Erosion. High Rates
of Infiltration Can Help Reduce the Threat from Small to Moderate
Floods. Since Infiltration Is So Important to this Process of Capturing
and Storing Water, Let\'s Go Back and Look at the Factors Affecting
Infiltration. Infiltration Is Affected by Soil Texture, Soil Moisture
Content And Vegetation. As an Infiltration Agent, Vegetation Performs
Different Roles Depending on Whether the Infiltration Is Related to
Precipitation or to Water from High Flows and Surface Runoff. First,
Let\'s Look at the Role of Texture, Moisture and Vegetation In
Infiltration from Precipitation. The Ability of Water to Infiltrate Soil
Is Related to The Pore Space in a Soil. The Larger the Pores, as in a
Sandy Soil, the Easier the Water Will Infiltrate. Water Readily
Infiltrates Soil With Large Pores Open to the Surface. How Do Vegetation
and Moisture Affect this Ability of Water to Infiltrate Soil? Rain
Beating down on a Bare Soil Will Break up the Soil Aggregates on the
Surface and Create Smaller Particles with Smaller Pore Spaces. The
Smaller Pores Reduce the Infiltration of Water. Vegetation Breaks the
Force of The Falling Water, Protecting The Soil Aggregates, and Helping
Maintain Larger Pore Spaces So Water Infiltrates More Effectively.
Plants Also Help in Infiltration By Absorbing and Transpiring Soil
Water. As a Result, the Soil Is Drier To Much Greater Depths than Would
Be Possible If the Vegetation Were Not Present. As Long as a Soil Is Not
Saturated, Vegetation Promotes Infiltration. Organic Matter on the Soil
Surface and in the Upper Soil Layers Also Increases the Soil\'s Ability
to Absorb Water and Can Be Even More Effective than Vegetation. In a
Saturated Soil, All Pores Are Filled with Water. Once a Soil Reaches
this Point, All Water Runs off and Vegetation No Longer Affects
Infiltration. But Vegetation May Still Lessen Erosion by Protecting the
Soil Surface from Runoff. Now Let\'s Look at Vegetation\'s Role During
High Flows and Runoff Events. In Riparian Areas, Plants Dissipate Energy
and Reduce the Velocity of Flowing Water. Reducing the Velocity Allows
More Water to Infiltrate. In Addition, as the Energy of The Flowing
Water Pushes Her Beige Us Plants Such as Sedges And Grasses Over, the
Soil Surface Is Protected from Erosion. This Slide Demonstrates the
Differences in Water Storage Capacity Between a Nonfunctioning Riparian
Area in The Upper Diagram and a Properly Functioning Riparian Area in
the Lower Diagram. In the Nonfunctioning System, The Water Storage
Capacity Has Been Largely Lost Through the Loss of the Riparian Soil and
Vegetation. The Riparian Area Has Become a Water Transport Device Rather
Than a Water Storage Device. In the Lower Functioning Riparian Area,
There Is a Tremendous Increase in the Amount of Water Stored. Camp Creek
Illustrates the Benefits of a Properly Functioning Riparian Area in
Terms of Water Storage. This First Slide of Camp Creek Was Taken in 1966
When the System Was Nonfunctional and the Stream Flow Was Intermittent.
The Second Slide Was Taken 20 Years Later from the Same Location after a
Change in Management Allowed the System to Recover. At this Point the
System Is Properly Functioning and the Stream Flow Has Become Perennial.
The Deposition of Sediments over This Time Has Raised the Floodplain to
a Depth Seven Feet Higher than the Previous Slide. That Addition of
Seven Feet Distributed over a Riparian Area That Is Now Half a Mile Wide
by Five Miles Long Equates to a Potential Storage Capacity of 250
Million Gallons of Additional Water per Mile of Stream. Now Let\'s Move
onto the Role of Soils and Cycling Nutrients. Nutrients Are Simply the
Elements or Compounds Essential For the Growth of Plants and Other
Organisms. Nutrients Cycling Is the Exchange of Nutrients Between Living
and Nonliving Constituent. For Instance, Oxygen from the Soil Is Used
for Root Respiration. Carbon Dioxide Is Produced by Respiration. The
Result Is a Continuous Exchange of Oxygen from the Atmosphere into the
Soil, and Carbon Dioxide from the Soil Into the Atmosphere. Nutrients in
the Soil Originate From a Variety of Sources. Some Are Made Available
Through Weathering of Minerals in the Parent Material or from Diffusion
of Gases from the Atmosphere. Other Sources of Nutrients Are
Fertilizers, Compounds Contained In Pesticides and Other Manufactured
Chemicals That Find Their Way into the Soil. Plants Absorb Most of Their
Essential Nutrients from Solution in the Soil. The next Two Slides Show
an Example of Nutrient Cycling Through a Simplified Diagram of The
Nitrogen Cycle. This Cycle Has Two Parts: in The First Part, Microbes in
the Soil Change Nitrogen Gas from The Atmosphere into a Form of Nitrogen
That Plants Can Use. At the Same Time, Microbes Are Also Converting
Nitrate, a More Harmful Form of Nitrogen Back Into Nitrogen Gas, Which
Is Returned to the Atmosphere, Completing this Part of the Cycle. In the
Second Part of the Cycle, Plants and Microbes in the Soil Take up
Nutrients and Store Them Until They Die. Microbes Use Nutrients as Food
Or Change Them So They Are Degraded into Simpler Compounds. Plants Take
up Nutrients Through Their Root Systems and Store These Nutrients in
Their Roots And Leaves. Once the Plants and Microbes Die, the Nutrients
Are Released Back into the Soil. Nitrates That Are Not Converted To
Nitrogen Gas Are Immobilized Through Uptake by Plants and Microbes Are
Released into the Groundwater and Streams. This Ability of Soil to Cycle
Nitrogen in Riparian Areas Is Important for Water Quality. Nutrients and
Sediments Are the Main Sources of Surface Water Pollution. Soils in
Riparian Areas Can Play An Important Role in the Long‑term Withdrawal or
Removal Of Nutrients and Pollutants. Nutrients Find Their Way to
Riparian Areas in a Number of Ways. Nutrients Adhere to Sediments And
Are Deposited Either by Surface Runoff from the Uplands Or as
Water‑borne Sediments During High Flows. Nutrients Are Also Carried by
Surface Runoff, Subsurface Flow And Streamflow. Nutrients in Water Are
Either Pulled from the Groundwater or Infiltrate Soils from Surface
Runoff and High Flows. For Nutrients or Pollutants to Be Removed from
the Water, They Must Come in Contact with a Biologically Active Surface
Layers of the Soil or the Rooting Zone of Riparian Vegetation.

Elmore: I Would like to Mention at this Point That We\'ll Be Going to
the Phones Again in A Few Minutes, So If You Have Any Questions or
Comments on Hydrology or Soils, Please Start Placing Your Calls.

Correll: Thank You, Wayne. We\'re Looking Forward to Those Phone Calls.
Back to Soils, While These Are Some of the Main Functions of Soil and
Riparian Areas, There Are Other Important Considerations of Soils for
Riparian Restoration and Management. As Lorena Has Already Mentioned,
Bank Stability Is Influenced by A Number of Factors, Including Soil
Characteristics, the Amount And Type of Streambank Vegetation, and the
Stabilizing Properties Provided to Soils by Root Systems. Bank Stability
Relies in Large Part on Having Both the Right Type of Vegetation and
Enough of That Vegetation to Provide Stability. Plants That Evolved
under Wetter Riparian Conditions Tend to Have Dense Root Systems That
Extend Further into the Soil than Uplands Species. The Roots of These
Riparian Species Enhance Bank Stability By Physically Binding the Soil
Along a Bank and by Providing Resistance to Compaction. Upland Species,
Such as the Bluegrass Are Mow Shallowly Rooted and Lack the Root Density
Of Species Adapted to Wetter Conditions. Because of This, They Add
Little To Soil Bank Stability. Soil Characteristics Contributing to Bank
Stability Include the Cohesion Found in Fine‑textured Soils and the
Internal Frictional Resistance Of Coarse Textured Material. Bank
Stability Is Dependent on The Interaction of These Factor And the
Destabilizing Influences Related to Manage Ment and Natural Events Such
as Flooding. The Ability of the Soil to Resist Compaction from a Variety
Of Sources Such as Hooves, Vehicles and People Is Related To Texture,
Soil‑water Content And the Amount and Type of Roots Binding the Soil
Together. Fine‑textured Soils Are Highly Susceptible to Compaction When
Wet. Compaction on Fine‑textured Soil Pushes Soil Particles Closer
Together, Restricting the Infiltration of Water and Increasing Runoff
and Erosion. This Further Dries out the Site And Tends to Favor More
Shallow‑rooted Species, Which Leads to Further Degradation of The Site.
Coarse Textured or Sandy Soils, On the Other Hand, Are Much less
Susceptible to Compaction When Wet Because Their Particles Are Larger
and There Is More Frictional Resistance Between Particles, Sandy Soils
Do Not Compress as Readily as Finer Grained Soils. The Addition of Rock
Fragments To a Soil Increases the Soil\'s Ability to Resist Compaction.
Compacted Soils Also Affect Plant Vigor by Presenting a Mechanical
Barrier to Roots and Reducing Water and Nutrient Availability. As Janice
Mentioned Earlier, Soils and Their Parent Materials Also Influence
Vertical and Lateral Channel Stability. Fine‑textured Soils and Parent
Materials Tend to Be Vertically Unstable and Subject to Downcutting.
Coarse Textured Soils Tend to Be Laterally Unstable and Subject To
Lateral Migration Across a Valley Bottom. Soil Investigations Early on
Can Help Identify These Potential Problems. Let\'s Finish Today\'s Talk
with a Short Summary of Factors to Consider in Determining the Potential
and Extent of Riparian Areas. , Determining the Ecological Potential of
Riparian Areas Is Often More Difficult than Upland Areas as Riparian
Resources Such As Soil and Vegetation May Be Absent. The First Step,
Therefore, in Determining Potential, Is to Understand the Landscape, the
Climate, Geology and Landforms That Influence Soil Development.
Investigate Soils If They Are Present or Look for Similar Areas Where
Resources Can Be Compared. Historical Records or Photographs Can Also
Help in Understanding What the Riparian Area Might Have Looked like in
The past. To Understand the Potential Extent an Existing Riparian Area
Might Be Capable of Achieving, Some of the Same Factors must Be
Considered. Understand Your Landscape. Landform or the Adjacent
Topography Is Often the Limiting Factor in Riparian Extent.
Understanding Stream Type Will Also Help Tell You What You Should Expect
in Terms of a Floodplain, Soil Material and Riparian Area. Investigating
Soils Is Important To Understanding Where Riparian Vegetation Might Be
Reestablished, And, Again, Historical Records and Photographs May
Provide Information on Historical Extent. I 2 I Hope You Now Have You a
New Feeling for the Importance Every Soils in Riparian Management.
Understanding Basic Soil Characteristics, the Important Function That
Soils Play in Riparian Areas and Anticipating The Way Different Soil
Types Will React to Management and Naturally Induced Stresses Will
Increase Our Successes in Riparian Restoration.

Elmore: Thanks, Cindy. You Know, It\'s Kind of Obvious From ‑‑ to Me at
Least ‑‑ from Both of Your Discussions the Importance of Having
Hydrologists and Soil Scientists Out There That Can Really Help Us. As
You Guys Know, They Are Some Of Our Scarcest Skills That We Have. How
Would You Look at Some Opportunities for Filling Those Voids and Getting
this Program Off the Ground?

Correll: I Think from an Agency Standpoint, We\'re Probably Not Looking
at Adding Additional People, and I Think One of the Real Strengths of
the Collaborative Efforts That We\'re Looking at Is the Ability to Pull
Our Best Resources from All Agencies Together And, You Know, From the
Private Sector, So We Have the Resources That We Need To Go out and Do
Riparian Restoration.

Elmore: Thanks. Our Phone Lines Are Open. So If You Want to Call In,
That Will Be a Good Deal. We\'ve Got One on the Line Right Now. It\'s
Gerald in Twin Falls. Gerald?

Caller: Yes. This Program Is Being Presented On a Very Practical Basis
and I Appreciate It. In Idaho We Have Been and Are Working on Riparian
Problems as Stated. Not Every Application Works Everywhere. We Need to
Continue on with an Aggressive Riparian Program and Water Is a must. To
the Question Here, the Involvement of the Interested Public Is Essential
to Developing a Balanced View of The Management of Public Lands.
However, the Way the Rules and Regs Read at the Present, an Individual
or Group Can Qualify For a 32 Cent Stamp Is an Interested Public. While
No One Should Be Restricted from Providing Their Input on the Management
of Public Lands, There Needs to Be A Way to More Clearly Defines an
Appropriate Protest or Appeal. My Question to the BLM Is: When Can We
Expect this to Be Corrected So We and the BLM Can Continue on with the
Programs You Are Talking about Here Today?

Elmore: Well, That\'s an Excellent Question. I\'ll Try and Answer That
One. The Answer from My Standpoint Is We Really Don\'t Know. The Courts
and Congress Decides What Is Considered to Be Acceptable as a Protest
and What Isn\'t. I Think One Way We Can Get Around and That Have Fewer
Protests Come in Is Working Through this Collaborative Process So That
the People Are Involved and There Is Ownership In the Decision and
Through That Ownership We Get Fewer Protests. We Have Some Faxes That
Have Come In, Too, and I Was Wondering, Janice, Do You Have One You
Would like to Answer?

Corzatt: Sure.

Elmore: We Have Numerous.

Corzatt: this One Is from Dan Carpenter in North Bend, Oregon, And He
Asks: Because of the Pattern of Valley Bottom Roads Encroaching on
Stream Channels And Early Century Slash Dam Logging Many of the Valleys
and Streams Are Entrenched and Disconnected from Former Floodplains.
Annual or Bankful Flows Do Not Have the Energy to Widen These Channels
and Form a New Floodplain Because the Strength Of the Bank Materials and
Bank Vegetation. How Can Such Stream Channels Be Reasonably Recovered
with the Functioning Floodplain and Should We Rely on Extreme Events? My
Thought on That Is That If You Manage the Vegetation ‑‑ You\'re Saying
That There\'s Plenty Good Vegetation There, And It\'s Taking the Energy.
I Agree with Your Last Statement That, Yes, We Should Rely on Extreme
Events. I Don\'t See Any Reason to Be Getting in There with a Bulldozer
and Moving Things Around If That\'s What Your Question Was. I Think That
‑‑ Manage That Vegetation, Maybe Take Care of The Old Road, Close it and
Get It Back into the Natural Shape Of the Way Things Used to Be.

Elmore: Thanks. Lorena, You Had a Couple That Came in Also. You Have One
You Would like to Answer?

Corzatt: Well, There\'s One Here That Is Actually Two Parts And I\'ll
Take a Shot at at Least The First Part. It\'s from Steve Harris, Rio
Grande Restoration in Taos, and He Asks: What Role Do You See Your
Agencies Playing in Stream Flow Enhancement? Then There Is a Dash,
Commitment To Federal Reserve Water Rights, Water Rights Purchases or
Can Watershed Restoration Alone Provide Adequate Water? Certainly I
Think Cindy Pointed Out Some of the Advantages to Good Riparian
Management and How That Allows the Riparian Areas To Act as Sponges and
Act as Reservoirs in the Higher Parts Of the Watershed and Even down
Lower. A Lot of Slides That We\'ve Already Seen and Things That We\'ll
See this Afternoon Certainly Point to the Ability Of Those Riparian
Areas to Store Water and Increase the Length of Time over Which the
Streams Flow. The Federal Agencies, of Course, Have a Mandate to Look at
Water Rights and I Know That a Lot of Our Agencies Are Actively Involved
in That Right Now. I Don\'t Know How That Tie Will Actually Come out
Finally as Far As Good Riparian Management and Water Rights Go.

Elmore: All Right. Thanks. We Have Another Caller, and It\'s Dick in
Pueblo, Colorado. Dick, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Okay, Wayne. As Part of the Colorado Tfs Training Cadre I Get a
Lot of Questions from Folks Saying You Are Totally Focusing on the
Physical and Hydrologic Aspects Of a Stream and Stream Health. You Are
Not Considering the Biological Aspects, the Terrestrial and Aquatic
Species And How They Relate to Riparian Health. How Would You Respond to
this in Explaining to the Folks in Terms Of, You Know, How We Get to Pfc
And Then How We Get to the Biological Aspects of Riparian Health?

Elmore: I\'d Respond to That Question in That Pfc, or the Functionality
of Streams, Builds The Base for Actually Having Something to Measure for
the Future and Your Desired Conditions You Want to Attain. You Cannot
Have Willows For, Say, Willow Fly Catchers, or You Cannot Have Shade or
Trout or You Cannot Have Increased Opportunities for Livestock Forage by
Increasing Water Storage and Those Kind of Things Until You Have the
Basic Functioning Properties of a Stream in Place. Those Functioning
Properties Are What Produce Those Desired Future Conditions. We Are Not
Saying That You Should Drop Any of Your Inventories or Any of Your
Thought Processes That Try to Detect Those Other Attributes, Those Other
Things That We\'re Interested In. We\'re Just Saying That If You Use
This, it Will Tell You Whether You\'re Ever Going to Get There or Not.

Caller: Thank You.

Elmore: You\'re Welcome. Cindy, You Had a Fax That Came In.

Correll: this Is a Fax from The BLM California Desert District Office,
and the Fax Reads: Many Agencies Have New Program Initiatives with
Catchy Titles. These Often Drape over Yet Other Programs Which Have
Always Been Fundamental to Resource Management, Yet They Have Had The
Effect of Distracting and Diluting Attention and Reducing On the Ground
Effectiveness Especially with Declining Budgets. Why Can\'t We Just Wrap
All These Efforts into One Cooperative, Stable Ecosystem Comprehensive
Program and It\'s Signed a BLM Staffer, and My Answer to That Would Be,
That\'s Exactly What We Are Trying to Do with this Program. The Whole
Purpose of Pfc Is to Establish Some Minimum Guidelines to Get Us to a
Minimum Level of Functioning That We Feel We Need, but to Do That, We
Need to Rely on All the Existing Efforts and Build on The Existing
Efforts and the Whole Process That We\'re Involved on Is Just a Minimum
Level to Help Us Communicate and Understand Each Other Better and To
Wrap in Those Other Efforts That Are Ongoing. So We Are Not Trying to ‑‑
this Is Not Meant to Be a New Effort That Takes the Place of Anything
That\'s Going On. It\'s Just Meant to Complement Existing Work.

Elmore: Thanks. I\'ve Got One Here That Just Says \"From Janet.\" Isn\'t
from You, Is It?

Corzatt: No. I\'m Not Janet, I\'m Janice.

Elmore: I Know. But I Thought You Might Have Tried to Trick Me. After 20
Years I Am I Struggling Not to Be a Cynical Ecologist in A Federal
Agency. How Do You Expect this New Initiative to Be Different than Past
Initiatives? And I Think the Answer to That Goes Back to What Cindy Just
Said ‑‑ this Initiative and this Thought Process Involves a Lot More
People and Will Not Work, Will Not Work, Unless Everybody In the
Watershed Is Involved in Trying to Keep Water on the Land Longer. We Are
Looking at Full Functioning System, Not Just Looking at Postage Stamping
the West with a Little Recovery Here And a Little Bit There. One Thing
We Have Done with a Lot of Land Plans in the past Is Excluded One Side
or the Other, And Our Examples of Having Full And Really Good Watershed
Plans That Include Everybody Within The Watershed and Having Them
Involved in the Decisions That They\'re Going to Be Most Affected By, We
Have Some but We Do Not Have Enough. There Are Some Good Examples, And
We Hope to Expand Those Examples and Get More on the Ground. Let\'s See.
Janice?

Corzatt: I Have One. This Is from Pam Jakes of the North Central Station
of the Forest Service in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Focus of the
Discussion Has Been on Riparian Management in The West, but as the
Recent Floods Have Shown, We Have Significant Riparian Issues in The
East. How Do You See Issues Related to Riparian Land Management in the
East? Is it Different than in the West And Are Your Roles Different? Our
Role Here on the National Riparian Service Team Right Now Might Be a
Little Different than What\'s Going on in the East Because We Have Been
Chartered Right Now to Focus on the West And Focus on Grazing, but We
Hope That as We Get Organized And Settled into What We\'re Doing, We
Will Be Able to Expand Into the East, but Even So, People in the East
Can Learn About the Proper Functioning Condition Assessment That Don
Prichard Will Be Talking about Later On. We Can Send Materials to You If
You Request That and Hopefully In a Very near Future We Will Be Able to
Start Having Training Sessions in the East Also. Classification Systems
Also Work Very Well in the East.

Elmore: Thanks, Janice. We Have Another Caller on the Line. It\'s Connie
in Melba, Idaho. Connie, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Okay. This Question Is for Cindy Correll, in Your Pictures, What
Were the Changes in the Management Practices That Took Place over That
20‑year Period? Did this Take Place on Private Or Federal Lands or How
Large a Drainage Area Are We Talking About?

Elmore: I\'ll Answer That One. It Was on BLM Land in Central Oregon, and
it Was Started in 1966 by a Man Named Harold Winegar. It\'s than
Exclosure Built First As Just a Quarter‑mile Long and Expanded to Be
Five Miles Long And Adjacent to That Exclosure Are Grazing Management
Practices That We\'ve Tried over the Last 25 Years, 30 Years to Also
Look At the Different Runs in Changes And We Found That What Has
Happened in Camp Creek in the Exclosure Can Be Duplicated Outside of
That Exclosure with The Proper Kind of Management.

Caller: Your Proper Kind of Management Then Was Total Exclosure of Any
Type of Use?

Elmore: No, Outside of the Exclosure We Had Spring Use Before the
Critical Growing Period of Upland Grasses, Which Is During the Month of
March and April, and We Also Had Some Winter Use. So the Use That Was
Going On, The Livestock Use That Was Going On Outside, Was Replicating
the Same Kind of Recovery Processes And Functional Processes That We Saw
Going on Inside the Exclosure.

Caller: Okay. Thank You.

Elmore: Okay. That\'s Concludes this First Half Of Our Interagency
Riparian Workshop. We Didn\'t Get to All the Faxes And I Am Sorry about
That, but We Really Appreciate the Calls And the Faxes That Everyone
Sent In. We\'ll Take a One‑hour Break at This Point and Give Everyone a
Chance to Grab a Bite to Eat. When We Come Back, We\'ll Talk More about
the Functionality of Streams and Also Look at Some Examples of How to
Design Grazing Systems That Are Compatible with Riparian Management and
Recovery, and Later in Our Second Segment, Our Top Leadership Will Be
Back. We Also Will Have Some Guests From the Livestock Industry and
Environmental Community. So Keep Your Equipment Set Right Where it Is.
When We Return, We\'ll Again Be Right Here on Galaxy 3, Transponder 21
Horizontal. We\'ll Give You about Two Minutes To Have a Test Signal
Before We Restart the Show. So We\'ll See You in an Hour. Have a Great
Lunch!

Elmore: Welcome Back to Our Interagency Riparian Workshop. I Hope Odd
Good Lunch. We Did. We Got a Fax from John Henderson In Rock Springs
Saying Send Us Pizza. John, It\'s on its Way. So Just Stay There in the
Office Until it Shows Up! The First Thing We Would like to Do this
Afternoon Is to Begin Our Discussion on the Functionality of Riparian
Areas. With Us Is Don Prichard Who Is a Fisheries Biologist and Riparian
Specialist. Don Will Talk about One Tool That Can Be Used to Assess the
Functioning Condition of Streams. Good Afternoon, Don.

Prichard: Good Afternoon. It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here to Talk about
Something That\'s So Important to Us That We Have Worked So Many Years
On.

Elmore: Thank You and Also Joining Us to Talk about Functioning
Condition Is Mike Borman, Rangeland Extension Specialist at Oregon State
University and One of the Services State Team Trainers. Mike, We\'re
Glad You Could Spend Some Time with Us Also.

Borman: Thank You, Wayne. I Appreciate the Invitation You Have Given Me
to Join You Today Because I Think the Overall Program That We\'re
Talking Today Has a Potential to Help Us Address Some of the Resource
Issues That Are Important to All Of Us.

Elmore: Thanks. Mike and Don Will Now Show Us How to Use the Information
Already Presented Today to Help Us Evaluate the Condition and Potential
of Riparian Areas. We Are Going to Begin with Don.

Prichard: Thank You, Wayne. As Wayne in My Introduction Stated I Am a
Fishery Biologist And as a Fishery Biologist, When I Walk out to a
Stream, I Start Lew Look at That Stream, Does it Contain Pools? And What
Are the Quality of Those Pools? Are They Providing Ideal Habitat For
Fish Species? I Look to See If There Is Overhanging Banks That Provides
Hiding Cover. I like to Look at the Substrate. Is a Good Clean Site for
the Fish to Spawn In. But I Have to Stop and Remind Myself, Those Are
Values, Those Are Desired Conditions I Want to See in a Stream, and
Before I Can Get There I Have to Have the Systems, the Attributes,
Processes in a Working Order or Functioning Properly. This Morning We
Talked about Some of Those Attributes Processes and I Want to Back up A
Minute and Talk about If We\'re Going to Assess a System\'s
Functionality and a Tool That Will Do That for Us, but to Use This Tool,
I Have to Go Back and Look at the Capability and Potential of a Given
Riparian‑wetland Area. The Capability Potential of Any Riparian Area Is
Dictated by the Interaction of Three Things: That\'s Water, Vegetation,
Soil And its Adjoining Landscape. For Example, If I Have a Stream That
Is Perennial, its Potential To Grow Vegetation Is Much Greater than If
That System Is Intermittent. But I Also Have to Add in the Factors of
Soil, Type, Texture, Landscape Setting. In Certain Settings, Even with
Perennial Water, I Have Limited Potential to Grow Vegetation or Maybe
Even Need to Have Vegetation. The Tool That I Want to Talk About Today
Is a Tool That We Can Use to Assess Whether or Not Our Riparian Areas
Are in Functioning Condition So That I Have a Chance to Manage for Those
Values That Are Important To Me. This Tool Is Broken down into
Categories, and the Way That We Assess it Is Relative to These
Categories with a Check List That I Will Show You in a Little Bit. What
Do We Mean by Proper Functioning Condition? Proper Functioning Condition
or The Acronym That You Heard this Morning, a Pfc, Means a
Riparian‑wetland Area Is Functioning Properly When We Have Adequate
Vegetation, Land Form or Large Woody Debris Present to Dissipate Stream
Energies with High Water Flows. Remember from Our Discussions This
Morning, When We\'re Talking About These Flows, We\'re Not Talking about
These Catastrophic Events, We\'re Talking about Those 5, 10, 30‑year
Flow Events We Deal with on a Common Basis F We Are Dissipating That
Energy, We\'re Reducing Erosion, Which Improves Water Quality. As We
Reduce Erosion and Improve Water Quality, We Are Going to Be Filtering
Sediment, Capturing Bedload and this All Results in Aiding Floodplain
Development. As We Aid Floodplain Development, as Lorena Talked About
this Morning, We Start to Improve Our Floodwater Retention. This Is How
We Start to Keep the Water on the Land Longer. Janice Showed You a
Hydrograph This Morning That Showed You a Proper Functioning Riparian
Area And a One That\'s Not Functioning Not Quite as Well and the Result
In the Runoff. Then We Have to Have Vegetation That Develops Root Masses
That Can Stabilize Those Streambanks Or Where Have Located That Sediment
Against Cutting Actions Of the Energies of Those Streams. Then I Can Get
to What\'s Important as a Fish Biologist. I Will Develop Characteristics
That Provide the Conditions Necessary for Fish Production, Waterfowl
Breeding and et Cetera. Again, the Functioning Condition Of Any
Riparian‑wetland Area Is The Result of the Interaction Among the
Geology, Soil, Water And Vegetation. If We Go Back to the Beginning Of
the Vegetation, We Notice That We Have to Have Adequate Vegetation,
Landform or Large Woody Debris. That Means If We\'re Going to Go Out and
Assess a Site, We Have To Kind of Understand the Potential of That Site.
What Do We Mean by Potential? Potential Means the Highest Ecological
Status a Riparian Area Can Attain Given No Political Social or Economic
Constraints. This Is Often Referred to as the Potential Natural
Community, Potential Plant Community, the Climatic State or of That
Riparian Area. We All Know on the Given Landscape out There We Have Made
Changes, and Some of These Changes Have Prevented These Sites from
Achieving Potential If They\'re in a Degraded State. So We Have to
Understand What Is The Capability of That Site as Well as the Potential.
What Do We Mean by Capability? Capability Is the Highest Ecological
Status a Riparian‑wetland Can Attain Given Political, Social or
Economical Constraints. These Are Often Referred to as Limiting Factors.
For Example, If We Have a Perennial Stream and We Construct a Dam on
That Stream, We May Change the Flow Patterns Of That Watershed. What Can
That Do? That May Change the Potential of What Kind of Vegetation We Can
Have in That System. Cottonwoods, for an Example, Are Very Attuned to
Reproduction to Flow Event, Deposition, Flooding, Germination and
Sustaining That Plant Community. If We Change That Flow Setting, We May
No Longer Have the Potential to Have Cottonwoods. Then We Have to Manage
for Functionality Through the Shrub Community or Herbaceous Community.
Now, Any Tool That We Use as We Use It, We Have to Get Categorize Things
into Things That Are less than Meeting Our Standard of Proper
Functioning Condition. The Tool That I\'m Talking about Today Has Two
Additional Categories That I\'d like to Define for You: Functional at
Risk Is a Category That\'s less Than Pfc or Proper Functioning
Condition. When We Categorize a Stream this Way, What We\'re Meaning Is
That This Given Riparian‑wetland Area Is in Functional Condition, in
Other Words, Many of Those Attributes, Processes Are Working, but an
Existing Attribute, Process, Maybe Soil, Water or Vegetation, Still
Makes That Site Susceptible to Degradation. Again, this Is to Those 5,
10, 30‑year Flow Event That Lorena Talked about this Morning. So If We
Go out There and We See A Site, it Has the Wrong Kind of Vegetation, it
Has an Upland Vegetation on the Streambanks, Doesn\'t Have the Ability
to Hold That System Together Would Be a Good Example of a System We
Would Rate Functional‑at Risk. The next Category We Have Is Titled
Nonfunctioning. The Definition for Nonfunctioning Is Riparian‑wetland
Areas That Are Clearly Not Providing Adequate Vegetation, Landform or
Large Woody Debris to Dissipate Stream Energies. Those Are Associated
with Those Five, 10, 30‑year Flow Events Thus Not Reducing Erosion, Not
Improving Water Quality or Those Things We Listed above as Proper
Functioning Condition. A Good Example of a Site That\'s Nonfunctional Is
a System That Janice and Others Talked about This Morning Where We Have
a System That\'s Incised, No Longer Has a Floodplain Where it Should
Have a Floodplain Is a Good Indicator of a Nonfunctioning System. Now, a
Lot of Terminology to All That, and What Do These Definitions Really
Mean? At this Time I\'d like to Run Through Some Successional States Of
a Given Valley Bottom Type And Talk about How We Would Rate One as
Proper Functioning Condition, Functional‑at Risk And Nonfunctional. On
Your Screen Is a Diagram of An Alluvial Nongraded Valley Bottom Type.
This Would Be Commonly Found Within the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau,
Rocky Mountain Regions. If We Look at State a What We See There Is We
Have a System That Relative to Our Category of Proper Functioning
Condition Is, Yes, it Has Adequate Vegetation, It Has a Floodplain
That\'s Achievable to Where We Can Dissipate Those Energies. It Has the
Right Kind of Vegetation in That Setting and We Would Rate it as Proper
Functioning Condition. Here\'s That Same Valley Bottom Type but in a
Different Condition. When We Go out There and Assess This Area, We Start
to Look at Is There a Soil, Vegetation Water Process That Makes the Site
Subject to Degradation. We Start to See a Few Changes. There\'s Been a
Significant Change in My Width‑depth Ratio. Am I in Balance with My Land
Form Setting Now or Am I out of Balance? We Have a Change in Vegetation.
If this Vegetation Is Upland, Like Bluegrass, or Whatever, That Does Not
Have the Ability To Hold Those Banks Together We Are Going to Rate it as
Functional‑at Risk. If We Are Moving from State a to State B, It\'s
Going to Be a Downward Trend. State C down Here, Again the Same Valley
Bottom Type, but Notice We Have a System That Is Incised. We Have Lost
Our Floodplain. This Is a Classic Cam Pull of Where We Would Rate the
System Nonfunctional. With All These Systems, Given a Chance, They Can
Recover. State D, Again, Has Started its Channel Evolution Process, Much
Of What Bill Jackson Talked this This Morning and Lorena and Janice
Added to in Their Discussions Today. We Would Still Rate this as
Nonfunctional Because We Still Want Some of These Other Attribute
Processes to Start Help Heal this System. State E, Now We Would Rate
Functional but at Risk, Upward Trend. We\'re Headed in the Right
Direction. And State F, Given Time, We\'ll Cross a Threshold and Again
We Can Say That That System Is Functioning Properly, in Other Words, it
Has Adequate Vegetation, et Cetera, to Dissipate Those Stream Energies.
Now, this Tile to Use to Assess Functionality of Our Riparian Areas Is
Found in Tech Reference 1737‑9. This Tool Is Not Intended to Displace,
Replace a Lot of the Inventories That We Have out There Already. This Is
Just a Tool That\'s Going To Help Us to Pull Some of this Information
Together, Get Us Focused, Help Us to Understand What\'s Needed for this
System to Function Properly. Before You Ever Go out on the Ground,
There\'s Many Things That You Have to Do. You Need to Review Existing
Data. If Somebody\'s Done Inventories, If Somebody Has Done Some
Classification for You, Those Are Things That Are Going to Help You to
Judge Potential. What Can the Site Really Be If It\'s in a Degraded
Condition? That\'s Important to Understand As We Balance These Things
and Work Towards It. Then for Any Site That We Go out On, We Have to
Understand the Attributes, Processes That Are Present, Could Be Present
for The Site That We\'re Assessing. One Thing That We Need to Do When We
Look at All These Is to Define What Those Attributes Processes Are. The
next Overhead I Have Here Kind of Shows You Some of the Hydrogeomorphic
Processes That Are Found in Most of Our Running Water Systems. Lorena
and Janice Talked about Many of These Today. When I Go out There and
Make an Assessment of a Site, for Example, I Have to Kind of Understand,
Shoot it Be Straight, Should it Have a Very High Sinuous Pattern to It?
Do I Need Large Woody Debris as A Controller of the Power in the Stream
to Capture Bedload and Help Dissipate Energy? Naturally, Is this a Steep
Stream or Is it a Steep Stream Because We Have Lost Our Sinuous Pattern
on That System? How Much of an Active Floodplain Should it Be There.
Those Are Some of the Things We Need to Look At. Some of the Other
Hydrology Aspects That Need to Be Looked At Are Floodplain Storage and
Release, How That Plays a Role In There. What Should Be Our Bank
Width‑depth Ratio? And What Are Some of the Hydrologic Controls That
Should Be There to Help Dissipate Some Of Those Energies? We Need to Do
the Same Thing for Soils. Erosion, Deposition. Some of the Factors That
You Want to Look at for Attributes/processes Relative to Erosion and
Deposition May Include Things Such as Bank Stability, Much of What Cindy
Talked about this Morning, Different Types of Soils, Different Textures
Provide Different Ability or Require Vegetation to Help in That
Stability, Bedload Transport Rate, What Kind of System Are We Talking
about? When We\'re in Alaska, Some of The Glacier Systems Have a Much
Larger Transport System than Some of the Ones We Deal with in The Lower
48 and We Need to Understand the Depositional Features That Should Be
There. For Soils It\'s Very Important to Know the Soil Type. Are We
Dealing with Sand, Silt, Clays? What Do We Have? What about Capillary
Ability of That System? We Also Need to Construct Attribute/processes
for Vegetation. I Am Not Going to Talk Too Much About this Today as Mike
Is Going to Follow Me and Go into Detail on Vegetation But, Again, What
Types Should Be There? Is There a Herbaceous Site, Herbaceous Woody or
Does it Need The Woody Component to Hold it Together to Get it to the
Threshold of Proper Function and Condition? What Kind of Plants Are
They? How Do They Recruit or Reproduce Themselves Is Important to
Understand When We\'re Making This Assessment. Now, If We Go Back to
That Definition Earlier, We Realize That We Have to Have Adequate
Vegetation and Landform. But How Much Is Adequate Vegetation? We Need to
Grasp the Capability Potential of Each of the Sites That We\'re
Assessing. At this Time I Want to Run Through a Little List of Some
Guidance That Will Help Us Get At Really What Is the Potential Of the
Site That We\'re Assessing. The First Key We Have There and Logical Is
That Look for Relic Areas. Exclosures. Preserves. If You\'re a Rancher
Throughout And You Want to Know What the Potential of a Stream Is on
Your Property, Maybe Your Adjoining Neighbor Riparian Areas Are in a
Little Different Condition or Whatever. It Provides You Keys of What
That Site Can Be. You Don\'t Stop at Your Boundaries. We Need to Look at
the Entire Watershed for These Relic Areas. Sometimes We Don\'t Have
Relic Areas. So I like to Seek out Historic Photos, Survey Notes or
Documentation That Indicates What Those Historic Conditions Were at One
Time. The Army, Those People That Come Out Here to Explore the Area and
Report Back to Congress, Kept Very Good Notes of Some of the Conditions
That They Found. One Caution on Photos I\'d like To Give. The Technology
of Photographs May Have Occurred after a Change In the Riparian Area
That You\'re Looking at So Be Careful with That and Look with Those
Survey Notes to Indicate a Change or Something Different Prior to
Photography. If Those Don\'t Do the Answer, Then I Start to Look for
Species Lists. I like to Go to Museums, Go to Universities, Fish and
Game Agencies. They Have Very Good Records of Species, Animal, Plants,
What Has Occurred Historically, What Is Present Today. Once I Understand
Those Species, Whether They Were Present or Not, Then I Can Start to Say
What Kind of Habitat or Build The Scenario of What Type of Habitat Was
There at One Time For That Species to Exist There. Sometimes I Need to
Go to My Soil Scientists and Say to Them, \"Can You Tell Me Whether or
Not There Was a Wetland, What Type Of Wetland Was It?\" They Can Start
to Examine Some Of Those Soils for You, and They Can Tell You Whether
They Were Saturated at One Time but Now They Are Well Drained. A Good
Indication That Maybe You Had a Large Wet Meadow Area There on the
System That You\'re Working with. You Need to Work with Your
Hydrologists, Examine the Hydrology, Establish the Frequency, Duration
of Flooding Ponding Are Important Things to Understand. We Also Need to
Identify Vegetation That Currently Exists. Are They the Same Species
That Occurred Historically or Is There a Major Shift? We Also Need to
Look at the Entire Watershed\'s Condition. I May Never Be Able to Get
Potential on Any Riparian Area If the Watershed Itself Is in Poor Shape.
If I\'m Not Infiltrating Moisture, Capturing, Storing It, Releasing it
over Time, I May Have Increased or Created a Greater Energy than the
System Evolved with. So I Have to Understand the General Condition of
That Watershed. Last but Not Least, When Determining Capability and
Potential, I Have to Look for Limiting Factors. Those Are Human‑caused
and Natural. Natural Is Potential to Those Sites. We Shouldn\'t Expect
Anything Other than That There. Human Caused Again Is If We Have
Constructed a Highway That\'s Removed Part of a Floodplain, If We Build
Dams, Transmountain Diversions, We Have Greatly Altered What the Site
Can Be. So I Have to Remember to Identify Those Limiting Factors Of What
Can or Cannot Be There. At this Time I Would like to Step Back and Look
at a Photo That Kind of Goes Through Some Of the Steps and Refresh Our
Memory of the Process. You Can See There in Step 1, If I Am Going to Go
out There and Assess the Functionality of a Riparian‑wetland System, I
Have To Go out There and Establish Its Existing Condition. That Existing
Condition Has to Be Balanced Against the Potential of That Site. Also
Where Capability Infers We Can\'t Reach Potential, We Have To Keep in
That Mind. Then We Assess the Area to its Functionality. Functionality
Is Not a Point in Time, but it Can Occur Anywhere Along That Line. Once
I Achieve Functionality, Then I Can Get to the Values That Are Important
to Me as a Fish Biologist and Manage for Those Fishery Resources.
Without That I Am Fighting Gaining Ground on a Daily Days. Then ‑‑
Basis. Then I Can Get to My Final Condition There and the Resource
Values That Are Important to All Of Us. Well, How Does this Tool Work?
What Is this Tool? What Do I Do to Actually Go out There and Do this
Thing? In Tech Reference 1737‑9 Is a Check List. This Process Is a
Qualitative Process Where an Interdisciplinary Team Goes out And Starts
to Answer Questions We Have Been Talking about this Morning. This Check
List Is Basically Broken into Four Categories. The First Part Is Just a
Header. In the Header Is Where We Want To Keep Track of Information of
The Riparian‑wetland Area We Are Assessing, the Time We\'re Assessing,
Reach, Area or Segment, Identify its Acreage, Miles, et Cetera, and
Identify The Team Who Is Doing the Assessment. This Check List, as You
Saw on That Broad View Shot, Is Broken Down into Three Component,
Hydrologic, Vegetation, Soil Erosion Deposition. Many of the Questions
Tied to Much of the Discussion Earlier Today of How We Will Assess That
Attribute Process in a Working Order. We Go out There and We Want to
Say, If We Have a Floodplain, Should Be a Floodplain, Is it Inundated
and Relatively Frequent Events. We Respond by Saying Yes it Is Or No,
Sit Isn\'t. There Is an N/a Category in Terms of Even Those These Are
Common Attribute/processes in Our Riparian Areas Doesn\'t Mean It Occurs
in All and We Would Have an N/a. We Need to Look at Active/stable Beaver
Dams. If They Are Present They Are Active. Most the Time We Assume They
Are Stable. But Beaver Are Short Lived, Short‑term, They Move on and
Then We Have to Have Some Degree Of Stability Within Our System. We Need
to Look at the Sinuosity, Width‑depth Ratio and Gradient. Are They in
Balance with the Landscape Setting. Again, this Goes Back to Much of
What Lorena Talked about this Morning. We Need to Look at Is the
Riparian Zone Widening or Has it Achieved Potential Extent? What about
the Upland, Is the Upland in the Condition it Is Degrading the Riparian
Area or Is it a Matter We Need to Improve the Riparian Area. We Have
Some of the Same Similar Questions for Erosion/deposition. This Is What
Janice Talked about This Morning, and These Questions Are Designed to
Get at Some of the Things That She Talked about. One of the Questions
You Ask Relative to Erosion Deposition Is Are My Floodplain Channel
Characteristics Adequate to Dissipate Energies? In Low Gradient Streams
These May Be Such Things as Ox Bulls, Backwater Areas, off Channel
Characteristics. It Might Be Large Woody Debris Or Rock Material. We
Need to Understand as the Meander Pattern Works Itself Through the
Landscape, Are Those Point Bars Being Revegetated. Janice this Morning
Sewed You a Very Good ‑‑ Showed You a Very Good Picture after Point Bar
Expressing a Problem Because it Wasn\'t Getting Captured with Reg
Vegetation. Lateral Stream Movement. Is it Associated with Natural
Sinuosity. Bill Jackson Talked this Morning In the Tape about this
Natural Movement Through the Landscape. Is the System Vertically Stable?
Or Is it Getting Ready to Downcut like the One Example Janice Showed Us
Today? Is the Stream in Balance with The Water and Sediment Being
Supplied? We Have a Number of Questions For Vegetation Also. I Don\'t
Want to Spend a Lot of Time on Those as Mike Will Go Through That Part
of the Check List in Detail. But Very Quickly, Some of Those Questions
Are: We Want to Know Do We Have a Diverse Age‑class Distribution to
Allow Recruitment for Maintenance So That System Will Maintain Itself
For Recover. Diverse Composition, Do Species Present Indicate
Maintenance or Riparian Soil Moisture Characteristics? Do We Have
Adequate Communities? Do We Have Adequate Amounts of Those Communities?
Are Those Plants Vigorous? And for Those Where Large Woody Debris Plays
an Important Role As a Hydrologic Modifier, Do We Have Plant Communities
in a Riparian Area That Are Going to Supply That Course or ‑‑ Coarse Or
Large Woody Debris. With Any Tool We Use There\'s Some General
Instructions That Are Applicable That We Have to Follow. I Want to Run
Through Those Very Quickly of the General Instructions That Apply to
this Check List. The First One Is the Concept Relative to Capability
Applies Wherever It\'s Inferred. In Other Words, If We Have Done
Something to Change the Potential of a Site, We Have to Put That into
Perspective. That Check List That I Just Went Through Is the Minimum
That We Need to Do to Assess Whether or Not That Riparian‑wetland Area
Is in Proper Functioning Condition. As a Minimum, We Have to Use an Id
Team. We Talked about Soil Processes, Water Processes, Vegetation, Row
Function. It Is Going to Require an Interdisciplinary Team out There On
the Ground. Ideally That Would Be a Hydrologist, Vegetation Specialist,
a Soil Scientist and A Biologist. The Check List Itself, You Noticed
Again, Was Grouped into Boxes. We Mark Each Box as We Look at That
Function and Assess Whether It Is Working or Is Not Working. Any Time
That We Identify a Soil, Vegetation Process That\'s Not Working We Need
to Identify, Explain in the Remarks Section Of Why That Is Not Working.
We Encourage You to Do That Even When You Answer Yes. Based on That
Check List, the Id Team Will Go Through and Look at How They Answered
What Are Those Whether Those Attributes/processes Were Working or Not.
The Functional Rating Is Based On Going Back to the Definition. If We
Have Adequate Vegetation, It Is Dissipating Energy, Doing Those Things,
We Have a System In Proper Functioning Condition. If One of Those
Processes Are Making That Site Subject to Degradation with Flow Events,
We Would Give Ate Functional‑at Risk Rating. If None of Those Things Are
Working or in Any Working Order, We\'re at the Bottom of the Barrel, and
We Would Give it a Nonfunctional Rating. As a Minimum We Should Also
Establish Photo Points to Document Where We Did Some of This
Information. Now, Most of the Day We Have Spent Our Time on Running
Water Systems. The Fancy Term for Running Water Systems Is Loading. But
There Are Many Systems That Would Qualify as Standing Water Systems. The
Fancy Term for These Are Lentic. Actually What I Want to Do Here Is Back
up a Couple Minutes and Let\'s Go a Series of Four Slides Writ Gives Us
an Example of a Running Water System Relative to Those Categories. This
Is Texas Creek Located in South Central Colorado, a Tributary to the
Arkansas River. Texas Creek Is a Perennial Stream. It Is One That its
Potential Should Be a Moderate Gradient Stream, Around 2, 2½%. It\'s
Going to Be One That Vegetation Plays an Important Role in Terms of its
Lateral Stability. Looking at That Stream You Notice It\'s Very Wide and
Shallow. It\'s Width‑depth Ratio Is Not in Balance with its Land Form
Setting. You Notice the Streambanks Are Unvegetated. We Don\'t Have
Adequate Vegetation to Hold That System Together. We Would Rate That
System as Nonfunctional. In 1977 We Had a Management Change on Texas
Creek. You Can Start to See Now That There\'s Narrowing of the Stream,
Or Change in Our Width Depth Ratio, Vegetation That\'s Start To Go
Capture the Point Bar, but When We Start to Measure Do We Have Adequate
Vegetation, et Cetera, We Would Rate the System As Functional At‑risk
Because It\'s Still Subject to Degradation. At the End of 1978 after
Going Through Another Growing System The System Now Got to the Point
That, Yes, We Had Adequate Vegetation to Dissipate Stream Energies. We
Would Rate That System as Proper Functioning Condition. I\'m Starting to
See Things Happen That Are Going to Allow My Fish to Make Their Presence
And Now I Can Start to Manage For My Fishery Resource. My Desired
Condition Comes after Achieving Functionality. When I Get to
Functionality, Then I Have a Choice on Many Vegetative Communities That
I Can Manage for for a Variety of Of Values. Well, Let\'s Go Back and
Talk a Little Bit about Lentic Systems Or Standing Water Systems and Are
What Those? Good Examples of Many of Our Standing Water Systems Are
Lakes, Ponds, Seeps, Bogs, Wet Meadows Are Examples of Standing Water
Systems And, Again, the Technical Term Are Lentic Riparian‑wetland
Areas. The Way That We Assess the Health of These Systems Is Much The
Same as We Do for Flowing Water Systems. Tech Reference 1737‑11 Contains
A Check List That Goes Through The Same Process Where We Assess Whether
or Not the Soil, Hydrology, Soil Erosion Functions under a Working
Order. I Would like to Run Through Three Slides Very Quickly to Kind of
Give an Example of a Lentic System in Different Conditions. This First
One Is a Wet Meadow Situation in New Mexico. If We Went out There and
Looked At the System, One of the Adjustments We Have to Make Is Our
Energies Are Limited. We Don\'t Have Big Energies. We Have Overland
Flow. Looking at Those Things We Would Rate the System as Being Proper,
Functioning Condition. Now, There Are Uses on the Land Out There That
Can Change the Condition of These Systems. You Can See That We\'ve Had
Some Trailing, Compaction and We\'ve Started to Affect the Overland Flow
Through this Wet Meadow. We Would Now Rate the System as Functional‑at
Risk, Downward Trend. Given Time Those Systems Will Start to Drain
Themselves. When We Get to a Point in Time That Our Wetland Has Drained
Itself, We Would Categorize it As Nonfunctional. The Last Point I Want
to Make, Wayne, Before I Turn it Back to You Is That this Tool Is a
Relatively New Tool in Terms of Its Thought Processes. The Things That
We Look At, the Things That We Do, Our Knowledge, Our Ability to Measure
and Understand Those Have Been There a Long Time. To Help the States
Start to Institute this Process, to Understand this Method, State Cadres
Have Been Formed in Each State with a Mix of Fish and Wildlife Service,
BLM, Forest Service, Fish and Game, Private Sectors, University People
to Go Out and Teach this Tool. So These Cadres Have Been Formed In Each
of the States and They Have a Schedule of Training as Being Provided.
It\'s a Two‑day Training Course. Wayne?

Elmore: Thanks, Don. You Made Quite a Point on Not Getting Mixed up on
the Distinction Between Desired Future Condition, Which Might Include,
You Know, Wanting Habitat for Willow Fly Catchers Or Fisheries Habitat
or Something like That, and Proper Functioning Condition, and I Take it
That\'s a Pretty Important Distinction That People Need to Keep in Mind?

Prichard: Very Important, and As a Biologist, One of the Hardest Things
for Me to Adjust To Is That to Have My Fishery Values, I Have to Have My
Foundation in Working Order. I Have to Start to Dissipate Those Energies
and Balance That. Functionality Comes First. And I Have to Measure
Whether or Not I Have That Functionality in A Working Order. Then Once I
Get Across That Threshold, Then I Can Start to Manage for Those Values,
Whether It\'s Neotropical Birds, Fish, Forage Production, Increased
Forage Production for Livestock, Wildlife, et Cetera. The Functionality
Has to Come First Before I Can Get to the Desired Condition.

Elmore: I Really like the Comment That Paul Johnson Had at Lunch Today.
He Said It\'s Kind of like Build It and They Will Come. Okay. As You Can
See Already Many Factors must Be Considered Before Going out on the
Stream, And Several Questions must Be Asked as You\'re Evaluating the
Riparian System. We Will Now Look at the Role Riparian Vegetation Plays
in This Process. The Composition and Diversity of Plants and the Amount
of Cover Along Streambanks Helps to Dissipate Energy, Store Water,
Filter Sediments and Assist in The Recharge of Underground Aquifers.
Mike Borman Will Now Discuss Vegetation and its Relation to Stream
Function. Mike?

Borman: Thank You, Wayne. Before I Get into a Discussion Of the Role of
Vegetation Plays In the Physical Functioning of The Riparian Systems
First I Want to Revisit and Reemphasize The Concept of Site Capability
And Then I Will Move into a Discussion of Some of the Roles Vegetation
Plays in the Maintenance or the Recovery of Riparian Systems, Some of
the Points We Will Revisit There Will Be Points That Were Made Earlier
in the Program. Then We\'ll Move into a More Detailed Discussion of the
Proper Functioning Condition Assessment Check List, the Items On That
That Are Specific to Vegetation. To Begin With, I Would like to Just
Revisit the Site Capability And Potential Question. It\'s Been My
Impression That Too Many of Us Have an Idealized View of What Riparian
Vegetation Should Look like and We Have a Tendency to Expect That View
to Apply Everywhere. Last Summer I Was Participating In a Range Field
Day in Eastern Oregon and the Emphasis of That Particular Field Day Was
Stream Temperature. Now, the Topic of the Moment During the Discussion
We Were Having Was the Relative Influence of Shade and a Biologist in
the Group Was ‑‑ Made the Comment That in His Opinion If this System
Were in Excellent Condition He Would Expect to See a Corridor of Shrubs
and Trees along the Entire Length of this Particular Stream. Lee Ettle
Man Was a Faculty Member Was Also with Us That Day, and Lee, as Is His
Habit Had a Sharpshooter Shovel along With Him, and He Was Digging
Around Trying to Sort out What\'s Going On, the Relationship Between the
Soils and the Vegetation. Lee Helped Us to Put Some of This into
Perspective for this Site. In this Particular Picture We See Alder on
the Far Bank of That Stream and That\'s Situated On Kind of a Coarse
Gravelly Substrate. As We Move a Bit Further Downstream We Have Some
Willow In the Background and Lee Found That Willow Was Situated on a
Finer Graveled Sandy Kind of Substrate. In the Center, Occupying Most of
The Center Is a Sedge Rush Community ‑‑ Dominated Community. Lee Found
That Was Sitting on Top of a Silty Soil That Was About Two Feet Deep.
It\'s a Bit Difficult to See in This Picture but There Are Two Ponderosa
Pine Saplings in the Metal of That Sedge Rush Community, and They Really
Looked out of Place. Well, it Turned out That They Were Sitting Right on
Top of Something of a Rock Pile. So the Point of this Discussion Is That
Lee in Putting this Particular Site into Perspective In Terms of its
Situation in the Landscape and Digging Around and Sorting out What Was
Going on With the Soil and the Vegetation Relationships Was Able to
Establish That Everything We Were Seeing There Was Right Exactly Where
We Wanted or We Would Expect it to Be. The Wish to Have a Corridor of
Shrubs and Trees along That Particular Stream down its Entire Length for
Shade or for Nesting Habitat or for Any Other Resource Value Was, in
this Case, Wishful Thinking. We Had What We Could Possibly Get on this
Site at this Time. I Would like to Spend Just a Few More Minutes on this
Particular Concept and I Would like to Visit with You about a Check List
That Bob Kendchy and Mike Krause Who Were Developed in the Late 1970s.
Mike Was a Fisheries Biologist And Bob Was a Wildlife Biologist In the
Veil District, the BLM Veil District in Oregon and They Had Built a
Number of Exclosures In the Veil District and Were Starting to See Some
Relationships Between Abiotic Variables and the Vegetation They Were
Getting. So I Would like to Do Is Work Through this Dichotomy to Help
Illustrate the Kind of Things We Need to Be Looking At. The Specifics of
this Key Are Just That, They\'re Specific to The Area We Are Talking
about. But the Principles Can Apply Also Where and There Are a Number of
Other Publications You Can Use to Help Identify What The Riparian
Vegetation Complexes Should Be Given Land Forms, Soils and So On. But
Let\'s Work Through this Initially. As Part of this Discussion. There
Were ‑‑ the Initial Breakdown in Their Key Was Persistence of Flow. If
the Stream Was Intermittent Rather than Perennial, Then We Had to Look
at What Happens with The Soil Moisture. If the Soil Dries Seasonally,
Then You Expect Upland Types of Species That We\'re Seeing on This
Slide. If the Stream Flow Is Intermittent but We Have Moisture in the
Soil All Year, Then We Have to Look at What\'s Going on with the
Gradient. If the Gradient Is less than 1% And the Stream Dries
Mid‑summer Except for Around Isolated Pools Then We Are Looking at Dense
Sedges or Expect to Find Dense Sedges, Grasses, Forb, about Few Or No
Woody Species Because We\'re Not Getting Any Kind of Souring Effect to
Help Develop The Seed Bed. If the Gradient Is Greater than 1% Then We
Would Expect Some of The Upland Species but Also Might Get Some of the
Sparse Willow and Some of the of the Other Shrubs. If We Move to the
Other Major Component of the Key and We Have Perennial Flow, Then We
Have to Look at the Extent of Fluctuation as a Determining Factor. If
the Flow Was Not Variable, For Example, If It\'s Spring Fed, Then in
That Situation They Were Looking at Alkalinity. If They Had Had Highly
Alkaline Soil, They Were Looking for Species with Alkaline Tolerance. If
the Soil Was Not Highly Alkaline, Then They Were Looking For Dense
Sedges, Forbs, Grasses And Cattails but Again Few or New Woody Species
Because in These Not Variable Flow Systems There Isn\'t That Scouring
Effect To Help Develop That Seed Bed. If There Is Variability in Flow,
Then We Need to Know about the Extent of That Variability. If the
Fluctuations Are Extreme, We Have Severe Scouring, Then We Would Expect
to Find Sparse Stands of Sedges, Forbs and Other Grasses. We Would Find
Woody Plants Only Where They Were Protected from That Scouring. If the
Variability Was Not a Great Deal, If They Were Moderate, Then We Need to
Look At the Soils and Gradient F We Had Extremely Rocky Soils, a
Gradient Greater than 5%, We Would Expect to Find a Narrow Band of
Willow, Mock Orange, Other Shrubs and Stands of Grasses and Forbs. On
the Other Hand, If We Had a Fine Textured Soil and a Gradient less than
5%, Then We Get to the Point Where We Have ‑‑ We Would Expect to Find
the Tree Willow and the Cottonwood And the Alder, Aspen above a Certain
Elevation, and Also Dense Grasses, Sedges and Forbs. Finally We\'re at
the Type of a Riparian Community That Most of Us Have this Tendency to
Have an As Idealized View but We Couldn\'t Have it until We Got to The
Site That Would Actually Establish and Support and Maintain Those Types
of Communities. So I\'ll Move off That Particular Soapbox Now and We\'ll
Move onto A Discussion of How Vegetation Interacts with Soils, with Land
Form and with Hydrology to Influence Physical Functions. To Begin That I
Would like to Start with a Slide That it Turns Out Is One of Wayne
Elmore\'s Favorites. When Wayne Is Giving a Presentation of Proper
Functioning Condition in Oregon, He Uses this Slide to Illustrate The
Nature of Oregon State University\'s Riparian Research Program and He
You a Sciences Responsibilities for That Research to Whoever He Wants to
Have Fun with That Day and I Have Had That Honor on a Couple Occasions.
But I Have Visited with a Number Of People Who Have Worked with Wayne
over the Years and Some Reliable Sources Are Telling Me This Is Where
Wayne Began His Riparian Work, this Was His Initial Effort. Now, Wayne
Was Initially Enamored with Structures, and This Was One of His First
Attempts at Bank Protection. After this He Moved on to Riprap And Other
Types of Structures, But this Is Where He Began. Okay. So, Now ‑‑ Rather
than Focus on Structures, Which Wayne Did Initially, and He Learned
Later That He Shouldn\'t, and it Doesn\'t Matter Whether the Structures
Were Chevys or Fords Or Weirs or Check Dams or Whatever, We Should
Initially Look at the What the Vegetation Can Do Given an Appropriate
Management Program. And a Primary Attribute it Provides for Maintenance
or Recovery of the Systems Is a Root System That Helps Bind the Soil
Together. This Root System Will ‑‑ the Root System Function Will Not
Eliminate Bank Cutting or the Concave or Outside of a Curve or Meander
but Will Slow the Rate Of Cutting down So It\'s in Balance with What\'s
Being Deposited on the Other Side on The Point Bar, the Convex Side Of
the Curve or Meander. This Slide We See Remnants of a Large Tree Root
Where the Bank Obviously Has Been Cut but Also See the Kind of Fine
Herbaceous Or Nonwoody Plant Root Density That Provides a Cohesiveness
to The Soil That Binds That Soil Together and Slows the Rate of Cutting
by the Water. The Other Attribute We Can See From this Slide Is That the
Ability of the Overhanging Vegetative Herbaceous Vegetation To Act as a
Buffer Between the Soil and the Main Current\'s Erosional Forces. The
Overhanging Vegetation Deflects the Force of the Water Away from the
Bank and Keeps it Into the Channel. This Slide Illustrates the
Difference En Route Length and Mass and Depth Between a Sedge That I Dug
up from the Water\'s Edge and a Bluegrass That I Dug From the Terrace
Just above a Few Feet Away. I Attempted for Several Minutes To Wash the
Soil out of the Root Mass of the Sedge Plant and I Wasn\'t Successful in
Getting Much Washed out Which Helps Illustrate the Binding Influence
This Root System Has. The Bluegrass, on the Other Hand, Does Not Have
Much of a Root System under It. The Little Bit of Soil Attached To it
Was Relatively Dry and Most of That Fell off. I Wanted to Use this to
Illustrate the Difference of the ‑‑ a Pictoral Difference of the Root
Masses Between a Water ‑‑ a Hydric Type Planned and Upland Type of
Plant. The next Thing I like to Do Is Go to an Overhead to Help
Illustrate with Numbers the Different Runs Between These Kinds of
Species. In the Mid‑1980s, Mary Manning, Who Is Now with the Forest
Service in Missoula, I Believe, Did Her Master\'s Research in Northern
Nevada and Was Looking At Different Plant Communities And Meadows. She
Looked at Two Wet Meadow Type Communities and Two Dry Meadow
Communities. I Am Reporting Just on Three of These Now for the Sake of
Time. The Other Thing to Note Here Is That I Have Changed Her Figures
From Metric ‑‑ She Reported Her Root Lengths in Centimeters per Cubic
Centimeter of Soil. I Have Changed it to Depths in Inches and Root
Length Measured In Feet per Cubic Inch of Soil. The Thing That\'s
Interesting Here and Worth Noting the Nebraska Sedge Dominated Community
in the Top Four Inches Was Producing 112 Feet of Root Length per Cubic
Inch of Soil. The Baltic Rush Which Was the Other Wet Meadow Community
Was Producing 53 Feet of Root Length Per Cubic Inch of Soil. The Nevada
Bluegrass on the Other Hand, Which Was Dominating A Dry Meadow Site Was
Producing Only 13 Feet of Root Length per Cubic Inch of Soil. There\'s
Nearly a 10‑fold Difference Between That and the Nebraska Sedge
Community and That Nevada Bluegrass Community In the Top Four Inches. If
We Move down to the next Four Inches, We See less Root System But Even a
More Dramatic Difference. The Nebraska Sedge Was Producing 64 Feet of
Root Length per Cubic Inch, the Baltic Rush 10 Feet, The Nevada
Bluegrass Was Producing Only Three Feet. Can You See for Yourselves the
Differences in the next Two Increments of Soil and the Difference Holds
Up. There Is Also a Difference En Route Mass, What Is Reported Here Is
Root Length. The Rot Mass Is Not Quite as Different but the Same Trend
Holds. Now, Repair 81 Vegetation Also Provides Another Attribute. It
Also Provides an Above‑ground Structure That Serves to Reduce Stream
Energy. In High Sediment‑producing Streams Systems, Reducing the
Stream\'s Energy Results in Helping to Settle Sediments out Which Helps
to Build Streambanks, and Raise the Water Table N this Case We Are
Looking At a Willow System Providing Those Functions. As We Look at this
Herbaceous Vegetation, It\'s Accomplishing The Same Above‑ground
Structural Functions of Reducing the Energy In the Stream, and One of
the Things That You Can See from This Picture Is That the Water Around
That Vegetation Is Looking Relatively Calm Compared To What\'s Going on
in the Background in the Main Channel. This Vegetation Is Serving That
Buffer Between the Force of the Moving Water and the Bank. I Would like
to Move on to Another Sequence of Slides That Helps Illustrate the
Energy Reduction, the Sediment Trapping, the Bank Building and The
Functions Vegetation Can Serve. In this August of 1976 Picture You See
Virtually No Vegetation To Serve Any Function Whatsoever. This Was the
Result of Many Years of Summer Season‑long Grazing on this Site. I
Don\'t Want to Get into a Grazing Management Discussion Because Steve
Leonard and Leonard Jolley Will Get into That in the next Segment of the
Program, but I Do Want to Let You Know That a Change after This Picture,
Change in Grazing Management, Was Made to a Time Of Grazing That Was
Appropriate For That Site. The Other Thing to Keep in Mind As You Look
in the Background, There Are Quite a Few Juniper on The First Bench
Here. Those Juniper Were Removed as Well. That Combination of a Change
to An Appropriate Season of Use and Some Juniper Removal over an
Eight‑year Period Had ‑‑ Resulted in a Tremendous Expression of Riparian
Vegetation. In August of 1984, the Site Looked like this. Now, We\'ve
Had Sediment Trapped, Had Banks Built, Had a Channel That\'s Been
Defined and Narrowed, and the Entire System Has Degrade Add Couple Feet
During this Three‑year Period. Three Years Late Inner June of \'87, the
System Experienced a Flash Flood That Left the System Looking like this.
The Immediate Reaction of Many People When They See this Picture Is That
it Looks Awful And the System Is Obviously Not Functioning. In Fact,
It\'s Functioning Very Well. We\'ve Had Several More Inches of Sediment
Trapped During the Course of this Event. By August of That Same Year,
1987, the Site Looked like this And the Riparian Vegetation Is
Expressing Itself Again. It\'s Working its Way Through the Sediment and
It\'s Helping to Stabilize the Sediment in Place. By October of the
Following Year, 1988, the Riparian Zone Had Enlarged in Terms of Surface
Area, a Greater Water Holding Capacity and a Higher Water Table. This
Whole Sequence of Events And this Improvement Occurred or A 10 or
11‑year Period, and That Whole Sequence of Events Occurred During a
Period Mostly Dominated by Drought Years. We Had in Two or Three Years
Ago, We\'ve Had a Change in Climatic Regime in the Northwest From
Relative Drought Years to a Series of Wet Years, and in the Winter of
1995 and \'96, We Had a Tremendous Amount of Snow, Then In January and
February We Had Rain on Snow and Warmer Temperatures That Had Snowmelt
Runoff Involved and We Had Tremendous Flooding Throughout The Northwest.
This next Slide Is the Same Site We Have Been Looking at During February
of 1996, Which Is near The Peak of the Runoff During That Year. One of
the Things That We Need To Keep in Mind That These Are Dynamic Systems
and Changes Will Occur, Particularly as We Go Through Changes in
Climatic Cycles, However We Had the Riparian Vegetation in Place That Is
Able to Hold this System Together in this Case Even under These Extreme
Flooding Events. Now, Another Point That I Want To Make Is That in Low
Gradient Reaches, Especially in Higher ‑‑ Or Naturally Higher Sediment
Producing Systems, the Riparian ‑‑ as the Riparian Vegetation Reduces
the Energy, as it Traps The Sediment, as it Grades the System and Raises
the Water Table, It\'s Also Narrowing and Deepening the Channel. We Move
to Another Look at this Eight‑year Change on Bear Creek From, Again,
August of 1976 in The Lower Part of the Picture to August 1984 in the
Upper Part And We Have Had this Change in Management That\'s Allowed the
Vegetation to Express Itself. We Now Have a Well Defined Channel That Is
Narrow and Deep. Now, in Oregon We Are Currently Debating Stream
Temperatures as A Water Quality Standard. I Would Submit Managing for
Riparian Vegetation That Will Result in a Lower Width‑to‑depth Ratio in
Systems That Can Achieve That, a Water Column That Is Narrower and
Deeper Will Do Anything for Cooler Water Temperatures than Anything I
Can Think Of. We Have Reduced the Surface of The Water Exposed to Direct
Solar Radiation and It\'s Also Reduced to the Exposure to the Overall
Ambient Temperatures That Are in Place Throughout the Environment There.
We\'ve Also Raised the Water Table and That Water Table Is Providing
Water into this Channel That Is Cooler than Anything We Would Expect
from a Shallower Type of a System. I Think If We Can Manage for These
Type of Riparian Vegetation, We ‑‑ We\'re Doing Everything We Can in
this Case To Influence Water Temperature As Well as the Other Functions
We\'re Looking At. The Other Thing That We Need to Keep in Mind Is That
this Narrowing and Deepening Process Is Probably Going to Have to Happen
Before We Get into a Situation Where We Get the Beginning of Sinuosity.
Developing the Meanders. Another Example of a Sinuosity Is Beaver Creek
in Oregon and as You Can See in this Slide, this Stream Has Had a ‑‑ Has
a Fair Amount of Sinuosity Now, but it Also Has Meandered Back and Forth
Across this Meadow over Time. In These Broad Valley Bottoms, This Is a
Natural Phenomenon, And All the Things Lorena Talked About Is Occurring.
We Have a Longer Flow for the Stream to Get from One End to The Other
Which Reduces the Gradient and the Energy in That System. So It\'s the
Vegetation in Concert with the Land Form and Soils and Hydrology That
Makes This Possible. When We Consider Vegetation Influences on Riparian
Zones, We Should Also Be Thinking about Upland Vegetation and How it You
A Influences the Riparian Zone. In this Picture We Have a Juniper
Dominated Site in Central Oregon That Is Producing The Vegetation Need
to Do Capture Store or Safely Release Precipitation at or near Where It
Falls. Runoff from this Site Will Move Soil into the Riparian Zone and
Possibly into the Stream Itself. This Kind of a Situation Has the
Potential to Overload the Riparian System below It. If, on the Other
Hand, If We Have Uplands with Good Groundcover That Will Promote The
Capture and Storage and Safe Release of the Precipitation, That
Ultimately Benefits the Upland its Occurring on but Benefits the
Riparian Area below It. Okay. Let\'s Move to the Check List, The Proper
Function and Condition Check List, Which Don Showed You Earlier, and You
See Another Version of Here. What I Want to Do Is Work Through the
Vegetation Section On this Check List, Which Are The Middle Six, Seven
Questions Or So and Provide a Few Examples That Help ‑‑ Perhaps Will
Help You with the Thinking Process You Need to Go Through as We Address
These Questions. Let\'s Move First to Checklist Items 6 and 7. Checklist
Item 6 Reads Diverse Age‑class Distribution and in Parentheses for
Emphasis, They Have We Want Age‑class Distribution That Indicates We\'re
Getting Recruitment for Maintenance or Recovery. And for Item 7 We\'re
Looking at Diverse Composition of Vegetation, And, Again, the Emphasis
Is on What Is Necessary For Maintenance and Recovery. We Have Many ‑‑
Our Riparian Species Reproduce Vegetatively. When We See Vegetation That
Looks like This, We Can Be Reasonably Sure We Are Getting The
Reproduction Necessary for Recruitment or Recovery. Sometimes in the
Vegetatively Reproducing Plants, It\'s Difficult to Know Is this a New
Plant or Not. When We See a Situation like This, We Are Can Be Pretty
Sure We Are Getting It. In this Type of System, We Don\'t Need a Great
Number of Species To Accomplish this. We Are Not Looking at Biological
Diversity in the Classical Sense. What We Are Looking for Is Do We Have
Enough Much a Species That Have the Attributes to Provide The Functions
We Are Looking for So the System Is Physically Functioning
Appropriately. We Need to Keep in Mind with the Check List What We\'re
Looking at Is Proper Functioning Condition. We\'re Not Looking at the
Other Resource Values That Might Come Later. That Is an Evaluation That
Does Come Later after We Get to the Proper Functioning Condition. We
Have Another Example of a Site in Colorado That Has Diverse Age‑class
and Composition for Both Woody and Herbaceous Riparian Vegetation. This
Situation Would Satisfy Not Only Proper Function and Condition but Also
Resource Values as Well. This Site, as Don Mentioned Earlier, Was
Actually Rated as Being in Proper Function and Condition Well Before it
Achieved this Level of Age‑class And Species Composition Diversity. This
Site in Western Oregon Has Both Age‑class Distribution and Species
Composition Greater than Many Sites That We Will Find in More Arid
Systems, but it Might Only Rate it Functioning at Wrist Income this
System Because It Doesn\'t Have the Large Conifer Component That Stream
Ecologists from That Area Tell Me Are Critical for the Proper
Functioning of These Systems. So it Doesn\'t Have the Diversity Of
Composition in the Sense it Doesn\'t Have a Critical Component and So We
Need to Be Careful We\'re Not Only Looking At Say Potential and
Capability But Also Within That Constraint, What Does it Have? Or What
Does it Have or Not Have That Are Critical to the Proper Functioning of
That System? This Set of Two Slides Illustrates a System That Did Not
Have Sufficient Diversity of Either Age‑class or Composition. To Satisfy
‑‑ Withstand a 25 to 30‑year Event. At this Time We Have a Kentucky
Bluegrass Understory and as You Recall the Discussion Earlier, The
Bluegrass Does Not Have the Root System That We\'re Looking For to Hold
These Systems Together. And the Stand of Willows We\'re Looking at Are
Old, Decadent and Not Reproducing. So We Don\'t Have the Composition Or
the Age‑class Distribution We Are Looking for. In the next Year the
System Looked like this. ‑‑ Let\'s Move to the next Check List Item.
Check List Item 8 Reads Species Present Indicate Maintenance of Riparian
Soil Moisture Characteristics. As We Move Back to this View, I\'m Using
this Slide to Illustrate a Number of These Points Because it Helps to
Illustrate a Number of Them. We See a Sedge Rush Greenline That
Indicates Maintenance of Riparian Soil Moisture Characteristics Here. As
You Recall, We Have a Sedge And a Rush Component along this Greenline.
These Are Obligate Wetland Types Of Species. They Have to Have the Soil
Moisture to Be There. This One Is a Yes for this Particular Question.
That\'s ‑‑ this Also Brings up The Importance of Having a Vegetation
Specialist Who Knows The Area That You\'re Working in So That That
Individual Can Help You Identify Do These Species Have the Types of
Attributes We\'re Looking for? We Need to Have Somebody Who Knows
Vegetation and Who Has Experience on the Ground with This Vegetation.
Let\'s Move to the next Check List Item. Check List Item 9 Reads:
Streambank Vegetation Is Comprised of Those Plants or Plant Communities
That Have Root Masses Capable of Withstanding High Stream Flow Events.
As We Move Back to this Same Site, Again, the Sedge Rush Greenline on
this Reach Would Generate a Yes to this Question. Because, Again, We
Have, as You Recall the Discussion Earlier, The Carex or ‑‑ the Sedges
and Rushes Both Have Those Kind of Root Systems and That\'s What We Are
Looking for. If We Had Species That Were Facultative, Wetland Species,
Then We Would Want to Know Something More about the Trend And it Would
Be Very Helpful to Have Some Background Information To Know If We\'re in
Upward or Downward Trend. If We Were in a System That Had Kentucky
Bluegrass down to the Water\'s Edge, the Answer Would Be No. Kentucky
Bluegrass Does Not Have That Type of Root Mass under It. Let\'s Move to
the next Check List Item. Riparian Plants Exhibit High Vigor. Now, this
Is Really a Very Qualitative Evaluation. But, Again, Using this Same
Site, the Riparian Plant in this Picture Show Good Size, They Show Good
Color, and They\'ve Obviously Been Reproducing. They Don\'t Show Any
Signs of Stress. Now, If We Go Back to this Site, We Won\'t Even
Consider Looking At the Kentucky Bluegrass Here Because it Is Not the
Riparian Species We Would Be Evaluating For Vigor in this Case and the
Willow in this Case Is Old, It\'s Decadent, Not Reproducing. If We Had
Some Smaller Shrubs in Here, If They Had Been Browsed Down Consistently
So They Weren\'t Reproducing and That Could Be by Livestock or by
Wildlife, If That Has Happened To Where It\'s Not Reproducing That, Too,
Would Generate a No In Terms of Vigor. Let\'s Move onto the next
Question. Checklist Item 11 Reads Adequate Vegetative Cover Is Present
to Protect Banks and to Dissipate Energy During High Flows. Now, This,
Just a Comment on This One, Prior to this We Have Been Looking at Do We
Have the Kinds of Vegetation in Place That Have the Root Masses and The
Structure That Will Hold Soil Together, Protect the Banks And So On. We
Weren\'t Looking Necessarily For Numbers in That Case. This Question
Gets At, Do We Have Enough of These Kinds of Vegetation in this Site to
Serve The Function? So as We Look at the next Site Here, We Have a
Combination of Woody and Herbaceous Wetland Species, We Have Diversity
of Age‑class Within Those and Because We Have a History of Information
at this Site, We Also Know That That this Is Well Beyond What Is
Required to Protect the Banks and Dissipate The Energy During High‑flow
Events. This Is a Series of Don Went Through a Few Minutes. 10 Years
Before the Site Looked Like this and There\'s Obviously No Vegetation
There to Serve Any Functions. As Don Mentioned, a Change in Livestock
Season of Use to a Season That Was Appropriate for The Site Resulted in
What Amounted to an Immediate Positive Trend and We Had Enough
Vegetation the next Year to Protect the Banks Enough to Define and
Narrow the Channel. It Was Also Sufficient to Trap a Fair Amount of
Sediment from the Side Channel as You Can See in The Foreground Here. By
That Fall or by the next Fall, the Vegetation Had Resisted a 25 to
30‑year Event, Flood Event. The Banks Had Been Protected, The Energy Had
Been Dissipated And the Sediment Had Been Trapped. Four Years Later this
Upward Trend Has Continued, as You Can See That the Water Here Has Been
Up out of its Banks, it Has Flowed over onto the Floodplain And the
Vegetation Has Reduced That Energy and Trapped Some of The Sediment out
of That. By the End of That 10‑year Period of Recovery Between, It\'s
About as Good as It\'s Going to Get and at this Point We\'re Well Beyond
Proper Function and Condition for this Site and Probably Are at What
Would Be a Potential Natural Community.

Elmore: We\'ll Be Going Back To the Phones Again in a Few Minutes to
Answer Any Questions You Might Have on Assessing the Functioning
Condition of Riparian Areas. So If You Have a Question or Comment for
Don or Mike This, Would Be a Good Time to Start Calling. I Might Also
Mention Our Faxes Are Really Backing Up. Don\'t Forget, You Can Also Use
The Phone. So Back to You, Mike.

Borman: Before We Take Those Phone Calls and Faxes, We\'ll Wrap up this
Section about a Discussion of the Last Check List Item Dealing with
Vegetation. So Let\'s Move to Check List Item 12. It Reads Plant
Communities in The Riparian Area Are an Adequate Source of Coarse And/or
Large Woody Debris. Now, There Are Stream Systems in Places like Western
Oregon That The Stream Ecologists and Hydrologists Tell Me Require Large
Wood to Function Properly. Some of the Steep Gradient Locations, the
Large Wood Provides a Stairstep Type of Decent. Now, When the Wouldn\'t
Is Removed from the Systems, Which Has Happened in Western Oregon, In
the Creased Energy of the Stream Cuts Through the Soil Down to the
Bedrock and We Have What Effectively Amounts to a Sluice That Just
Flushes That System from Top to Bottom. The Trees and Their Root Masses
Are Necessary in These Systems To Armor the Banks, to Stabilize The
Point Bars, and When We Get Debris Jams in These Systems, Occasionally
They Will Break out And We Will Have the Whole Works To Flush on
Downstream. That Large Woody Material Is Also Necessary down below to
Help Stabilize and Maintain Floodplains. I Want to Make the Point,
Though, That Just Because ‑‑ Because There Is Wood in a System Does Not
Necessarily Imply That it Is a Necessary Component. This Particular
Stream Has Wood In It, but it Was Not Necessary For a Proper Function in
this Situation at this Site. The Herbaceous Vegetation in This System
Was Adequate to Interact with the Soils, Landform and Hydrology to
Provide the Proper Function. If We Were in a Bit Steeper Gradient Here,
If We Were in a Rosgen Type B Channel, with More Gradient, Then the Wood
Might Well Be Necessary in this System. Before People Get Upset, When I
Say That the Wood Wasn\'t Necessary in the First Case There, That
Doesn\'t Mean That You Should Be Pulling the Wood Out of That System,
Because it May Well Be Serving Other Functions Such as Fisheries Habitat
and So On. So I Just Wanted to Make the Distinction, in Some Cases You
Have to Have the Wood, in Other Cases You Don\'t Have to Have the Wood
but Just Because You Don\'t Have to Have it Doesn\'t Mean You Have to
Get Rid of It. You Really Do Want to Leave it In Place to Help Serve
Some of These Other Functions. Wayne, I Turn it Back to You.

Elmore: I Was with Wondering, On this Vegetation Section That You Just
Talked About, about Root Holding and an Increase in Recruitment and All
That, How Does That Relate to Benefits for Private Land Own Centers What
Are Some of the Benefits That Private Landowners Would Get out Of this
Process of Restoring Vegetation along Riparian Areas? Bore Beer I ‑‑.

Borman: I Guess a Pretty Good Example Would Be to Go Back to Bear Creek
Example Where a Change in Grazing Management Was Determined to Be
Necessary and We Moved from a Summer Season Long Use to Ultimately it
Ended Up Being a Late Winter Early Spring Type Use and We Saw a
Tremendous Increase in the Vegetation, the Herbaceous Riparian
Vegetation There. We Also Had an Increase in the Acreage of Riparian
Communities In That Area. I Had ‑‑ You Initially Did Surveys in That in
the Late 1970s and I Had a Graduate Student Who Went Back and Resurveyed
That Area in 1994, And I Don\'t Remember the Exact Figures, but There
Was a Tremendous Increase in the Amount of Riparian Acreage Producing
Something like a Ton Of Herbaceous Biomass per Acre Whereas Before We
Were 100 or 200 Pounds of Production. Other Other Benefit the Rancher
Got from this Was That He Has Much Better Distribution in the Uplands
and Is Getting Much Better Use of the Upland Vegetation and He\'s
Actually Increased His Aum\'s from Somewhere in the 70s, 70 Aums in The
Late 1970s to 350 or So Now. So this Whole Process Can Really Benefit
the Producer as Well as The System.

Elmore: All Right. Thanks. It Is Clear from the Material That You and
Don Have Presented That When Examining Riparian Areas, the
Interrelationship Between Soil, Water, Vegetation, Geology and Climate
Are Key, Absolute Key. It Is the Combination of All These Factors and
How They Work Together That Will Ultimately Give Us Our Future
Conditions. That Future Will Include the Results That We Desire Such as
Better Water Quality, Increased Livestock Forage, Improved Wildlife
Habitat and More Recreation Opportunities Just to Mention a Few. You Can
Describe Riparian Systems the Same Way Architects Describe Buildings.
First Comes Function, Then Comes Form, and Finally Value. Or in the Case
of Riparian Areas, Your Desired Condition. Back with Us Now for this
Call‑in Segment Is Lorena Corzatt. Welcome Back, Lorena.

Corzatt: Thanks, Wayne.

Elmore: at this Point We Would like to Go Back to the Phones and Our
First One Is Lynn In Phoenix. Lynn, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Yes, Thank You. It Seems to Me That the Heart of This Riparian
Initiative Is the Use of Proper Functioning Condition Assessment. As of
Yet, I Am with the Forest Service, We Still Haven\'t Provided Direction
That Will Institutionalize this Assessment Method. There\'s Been Sort of
a Free Form Use of It. It\'s Spotty Across the Forest Service in
Different Regions and There Really Isn\'t Any Quality Control. When Will
this Change?

Elmore: You Want to Address That Lorena?

Corzatt: I Can Address Part And Maybe Can You Help Me out With the Rest.
One of the Things We Are Doing As Far as Quality Control in the 11
Western States Now, We Have Training Cadres That Are Quite Well‑versed
in Proper Functioning Condition and We Are Doing Community‑based
Training In All 11 Western States in Order to Get the Word out to People
on How to Use Proper Functioning Condition, the Fact They Do Need to Use
Journeymen Level Interdisciplinary Teams in Order to Keep the Quality
High. Wayne, Maybe You Can Help Us Address the Policy Aspect of That
Question a Little Better.

Elmore: Yes, Right Now Van Elsburn Who Is in the Fort Collins Office, Is
Working on That Very Topic and That Is Working on the Process of
Institutionalizing That into the Forest Service, and I\'m Not Sure
Exactly Where They Are in That Process Yet, but I Know They Have Made
Progress. So Does That Answer Your Question, Lynn?

Caller: Sounds like You\'re Working on It. Thank You.

Elmore: You\'re More than Welcome. Thank You. Let\'s Go to Line 2. Mark
in Jackson, Wyoming, You\'re On the Air.

Caller: Okay. Thanks. With Regard to the Functional But at Risk Type of
Condition in Terms of Stubble Height or Utilization, Can You Give Us a
Feeling For, Is There Any Sort Of a General Rule of Thumb for a Minimum
Stubble Height That We Would Strive for or Even a Maximum Stubble Height
Beyond Which No Further Gain to Sediment Deposition or Streambank
Building Would Occur?

Elmore: Okay. I Would like to Start with Mike Borman and Also Have Don
Comment On That Also, and Then I May Even Comment on That.

Borman: Well, My Initial Reaction to That Is That Stubble Height Can Be
a Useful Tool in Helping to Understand What\'s Happening with Trend. I
Have a Hesitancy to Promote Stubble Height as a Management Objective. It
May or May Not Be Useful as That. We Do Want a Certain Amount of Stubble
Height Available During Peak Flow to Help Reduce the Energy in These
Streams, and the Amount of Stubble Height That You Leave at the End of a
Grazing Seat Depends on When the End of the Grazing Season Is, What\'s
Appropriate. If It\'s Early in the Spring, Then We Don\'t Have to Worry
About it Too Much. We\'re Going to Get Enough Regrowth to Have Plenty of
Vegetation There. If it Is at the End of Summer, At the End of the
Growing Season, Then We Need to Concern Ourselves with How Much Stubble
Height Are We Leaving Because We May Well Not Get Any More Regrowth. And
Then There\'s Another Publication That\'s Come out of The Forest Service
by Fred Hall Dealing with Stubble Height and Some of the Things That He
Looks At Are the ‑‑ If We Have ‑‑ If We Get down to about an Inch of
Stubble Height We\'re Getting Down to the Point Where a Cow Can No
Longer Because of the Size of Her Lip Get Much of a Bite out of That and
She Is Likely to Start Changing Her Grazing Preference to Shrubs and So
There Are Lots of Different Considerations There. I Hesitate to Give You
Any Real Guidelines to Make Specific Objectives with.

Caller: Could You Also Tell Us, Should We View Pfc as a Minimum
Threshold?

Prichard: Let Me Take a Stab At That. That Was Kind of Way I Was Going
To Approach an Answer to Your Question and That Is, When We Look at Any
System, Those Variables, We Have to Go Back to The Capability Potential
of the System That We\'re Dealing With, And When We Do That, Then We
Start to Understand What That System Can Be, What\'s Important, What
Needs to Be There. The Threshold We Have to Be to Is to Proper
Functioning Condition. That Is Where We\'re at a Point In Time Where We
Do Adequately Dissipate These Energies. Sometimes It\'s Easy to Go to
Hard Numbers and Categorize Things, but Many Times That Gets Us into
Trouble Because When We Universally Apply with That These Other
Variables in a Different Stream Type, Different Land Form Setting, Those
Variables Will Get Us in Trouble. I Am One That Tries to Be Very Careful
with Locking One Particular Category Number Across the Board. Wayne?

Elmore: Thanks. Does That Get at Your Question There, Mark?

Caller: Yes, Thank You.

Elmore: Thank You. Let\'s Go to Line 3 and Talk to John in Ache Akin,
South Carolina. You Are on the Air.

Caller: My Question Is I Understand Epa Is Not Part of The Group at this
Point but May In the Future Be Part of the Group. But My Question Is, Do
Any of The Participants There, Are They Aware That Is Epa Working on a
Sediment Standard for the Nation For Creeks and Streams for Some Numeric
Water Quality Standard? And If So, Is it Something That Can Be Lived
with Across the Nation?

Elmore: Lorena, You\'re Our Sediment Expert.

Corzatt: I Don\'t Know If I Am A Sediment Expert or Not, but I Guess
I\'m Hesitant to Buy into Any One Number That Could Be Applied Across
the United States. Each System Is Going to Be Very Individual. As We\'ve
Seen Today, We Can\'t Count on One System to Behave The Same Way as Any
Other System. Some Systems Are Going to Be Naturally Very High Sediment
Systems as Janice Showed this Morning in Her Slide of a
Glacier‑dominated System. That\'s Naturally Going to Be Very High in
Sediment. We Have Some Bedrock‑dominated Systems That Will Naturally Be
Very Low in Sediment. Proposing the Same Standard Across All of Those
Types of Stream Channels Would Be Very Difficult to Meet in a Reasonable
Way.

Elmore: and I Would like to Answer the Other Half of That, Yes, We Have
Been Working a Lot With the Epa and We Have Done a Lot of Things in
Talking About, You Know, How to Look at Streams And How to Set Criteria
and Stuff. So We Do Plan on Having Epa in The Future Be a Major Part of
This. They Already Provided Quite a Bit. So Does That Answer Your
Question?

Caller: Yes, I Believe So. Just a Follow‑up, Is There Any Work Toward
Any Numbers of Any Type for Sediment?

Elmore: Not That I Know Of.

Corzatt: I Don\'t Know for Sure, John.

Caller: Okay. That Answers My Question. Thank You Very Much.

Elmore: Thank You. Okay. Let\'s Go to Bruce in Portland. Bruce, You\'re
on the Air.

Caller:\... Pfc Is Sort of Like a Foundation or Minimum of Acceptable
Physical Functioning, And Some of the Criticism I Have Heard about Pfc
Is Exactly That It Doesn\'t Go Beyond That Baseline into Assessing
Conditions above What Might Be a Minimum, and My Question Is, as Long as
We Are Investing in Having this Interdisciplinary Team out in the Field
Doing Assessments, What Are the Reasons for Not Assessing Conditions
Beyond Pfc, like Aquatic Ecology or Fisheries Condition or Wildlife
Habitat?

Elmore: Don, You Want to Answer That One?

Prichard: You Bet. You Are Correct in Your Assumption That Pfc Is Kind
of a Minimal Threshold That We Want Our Systems At. I Hope from Today\'s
Session That You Are Well Aware That Pfc Is Just Establishing That
Foundation So That We Can Manage For These Other Values. One Thing That
We Deal with in Agencies or Whatever Are Limitations to Budget, People,
And We Really Need to Set Forth A Foundation of Where We\'re at Relative
to the Condition of These Creeks. This Doesn\'t Mean a Field Office, a
Collection of Field Offices, Agencies Can Do More When We\'re out There.
This Is Just the Minimum We Want Done There. If They Have the Manpower,
the Time, Whatever, to Do These Other Assessments, We Encourage Them to
Do So. Wayne?

Elmore: Okay. Now Let\'s Take Another 10‑men Break. When We Come Back,
We\'ll Look at Examples of How to Design and Monitor Grazing Systems,
and as We Mentioned Earlier, Our Top Leadership Will Again Be Joining Us
along with Members of the Livestock and Environmental Communities and We
Will Take a Closer Look at Some More of Your Questions and Comments on
the Air. We\'ll Be Right Back. Thanks.

Elmore: Hello, Again, and Welcome Back to Our Interagency Riparian
Workshop. Joining Us Now to Provide an Overview of How to Design Grazing
Systems Is Steve Leonard. Steve Is an Ecologist and a Grazing Management
Specialist With the Riparian Service Team. Hi, Steve. Welcome to the
Program.

Leonard: Hello, Wayne. I\'m Glad to Be Here to Talk About Grazing and We
All Know That Many Land Uses Can Affect Riparian Areas, and Grazing Is a
Widespread Use That\'s Often Controversial, and I Hope We Can Show That
it Doesn\'t Necessarily Have to Be So at Least in Regard To
Functionality.

Elmore: Thank You. And Also Here to Share His Experience on Grazing Is
Leonard Jolley, an Ecologist and State Range Conservationist Who Comes
To Us from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Previously The
SCS. Hi, Leonard.

Jolley: Hello, Wayne. I\'m Happy to Be Here in Sunny Phoenix,
Particularly after the Snowstorms in Colorado Last Week.

Elmore: Thanks. And Completing Our Panel of Grazing Experts Is Al
Winward. Al Is Also an Ecologist and a Monitoring Specialist with the
U.S. Forest Service. Glad You Could Be with Us Today, Al.

Winward: Thank You, Wayne. It\'s Good to Be Here with You And the Rest
of the Crew and the Audience Today.

Elmore: to Kick Thing Off, Steve, I Believe, You Would like To Begin
with a Quick Recap of Riparian Attributes, Grazing Might Affect and an
Introduction To General Management Considerations.

Leonard: Yes, Thanks, Wayne. Before I Start, Though, Leonard Jolley and
I Would like to Thank Carol Evans Claude Singleton of Susanville,
California, and Many Others That Provided a Lot of The Examples We Are
Going to Use. Most of All I Would like to Thank the Many Livestock
Operators and Livestock Producers Whose Effort Actually Made the Change
in Most the Slides You\'re Going to See. Let\'s Review Some of the
Riparian Attributes and Potential Impacts from Grazing, And Riparian
Function, as You Recall Is the Interaction Between Soil, Vegetation and
Water. Livestock Grazing, of Course, Can Affect Vegetation to the
Greatest Degree and Have Some Direct Impacts on Soils and to a Little
Lesser Extent on Water, But Any Impact to One Affects Relationships with
the Other. So, First, Let\'s Look at Vegetation, and as We Have Seen
Before, Vegetation Increases the Shoreline Strength and Reduces Erosion
from the Energy of Flowing Water and If We Look Here at the Shallow
Rooted Grasses and Forbs Don\'t Have the Root Structure to Hold Soil
Even In Low‑energy Systems, and Grazing Affects this Plant Composition.
With Good Grazing, We Can Have a Composition of Sedge, Rushes and
Deep‑rooted Grasses to Hold and Bind the Soil and Form Good Stream
Characteristics. In Larger Noncohesive Bank Materials, like Here on
Beaver Creek, it May Take Grazing to Support Woody Plant and Willows
That Have the Larger Roots That Act like Rebar to Hold the Banks And
Soil Together. Grazing Can Also Affect Residual Vegetation. Residual
Vegetation Slows Water Velocity over the Floodplain, as You Have Heard,
to Trap and Filter Sediment or Mud on Banks. And Allow Greater
Infiltration And Water Storage into the Floodplain Soil. Bear Creek
Here, You Have Seen a Couple Times. Here It\'s Clearly Nonfunctional,
Before the Change in Management. And Here, after a Change in Management,
We Have Good Residual Vegetation and We\'ve Seen the Capturing the Mud
and The Vegetation Regrowth at the End of the Season That\'s Holding The
Banks Together and Things Like That. One Thing I Would like to Say Right
Now about Bear Creek Is This Response Has Been Achieved With Five Time
the Numbers Now Than the Numbers of Livestock That Caused the
Degradation in The First Place Simply Because Of a Change of Use from
Season‑long to Late Winter/early Spring. Leonard Will Talk More about
Specific Grazing System in Late ‑‑ Later On. The Right Kind of
Vegetation Simply Holds Water on the Land Longer. Here We Have Lower
Dixie Creek And the Immigrant Spring Allotment in Nevada and Before
1989, it Even Dried up Later in The Season. Clearly Nonfunctional
System, But after Change in Management, Now it Supports a Nice Flow,
Even in the Later Summer Season. We Also Know That Grazing Can Affect
Soils and Soils Store Water for Slow Release Back to The Stream, Produce
Vegetation, Capture and Store Nutrients, Pathogens and Contaminants. We
Have Now Fitzhugh Creek in 1976, and There\'s Not Much Soil Here. It
Didn\'t Store or Produce Much Of Anything. Direct Physical Impacts of
Bank Trampling as Well as Changes in Vegetation Have Led to Bank Erosion
and Widening of the Channel. Now in 1996, Fitzhugh Creek Looks like
This, and There\'s Several Feet of New Soil That Acts as a Huge Sponge
to Store Water and Hold Nutrients, Pathogens and Contaminants in Place
Longer. I Might Mention this Is One of The Few Slides That We Use That
Is in an Exclosure. But It\'s Able to Produce Many Time Amount of
Vegetation Now And Can Probably Now Go to Some Other Grazing Management
Strategy. These Interactions Between Vegetation and Soil Also Have an
Impact on Water. Water, as You Have Seen, Can ‑‑ Its Function, Main
Function, Is To Transport Sediments, Which it Can Be Either to the
Floodplain In Part or it Can Be down to the Channel to a Reservoir or Do
Other Kinds of Things. If We Look at Lower Dixie Creek And the River
Allotment in 1989, The Sediments Were Transported Down the Channel or
Were Retained in the Channel, Clearly A Nonfunctional Situation. Here in
1994 the Sediments Are Now Trapped on the Floodplain And Resulting in a
Much Better Walter Quality and Reduction of Sediments. And, of Course,
Water Supports All Life in the Riparian Zone. It Is the Lifeblood. If We
Look at Bully Creek, in 1982 it Simply Didn\'t Support a Lot of
Anything. It Didn\'t Support Vegetation. It Didn\'t Support Much
Wildlife, And Water Quality Is Impaired Here, but after a Change of
Management, by 1988 It\'s Clearly Providing Better Walter Quality As
Well as Wildlife Habitat and Forage. So We See That Grazing Strategies
to Maintain Functionality Also Provide Many Other Values Such as Clean
Water, Water Stored on the Land Longer, Wildlife and Fish Habitat,
Recreation, Forage and Aesthetics. The Bad News Is That There Is No
Cookbook. We Simply Can\'t Come up with Any One Grazing Strategy or Any
Combination of Strategies That Works Everywhere as Has Been Previously
Mentioned. We\'re Going to Have to Look at The Individual Situation and
Adapt Things to It. The Good News Is That the Single Common Denominator
among Riparian Areas Inventoried in Montana as Functioning Properly Was
the Continual Involvement on The Part of the Operator or Manager. If
They Have the Interest and The Desire to Make Things Happen, Then There
Are Strategies That Can Help Them Determine That. So, Warren Clary and
Burt Webster Then Make this Statement That in Fact, as Long as Good
Management Is Practiced So There Is Control of Livestock Distribution
and Grazing Intensity, the Specific Grazing System Employed May Not Be
Significant. Okay. There Are, However, Grazing Management Practices like
I Said, That Can Be Employed Either Singly or Usually in Combination
That Provide a Strategy That Can Have a Reasonable Success of Improved
Conditions or Restoration of Riparian Areas or Maintenance Riparian
Areas That Are Already Improperly Fung ‑‑ in Properly Functioning
Condition. The Selection of These Practices To Formulate a Strategy for
Any One Ranch Is Dependent Upon, Number One, Commitment of the Operator
to Achieve Riparian Objectives, and the Specific Needs of Each Unique
Riparian Area And, of Course, Compatibility with the Entire Ranch
Operation. The Specific Needs of the Riparian Area Depend upon its
Present Condition in Relationship to Objectives and Its Capability and
Potential in Particular. So If We Look at What Might Be Involved There,
We Can Come up With Some General Guidelines to Meet the Needs of
Riparian Areas And the Viewers Will Have to Make the Determination
Whether They Have the Commitment or Whether or Not Certain Practices Can
Be Made with the Individual Ranches or Allotments They\'re Dealing with.
We\'re Not Going to Be Able to Discuss Most or Not ‑‑ Especially Not All
of These Options That Are Available, and Innovation and Creativity Will
Be Required to Make These Things Fit Any One Situation. Or Management
Unit as a Whole. There Are Some General Things That We Can Look At.
Again, Grazing Systems for Riparian Areas must Generally Limit Grazing
Intensity and Season of Use to Provide Sufficient Rest to Encourage
Plant Growth, Vigor and Energy Storage. And Ensure Sufficient Vegetation
Is Left During Periods of High Flow to Protect Streambanks and We Need
to Control the Timing of Grazing to Prevent Damage to Streambanks When
They\'re Most Vulnerable to Trampling. There Are a Lot of Other Factors
That We Can Consider. A Few of These Include Stocking Rate and
Utilization Levels, Types of Stream, Post‑grazing Regrowth and Residual
Cover, Especially Prior to High Flows, Duration of Treatments by Season
‑‑ That\'s Just the Lent of Time In a Pasture Regardless of Use ‑‑ and
Topography of the Ranch And Riparian Areas. And Last, Certainly Not
Least, Is Economic Feasibility and Practical Tea. Let\'s Look at a Few
of These in A Little Bit More Detail. If We Look at Stocking Rate,
That\'s the Number of Animals per Unit Area, and We Need to Know The
Amount of Time That Grazing Occurs and the Forage Consumed, It\'s Been a
Critical Factor in Development of Grazing Systems On Uplands, but We
Also Need to Consider Management Stress Versus Natural Stress in
Riparian Systems. There Are a Lot of Different Stream Types. We Can Look
at Natural Stress as The Sensitivity of a Riparian Area to Disturbance.
One of Those, of Course, Can Be Grazing. And Management Stress Is the
Amount of Forage Removed or the Bank ‑‑ the Trampling Effects, Those
Kinds of Things. Certain Streams Cannot Take Very Much Stress. They Have
a High Sensitivity. While Others Can Take a Lot. Let\'s Look at Just One
Factor Relating to That. Here We Have a Stream with 25% Utilization, as
Close as Could Be Measured, Starting to Show Some Effects on the Banks.
As We Get to 50% Utilization, There\'s Some Obvious Effects. But If We
Go Upstream to a Different Substrate, Different Soil, Here We Have 60%
Utilization to the Left of the Fence and There Is at Least No Bank
Damage Starting to Occur Here. So Utilization Can Be a Tool, But it
Varies with What the Effects Are with Different Stream Types. We Also
Said We Had to Look at Vegetation Regrowth, Especially Prior to High
Flows. Here in Another Section of Fitzhugh Creek, this Is Late in The
Growing Season, and There\'s Very Little Opportunity for Regrowth Here
and Very Little Residual Vegetation to Trap and Filter Sediments and Do
Those Kind of Functions That We Want Vegetation to Do. However, Here
with a Change in Management, this Is in the Winter, after Grazing Has
Occurred, and with this Amount Of Regrowth of ‑‑ it Should Allow
Recovery to Proceed in This System. We Also Talked about Duration of
Grazing Treatments and Lou Meyers in Montana in 1989 Study Showed That
the Successful Systems That He Had Observed Had An Average of about 28
Days, Plus or minus Several Days for Successful Systems. Unsuccessful
Systems May Have a Duration of Around 60 Days. Again, plus or minus
Several. One of the Important Things That He Had to Look at Also Was the
Average Days Duration, the Hot Season Grazing Treatment. In That Case He
Was Looking at Willow Dominated Systems, and So Only Around 10 or 12
Days of Duration in Pastures During the Hot Season Led to Successful
Management, Whereas If You Approach 30 Days General Duration in Pasture
Degradation Occurred. There We Have about 12½ Days in Successful, 33
Days. Again, There Was a plus or minus A Few Days Variation There. Okay.
We Also Have to Consider Terrain, of Course. If We\'re Dealing with
Large, Broad Riparian Areas, Gentle Terrain, Reef Lots of Opportunities
from Riparian Pastures, Rotational Schemes, All Kinds of Things That We
Can Do Without a Lot of Input. However, as We Get to Steep Terrain like
Here in the Trout Creeks, Smaller Riparian Areas And Large Pastures,
Things Become Increasingly Difficult to Arrive at a Suitable Solution.
But One Thing I Want to Emphasize Before I Leave Very General Guidelines
Is We Can Design Some Practice for Any One Spot That Will Solve a
Riparian Problem, However, If It\'s Not Economically Feasible and
Practical, Then the Operation Operator Won\'t Have the Commitment to
Make it Work and Implement It. If I Can Briefly Summarize the General
Considerations in Just a Few Words, I Would like to Say The First Thing
Is That Commitment. And Then as Far as the Grazing Itself, We Want to
Look at Frequency, Intensity, Duration And Season of Use and How That
Fits in with the Topography That We\'re Dealing with. Wayne, You Want to
Take it from There?

Elmore: Yes, That Was Real Good, Steve. Thanks. I Would like to Have You
Give Just a Little Bit of an Expansion on How Timing Changes With
Different Community Types.

Leonard: Sure. Timing Often Is Related to the Plant Physiology of
Different Species and Their Palatability. If You Have to Have Willow or
Woody Dominated System to Hold The Banks Together in Those Noncohesive
Materials, Then Hot Season Use Is Really Critical, Whereas If You\'re
Dealing with a Herbaceous Community, You May Be Able to Get by with That
If You Have ‑‑ If You Have Periodic Rest and Things like That. But One
Thing That Is Real Evident in Some of These Systems Between Woody and
Herbaceous Communities Is Their Response Over Time Relative to Stress
and Recovery. We Find That Woodys Persist for A Long Time Even with
Quite a Long Use and They Almost Imperceptibly Sometimes Go out Of the
System. But They Also Take a Long Recovery Time Compared to Some Of the
Herbaceous Components. Whereas the Herbaceous Components Often Can Go
out of The System with Improper Grazing Management Very Quick, but They
Also Can Recover Very Quickly. So You Have to Know the Site Conditions
and Also Your Desired Future Conditions in Order to Be Able to Evaluate
Those Things And Relative Plant Physiology And Stress and Recovery
Periods.

Elmore: Thanks, Steve. We must Remember That Timing, Intensity, Site
Potential and Present Condition Are Some of The Important Factors to
Remember When Designing Grazing Strategies to Maintain and Restore
Riparian Areas. Our Ability to Be Flexible Is Vital to Ensuring the
Success of Meeting Your Management Goals And Objectives in Any Grazing
Strategy for Riparian Areas. Leonard Jolley Will Now Continue With Some
Specific Examples of Grazing Strategies and Additional Techniques That
Can Be Incorporated into Those Strategies to Make Them Work. Leonard?

Jolley: Thank You, Wayne. I Will Start Today Reviewing a Few of the
Possible Strategies And Give Examples of Each. Let Me Start with the
First of The Riparian Pasture. The Riparian Pasture Is a Product of a
Riparian Area That\'s Large Enough That it Can Be Used as One or More
Pastures And Provides the Ultimate in Control and Flexibility. Without
Foregoing the ‑‑ Foregoing Availabilities of Upland Areas. These
Pastures Can Be Used Seasonally, Can Be Used in Conjunction with
Rotation Strategies or as Special Use Pastures. As an Example, Let\'s
Take a Look At the North Fork of the Humbolt River, 1989, and Contrast
That With a Picture Taking in 1994. Here We Have a Riparian Pasture
That\'s Been Established That\'s Used Several Weeks Prior to Mid‑june as
a Yearling Bull Pasture, and Note the More Vegetation on Either Side,
the Narrowing of the Stream Channel, A Better Width to Depth Ratio.
Dramatic Improvement. The next Example, Let\'s Take a Look at the Goosey
Lake Flat Creek in 1965 in Northern Nevada. Let\'s Contrast this with a
Picture Taken in 1991 after Early Use One Year Followed by Two Years
Late Use as a Gathering Pasture. And Let\'s Look Closer at the Stream
and Bank Vegetation Where This Has Been Used as a Riparian Pasture and
Look at the Dramatic Narrowing Again of this Stream, The Rebuilding of
the Streambanks and Riparian Vegetation. The next Strategy to Review Is
That of Winter Dormant Season Grazing. And the Benefit of Dormant Season
Grazing it it Provides Total Growing Rest Every Year. There Is Some
Utilization You Can Expect to Occur on Woody Vegetation, However That
Use Is Usually Low Because the Drainages Are Often Colder than Adjacent
Uplands. Again Let\'s Look an Example of Dormant Season Grazing. This
First Image in Little Bear Creek, That\'s Central Oregon. At this Time
Season‑long Grazing Was Being Practiced in 1977. Let\'s Contrast this
with Little Bear Creek after 10 Years of Winter Use and No Reductions in
That. The next Contrast, Let\'s Take a Look at Wickiup Creek. This
Picture Taken in 1939, and At That Point it Had Had 29 Years of Winter
Grazing. Note the Belly‑high Vegetation In this Area. Then Let\'s
Contrast That with 1991 at Wickiup Creek with Continued Winter Grazing.
Note the Vegetation, the Large Woody Debris and We Should Note That in
Addition to this Dormant Season Grazing That the Operator Here Calls
Riparian Loafers, Places the Salt Well Aware from The Riparian Areas and
Turns out At Different Locations from Year To Year. The next Strategy I
Would like To Review Is That of Spring Grazing Early on and Early off.
The Benefit of Spring Grazing Is It Provides Rest During the Critical
Growing Period. We Know That Compaction Can Be a Problem on Some Soils
by this Early On, However, Riparian Vegetation Usually Benefits Because
the Use Generally Occurs After Spring Runoff and Regrowth Is Allowed
Each Year. We Also Know That Cool Temperatures and the Green Forage
Available in the Uplands Help with the Distribution. Let\'s Look at
Examples of this. The First, That of Bully Creek, Which I Think You Have
Seen Before. This a Picture in 1982 with Season‑long Grazing. Let\'s
Contrast this with Bully Creek after Six Years of Spring Use and No
Reductions in the Animal Numbers. The next Contrast to Show You Is That
of the South Fork of the Crooked River Where Practicing Season Long Use
in 1979, this Is In Central Oregon, and Let\'s Take a Look at South Fork
of the Crooked River in 1986 after a Combination of Early Exclusion, But
in Recent Years It\'s Had Spring Use. And Look at the Rebuilt
Streambanks, the Riparian Vegetation, this Proper Functioning Situation
We Have Here. The next Strategy to Review with You Is That of Rest
Rotation. Now, Rest Rotation May Incorporate Three, Four, Five or More
Pastures, One or More Pastures Are Rested the Entire Year, with the
Remainder of the Pastures Grazed for a Portion of The Year. Pasture
Changes Are Usually Based on Plant Growth And/or Livestock Production
Needs. Now, Let\'s Look at an Example of A Five Pasture Rest Rotation
Scheme, and Here You Request See ‑‑ You Can See this Pattern in Use ‑‑
in ‑‑ Each Pasture Has a Different Use in Each Year. Let\'s Look at a
Three‑pasture Rest Rotation and It\'s Probably Safe to Say this Has Been
the Most Extensively Used Because of The Lower Cost Required to Split Up
an Area into Three and Provide Water as Well. Now the Use of a Three
Pasture Rotation Was Used on Strawberry Creek Here in Northern Nevada
And It\'s in Good Condition. The Three Pasture System Has Worked Well,
but Let\'s Realize That Strawberry Creek Was in Good Condition to Begin
with. Let\'s Take a Look at Another Part of Strawberry Creek and See The
Good Balance of Structure Here with the Herbaceous Vegetation as Well as
the Aspens And Willows. Now, Let\'s Take a Look at the Example Where a
Three Pasture Rest Rotation Was Not Successful. This Is on Wildcat Creek
in Northern Nevada. Why Wasn\'t it Successful? Well, it Was in Poor
Condition To Begin With, and When You Look At a Three Pasture System
Where It\'s Getting Only One Year of Rest in Three, There Is the
Potential for Concentrating Animals the Other Two Years, And, Therefore,
the Solution to A Situation like this May Be More Pastures to Shorten
the Duration, More Apparent Rest, Additional Practices to Achieve
Distribution or Possibly Exclusion, at Least Temporarily. The next
Strategy to Discuss With You Is That of Deferred Rotation. Deferred
Grazing Provides Critical Growing Season Rest for Each Pasture Each
Year, but Each Pasture Is Also Grazed. Deferred Rotation Usually Varies
The Time of Year Any One Pasture Is Grazed. Deferred and Deferred
Rotation Grazing Stat Gees Are Often Detrimental to Woody Vegetation
Unless Carefully Developed and Monitored. Let\'s Look at an Example of
Wildcat Creek Again. This Is Just Downstream of That Failed Three
Pasture Rest Rotation We Looked at Earlier Where Two Years of Spring Use
Followed by Two Years of Fall Use Combined with the Appropriate Herd
Management Has Just Just Fine. Now, Look at this Example of the Turn of
the Century Impacts That Many Riparian Areas Suffered, But in this Case,
Very Dramatic On Van Duzier Creek in Nevada. Mining Took It\'s Toll on
Virtually All of this Creek, However by 1982 it Had Recovered
Remarkably. But Then We Look in 1991, the Five Pasture Deferred Rotation
Strategy Allowed Even Betterer Recovery. If We Look the Other Direction
On Van Duzier Creek, Note the Woody Recruitment. Let\'s Turn to the
Display Here And Review Systems That Generally Don\'t Work and Those
Systems Include Season Long Grazing Through Spring, Summer And Fall. And
Spring and Fall Grazing on The Same Year. Let\'s Look at an Example of
Season Long Grazing. This Is an Example Where We See Degraded Conditions
of the Streambank, the Stream Edge, the Laid Back Streambanks That
We\'re Only Too Familiar with in Many Areas of the West. Let\'s Look
Again at a Different Location. This in Wyoming Where We Have a Fence
Line Contrast. On the Right Side of the Fence We Had Spring and Fall
Grazing Compared with Winter Grazing Only on the Left Side. Note the
Loss of Shading and Stability Provided by Those Willows on the Right
Side of This Streamline ‑‑ Fence Line Contrast. Now, We Need to
Acknowledge There\'s a Lot of Variations in These Systems. There\'s Way
to Combine Systems. And These I\'m Reviewing Are Certainly All of Those
That Are Possible. Now, Most of the Systems That I\'ve Described Employ
Other Techniques or Practices That Distribute Livestock or Otherwise
Avoid Adverse Impacts To the Riparian Areas. Now, These Can Be
Categorized As, First, Those Techniques That Attract Livestock Away from
the Riparian Areas. Secondly, Techniques That Restrict Livestock from
Riparian Areas. And Thirdly, Techniques That ‑‑ Of Herd Management and
Animal Husbandry Practices All Used to Promote Distribution. Let\'s Take
a Look at the Techniques That Attract Livestock Away from Riparian
Areas. They Include Offsite Stock Water, Alternative Forage Sources,
Fertilization Might Be Used to Improve Palatability. The Use of
Prescribed Fire to Improve Forage Availability and Palatability and Use
of Feed Supplements. Let\'s Look an an Example of One Of These
Techniques. The First, That of Offsite Stock Water. This Is in a
Recovered Desert Riparian Area and Here We Have a Benefit from this
Offsite Stock Water, Both That it Removes Water ‑‑ the Traffic of Access
To That Water from the Recovering Area and Secondly There Is a Benefit
Often of the Temperature of the Water in the Trough Is More Desirable to
the Stock than it Might Have Been in The Stream. Let\'s Look at Another
Example of A Technique, That of Seeding. Here Is a Fence Line Contrast
in Ruby Valley Where a Seeding on The Left Side Is Quite Attractive and
Potentially Can Lure Livestock out of Riparian Area Much. Certainly by
Contrast with the Area to the Right Side of this Fence. A Third
Technique Is That of the Prescribed Fire, Prescribed Burning. We Know
That Native Americans Used ‑‑ Long Used Fire in the West to Both Attract
and to Manage Wildlife, and We Can Get Similar Effects for Livestock
After Judicious Use of Prescribed Fire, These Areas Have Been Burned Can
Be Quite Attractive to Livestock And, Again, Can Be Used to Lure Them
Away from Riparian Area. We Also Need to Remember to Place Salt and
Other Supplements Well Aware from These Riparian Areas. Now Let\'s Look
at Techniques That Restrict Livestock from Riparian Areas. These
Techniques Include Fencing, Natural Barriers, Such As Brush, Windrows or
Downed Trees, the Use of Hardened Crossings or Water Access and Finally
the Use of of Herding. Let\'s Turn to an Example Here at Mahogany Creek.
Here Mahogany Creek in this Picture Is in Sad Shape. We Again See
Deteriorated Streambanks, We Have Exposed Roots and in this Particular
Case There Was a Sensitive Fish At Issue. In the next Picture We See
Mahogany Creek after Exclusion Fencing Was Used, and in this Case it Was
the Appropriate Technique. Sometime Because of the Cost, The Size of the
Pasture or Terrain, Exclusion May Be the Most Practical. In this Case it
Has Worked to Provide Better Streambanks, Better Fish Habitat, Better
Functioning Condition and Probably Cooler Temperatures in Here. Once
Recovered We Know Exclusion Might Transition to Another Grazing System.
We Realize That Livestock Will Often Travel Some Distance to Use a
Gently Sloping Hardened Crossing or ‑‑ for Access to Drink Rather than
Negotiating Steep Banks or Mud and That Can Reduce Impacts on
Overhanging Streambanks. We Know Finally That Herding or Hazing of
Livestock from Riparian Areas Can Also Help to Minimize Impacts,
Especially Where Sufficient Upland Forage And Offsite Water Are
Available. Let\'s Turn Lastly to Herd Management and Animal Husband re
Practices and Really Can\'t Do Justice to this Topic in the Short Time
but Let\'s Recognize There Are Culling Practices That We Have So‑called
Bottom Huggers And Riparian Loafers That Can Be Culled. They Tend to
Spend More Time in Riparian Area. Different Classes of Livestock Are
Possible Where They Have a Different Behavior and Bee Use a Riparian
Area More Predominantly Than Year Lynx. The Kind of Livestock. Finally,
Breed of Livestock, Herefords, Brahmas, and All of These Can Come into
Play. Let\'s Show an Image Here. There Is Riparian Loafers and The
Bottom Huggers, I like That Term, Which Can Make a Difference If
They\'re Removed From the Mix. Now, We Focused on These Different
Techniques, These Different Systems, and We Can\'t Forget That in All
These Slides Focusing on Riparian Areas, Don\'t Forget the Uplands in
These Systems. The Point Is to Balance and to Get Appropriate Management
for Riparian Areas That We Ought Not Forget the Uplands as Well. There
Are Many Options Available. The Ones That Were Present Are Just a Few.
The Bottom Line Is If You Are Committed to Improved Riparian Resource
Management, Then There Will Be a Way to Get it Done. With That I\'ll
Pass it Back to You, Wayne.

Elmore: Thanks, Leonard. That Was Excellent. As We Have Just Learned,
the Design of Grazing System Depends On Many Things. Another Important
Consideration Is Monitoring the Progress of Your Management Program. Now
Al Winward Will Present an Overview of Monitoring Vegetation. Al?

Winward: Thank You, Wayne. My Presentation on Monitoring Will Focus
Primarily on the Vegetation Resources in Riparian Areas. Monitoring
Involves Some Sort of Periodic Checks. To Evaluate Whether There Are
Resources on an Area Are Being Managed in a Way That Has Been Previously
Agreed upon. Since Management in Riparian Settings Usually Influence
Many Kinds of Values, for Example, Water Quality and Quantity, Habitat
and Food for Animals and Birds and Fish, Scenic Qualities And Other
Things, it Most Often Involves Bringing Together Several People, Each
with Their Own Interest and Values, to Help Preset How an Area Will Be
Managed. It Has Been Said We must Begin With the End in Mind and this
Certainly Applies with Riparian Monitoring. My Presentation Will First
Emphasize Short‑term Monitoring, In Other Words, What Is Happening in a
Particular Riparian Setting this Season or This Year? Second, I Will
Cover Long‑term Monitoring, Which Is Designed to Provide Information on
Potential Changes Which May Occur over Several Years of Management.
Short‑term Monitoring in Riparian Areas Often must Include Periodic
Checks on the Animals Themselves. Are They Present in an Agreed Upon
Place for the Right Season Of the Year, for the Proper Number of Days?
Since Riparian Areas Make up a Minor Portion of the Acreage of A Grazing
Unit and since Animals Usually Prefer These Areas, Only A Few Animals
out of Place Can Have a Rapid Negative Influence On the Vegetation, the
Soils, Streambanks or Other Inter‑tied Riparian Values. When Vegetation
Begins to Dry or Becomes in Short Supply, or When A Cold Snap in the
Weather Occurs, Animals May Change Their Foraging Preferences or They
May Begin to Walk the Streams More Than Normal, and When this Happens, a
Short‑term Monitoring Process Should Be in Place to Evaluate If
Mechanical Impacts, Such as Deep Who Have Prints, Broken Banks or
Anything That May Negatively Influence a Riparian Area Are Causing
Excessive Impact. Unfortunately, by the Time Mechanical Impacts Become
Easily Visible, Much Damage May Have Already Occurred. We Are Still in
the Process of Developing Methodologies Which Will Allow Us to Reliably
Measure Mechanical Impacts and To Distinguish These Impacts From Other
Accelerated Causes or From Normal Hydrologic Forces. Another Short‑term
Monitoring Procedure Used to Evaluate Animal Impacts Involves
Utilization Measurements. These Include Periodic Checks Within the
Grazing Season to Determine How Much of the Plant Biomass Has Been
Removed. It Most Often Involves Placement Of Cages in the Appropriate
Portions of the Pasture Before The Animals Enter the Area. As the Season
Advances, One Can Make a Comparison of the Weight Of Vegetation Within
the Cage And Compare the Weight Outside The Cage and Calculate the
Percent That\'s Gone. While this Short‑term Monitoring Method Has its
Drawbacks, Used Appropriately, it May Provide Information to Help
Determine How Long Animals May Remain in a Unit Without Undue Stress on
the Plants Involved. This Is Important. Data from Utilization Generally
Should Not Be Used as a Management Objective. Instead, it Should Be Used
a as A Tool for You to Achieve an Objective You Have Set. Another
Monitoring Method to Evaluate Seasonal Impact Involves What Has Come to
Be Called Stubble Height. This Approach Has Gained in Popularity Because
it Often Is Easier to Measure What Is Present Versus What Is Gone, and
It Does Not Require the Use of Cages. Instead, One Periodically Measures
the Average Remaining Height of Either Selected Key Species or an
Average of Several Species During the Grazing Season. This Method
Requires That a Previously Agreed upon Value Be Set on What Stubble
Height Should Be Allowed Before Animals Are Removed from the Unit. On
Some Stream Sides, Willows or Other Shrubs Are Important to Stream
Stability as to ‑‑ as Well as to Several Habitat Values. They, Too, must
Be Monitored and Maintained. This Is Why an Awareness of Seasonal
Preference Changes from Herbaceous Woody Plant Species Is Often
Important. Much Confusion Exists as to How To Monitor Use on These Woody
Species as Well as Where or in What Quantity They Should Be Present.
Until Better Methods for Monitoring Use on Woody Plants Becomes
Available, We Should Make Sure That an Appropriate Age‑class
Distribution, That Is, Young Medium Age and Mature Plants Is Present on
Streams Adapted for Shrub Species. If an Appropriate Age Class Is
Maintained over Time, Areas Will Develop Quantities of Woody Plant
Species That Are Suited For Their Sites. It Is Important That Studies Be
Put in Place That Are Designed To Monitor Long‑term Impacts as Well.
Long‑term Monitoring Often Requires a Knowledge of at Least Most of the
Plant Species in an Area. Different Species Provide Varying Values to
Riparian Settings, Ranging from Buffering Forces of Water to Forage and
to Habitat. Since Animals Forage on or Influence Plant Species to
Varying Degrees, Long‑term Monitoring Processes Are Often Designed to
Measure Changes in The Relative Amounts of Species. Methods Are
Available to Measure Changes in Density of Plants, Cover, Biomass or
Frequency of All Species in an Area. These Types of Studies Can Be Made
at Varying Levels of Complexity or Detail. All Usually Require
Considerable Amount of Effort and Dollar Input to Provide Adequate and
Reliable Information on Impacts In Riparian Settings. In Riparian Areas
Plant Species Tend to Cluster Themselves Together in Groups. We Call
this Groups Community Types. Within Various Valley Segments, These
Community Types Develop And Distribute Themselves Across A Landscape in
a Pattern That\'s Somewhat Predictive of Such Things as the Water Table
or Specific Disturbance Pattern. Sampling Methods Have Been Designed to
Monitor Changes over Time in the Pattern of These Community Types Within
a Specific Valley Segment. Any Changes in the Kind, Amount Or the
Location of the Community Types Can Then Be Evaluated as Either Positive
or Negative, Depending on the Objectives That\'s Been Set for That Area.
Across ‑‑ a Cross Section Measurement Can Also Evaluate Whether the
Overall Riparian Area Is Shrinking or Expanding In Acreage. Similarly, a
Method Called Greenline Sampling Has Been Specifically Developed to
Measure Changes Which Might Occur to the Streamside Vegetation Within a
Valley Segment. In Specific Valley Segments with Particular Water
Forces, Streamside Vegetation Develops To Buffer the Forces of Water.
Under Natural Hydrologic Processes, Stream Channels Often Move about
Within a Given Valley Segment, and as a Stream Meander Breaks, as Is
about to Happen in This Scene, and the Stream Reforms a New Meander,
Plant Community Types Develop to Fit The Newly Located Stream Edges. The
Greenline Sampling Process Is Designed to Monitor These Changes over
Time and Evaluate Whether the Changes Are Appropriate for a Certain
Valley Segment. The Green Line Is Defined as the More or less Continuous
Line of Perennial Vegetation That Develops along the Sides of a Stream
or a Lake. The Greenline Sampling Method Involves Walking Both Sides of
a Stream Segment and Recording the Amount of Lineal Distance Each
Community Type Makes up for That Area. Any Changes in Community Type
Composition That Occurs over Time Can Then Be Evaluated as to Whether
the Changes Are Compatible with the Objectives Set for That Area. Nature
Has Developed Robust Deep‑rooted Plant Species to Grow in Streamside
Settings. These Species Serve to Buffer The Forces of Moving Water and
Filter Sediments and Perform Other Important Hydrologic Functions. Each
Stream Type Is Designed to Have a Major Portion of its Banks Covered
with Community Types That Are Made up of These Robust Hydric Species.
When These Community Types Are Present, the Soil, the Water and The
Plants Interact Together to Provide a Properly Functioning Stream.
Conversely, When Appropriate Amounts or Kinds of Community Types That
Are in Appropriate For the Setting, the Stream Fails to Function
Properly. The Greenline Measurement Provides a Way to Measure Whether a
Particular Stream Has Adequate Lineal Coverage of the Appropriate Hydric
Species on Its Banks. Monitoring Can Involve Many Other Things
Concerning Vegetation Such as Measuring Large Woody Debris, How Much,
What Sizes, Is it Standing, Is It Down, et Cetera, or Monitoring May Be
as Simple as Keeping a Repeated ‑‑ as Keeping A Record Through
Photographs on An Area over Time. I Have Provided Only a Few of The Many
Kinds of Vegetation Monitoring Procedures That Are Available to Use in
Riparian Settings. New or Revised Methods Are Being Developed Each Year,
and Much Literature Is Available to Help One Select Those Methods That
Are Most Appropriate to Their Particular Situation. Remember the
Statement That I Used Earlier, We must Begin with The End in Mind.
Select Those Monitoring Procedures Which Will Best Answer Whether You
Are Meeting Your Predetermined Management Objectives. Thank You, and
I\'ll Turn it Back To You, Wayne.

Elmore: Thanks, Al. We Apologize for Time Constraints. We\'re a Little
Behind. We Are ‑‑ We Got Some Excellent Faxes Having to Do with the
Grazing Segment. I Might Just Mention We\'re Developing a Curriculum and
a Tech Note Which Will Have Incorporation of a Lot of What You Heard
from These Three Gentlemen in it and Training Sessions That Will Be
Provided This next Year on Designing Grazing Systems. We Are Going to
Move into Our Next Segment and to Do That, If We Are Going to Achieve
Our Ultimate Goal of Keeping Water On the Land Longer Through the Design
of Compatible Grazing Systems, Then We must Remember Some of the
Important Points We Have Covered Here Today. But We must Also Remember
That Many Other Factors Besides Grazing Influence the Condition Of
Riparian Areas. These Can Include the Location Of Roads and Highways,
Wildlife Impacts, the Effects of Climate, Especially the Timing and
Intensity of Droughts and Floods, and Land Use Activities Such as
Mining, Timber Harvesting and Recreation. We must All Be Committed to
Making Restoration Work. This Can Only Occur by Looking At the Entire
Watershed, Across Ownership Boundaries Because Streams Do Not Know or
Care Who Owns the Land, Only How it Is Managed. In Our Final Segment
Today We Would like to Discuss Just How We Are Going to Accelerate
Cooperative Riparian Restoration And Management. To Talk about How We
Will Achieve the Goals, Our Interagency Leadership Panel Has Rejoined Us
along with Representatives of the Livestock Industry and Environmental
Communities. Paul Johnson, Chief of the Natural Resources Service,
Conservation Service, the Old SCS, Is Back with Us Again, Gary Edwards,
Assistance Director Fisheries from the U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service,
Former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas and Judy Noritake Is Also
With Us. Welcome, Judy.

Noritake: Glad to Be Here.

Elmore: Thank You. And Joining Our Group Are Doc And Connie Hatfield,
Owners of The Hatfield\'s High Desert Ranch In Central Oregon. Connie,
We Are Looking Forward To Hearing about Some of Your Experiences.

Thank You. Glad to Be Here.

Elmore: Doc, Thanks for Come To Go Phoenix.

Thank You.

Elmore: Mat Millenbach, Deputy Director for the BLM Has Also Returned
and Chief of the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck. Before We Continue Our
Discussion, I Would like to Mention We Will Be Going to the Phones Again
in a Few Minutes For Our Final Interactive Segment. So If You Have a
Question or a Comment for Our Top Leadership And Guests, Please Start
Placing Your Calls Now. We\'ve Covered a Lot of Ground Since We Kicked
Things off this Morning, and it Would Be Interesting Now to Hear Our
Panel\'s Perception to What\'s Been Presented and Where They Think We
Should Focus Our Efforts. I\'m Going to Start with Mike Because of Time
Constraints. He Has to Get Back. So, Mike, If You Have Some Closing
Comments First, I Would Like for to You Start.

Dombeck: Thanks, Wayne. You Know, It\'s Been a Wonderful Day, and I Just
Want to Start Out by ‑‑ Start out with a Leopold Quote and That\'s That
The Only Progress That Really Counts Is That on the Landscape Of the
Back 40, And, You Know, This Is about People, Not, ‑‑ Knowledge and
Land. That\'s What Today Was about. I Was Fascinated to Hear the Wide
Variety of Techniques and The Science That\'s Being Applied To Riparian
Management. I Think Where I Can Help and What I\'m Asking Each of You to
Really Focus on What You Can Do As Individuals, Take Personal
Responsibility, Don\'t Wait for Directions from Washington or From the
Regional Office or State Office or Wherever. Many of You Are the Experts
out There and Get out There and Work Together. Stay Within the Law. As
Jack Ward Tom Us and I Have Said Many, Many Times When I Was At BLM and
He Was Chief of the Forest Service, That Don\'t Wait For Us to Tell You
What to Do. Get on with It. That\'s My Directive to You. And Work with
People. Commitment Is What You Will Get From Me, and I Think All the
Panelists up Here, It\'s the Importance of Understanding the Values That
We Have, and I Would Like to Close with Another Quote Or near Quote, at
Least, and That\'s What Margaret Meade Always Says, Is Never Doubt a
Couple People Can Really Make a Difference. In Fact, That\'s the Only
Way Changes Really Occur. It\'s up to Take Responsibility To Carry On,
Be Creative, Work At the Edge of the Envelope, but Most Importantly,
Involve People, Because People Are the Key to the Delivery System of a
Healthy Landscape and by Working With Landowners with Scientists, With
the Resource Managers from The Agencies, That\'s the Way We\'re Going to
Get this Job Done And My Commitment to You Is You Have My Support All
the Way. Thanks, Wayne.

Elmore: Thank You, Mike. Well, Judy, Doc and Connie Have Been Watching
Our Show Today, And Now We Would like to Hear Your Perspective on How We
Can Make All this Work. So Let\'s Start with the Hatfields. Doc?

Doc: I Would Have to Say What Mike Just Said, We Personally Know That
When He Was Director of the BLM That\'s Exactly What He Did Do, Was Work
With Us on the Ground with Support, Even Though He Was a Long Ways off
and Not Directly Involved. We Got the Support That He\'s Saying. So That
Isn\'t Just Noise. Connie and I Have Been Involved With Cooperative
Watershed and Riparian Work for about 15 Years, and One of the Prime
Reasons We\'ve Done Is That We Feel That\'s the Best Way to Keep The
Values and the Culture That Go along with the Farming and Ranching
Community. We Have a Problem in Natural Resource Management. It Seems
like We Always Want to Blame Somebody and Say, Who Was The Bad Guy and
Why Is He Doing It Bad? And I Want to Give a Little of My History That
Shows How Times Change. My First Ancestors Came to Western Oregon in
1843, and by 1864 All the Ancestors I Have on All Sides Were Already in
Oregon In Farming and Ranching. For the First 100 Years They Were in
Oregon, the Worst Weed They Had to Fight Was Old‑growth Douglas Fir and
I Can Remember In the Last of the ‑‑ in the \'40s the Last of the Old
Growth Fir Slash Burns Where They Cut Them down and Burned Them for
Pasture, and That Wasn\'t That They Were Bad People. It Was Doing What
Was Appropriate for the Time and in Reality the Amount of Old Growth Fir
They Could Kill with the Technology of the Day Wasn\'t Even a Dent in
the Interest of The Biological Capital. Well, We All Know Things Have
Change since Then and Nobody Is Cutting and Burning Old Growth Fir to
Get Rid of Them Now. We Had a Ranch Before We Moved To the Desert 21
Years Ago in Montana, and We Had Some Old Cottonwoods, and it Never
Occurred to Me We Didn\'t Have Any Baby Cottonwoods and Now Looking Back
I Know from Hearing Don Prichard and Those Kind of Folks Talk, We Had
Enough Flows To Establish Baby Cottonwoods, Probably Our Cows Were
Eating Them off. It Wasn\'t We Were Deliberately Eating Them off. We
Didn\'t Know Bit. The Thing That\'s Exciting to Me About the Proper
Functioning Conditions and the Work That Wayne Has Done and We Have Been
Involved with Him for a Long Time on Is How That Can Kind of Form a
Common Ground for Solutions, and Wouldn\'t it Be Nice Instead of Saying,
There\'s Too Many Buffalo in Yellowstone, Not Enough Buffalo in
Yellowstone, It\'s Natural, It\'s Not Natural, If We Applied the Proper
Functioning Condition Parameters to That and Talked About Management
from That Perspective Instead of Pointing Fingers Saying You Did It. And
the Same Way with the Grazing Allotments That Would Be Neighboring in
Similar Ecosystems. Instead of Saying We Need to Get Rid of These Cows
or These Cows Are Fine, We Have the Tools to Say Here Is How a Stream
Should Function. Is it Functioning Right? What Can We Do about It? Just
Briefly, Connie Got Us Involved to Stimulate the Formation of the Trout
Creek Mountain Working Group about Eight Years Ago, and Trout Creek
Mountains Are in Southeastern Oregon and Involve about a Quarter Million
Acres in an Area Involved in about 150,000 Acres Of it Is High Mountain
Pasture, And There Was a Special Trout There That Was in Real Difficulty
Because Mountain Had Been Grazed Season Long Every Summer for the Last
100 ‑‑ Well, Since the Late 1800s. Anyway, I Don\'t Have Time to Go Into
it in Detail, but by Looking at What it Took to Make The Stream
Function, and Agreeing on Some Common Goals, The Ranchers Voluntarily
Removed 3,000 Mother Cows from the Top Of That Mountain for Three Years,
and Then Grazed Them Under a Planned Program Using Some of the Methods
That Have Been Talked about Today, and Just this Spring the Aums That
The Ranchers Voluntarily Relinquished Which Were about 900 Were
Restored, and Now the Trout Has Improved in 75 Miles Of Stream That
It\'s in Good Enough Shape to Be Delisted and We\'re Really Excited
about the Possibility of Delisting a Wild Trout as a Result of
Management Changes That Allowed its Habitat To Improve So it Could Live
and At the Same Time the Ranch Community Could Still Live. They\'re
Grazing Totally Different than What They Did Before and They\'re Viable.
Thanks.

Elmore: Thanks, Doc. Judy, How about You?

Noritake: I\'m the Environmentalist on the Panel, And I Guess I Have to
Say That It\'s a Pretty Big Job to Try and Represent the Views of the
Whole Environmental Community, So I\'m Not Going to Do and That I Will
Speak Only on Behalf the Rivers Council and More than That on Behalf of
Myself. I Think, You Know, I\'m Not One Of the Gucci‑shoed Lobbyists in
Dc. I Do Live in Dc, but the Reason That I Do What I Do Is Because I\'m
a Daughter of the Bitter Root, Which Is a Mountain Stream That Flows up
the East Side of The Rockies in Western Montana. I Am Also the
Granddaughter of a Rancher, and I Do What I Do Because I Love the Land.
So I Just Wanted to Sort of Put That on the Table as a Caveat. That\'s
One Thing That I Think Doc and Connie and I Have in Common, and Other
People on this Panel. The Other Thing Is I Don\'t Think That Anybody
Here ‑‑ We\'ve Spent Some Time over the Last Couple Days Together, All
of Us, You Can\'t Question the Commitment of Any of the People Sitting
at This Table, Whether They\'re the Heads of Agencies or Ranchers or
Environmentalists. These People Are All Here Because of the Resource and
I Think We Need to Keep in That Mind. We May Not Always Agree about The
Way We\'re Going to Approach The Problems, but We\'re All Headed Towards
the Same Thing And I Think That\'s Real Commendable. I Don\'t Disagree
with Anything That I\'ve Heard Here in the Last Few Days. In Fact I Take
a Lot of Heart From It. We\'re Not Just Talking about Streams and
In‑stream Structures And How Many Pools per Mile. We\'re Talking about
the Way That Streams Function to Create Those Things, and in My
Experience That\'s Sort of a Leap Forward. How Do You Measure Those
Things? Well, You Know, You Look and See How Many Fish Are There, How
They\'re Doing, Are They Better, More Grass, More Forage, All Those
Kinds Every Things. Other Thing That Salted the Whole Presentation by
Everybody, The Scientists, the Agency Heads, Everybody, Is That this Is
about the Watershed. It\'s the Whole Watershed. And It\'s All the People
That Live in and it Use It. My Organization, That\'s the Bedrock of What
We Operate On, So We Need to View All of Those Things, All the Riparian
Work That Wayne Does in Context of The Watershed, and Certainly We\'ve
Heard That. The Commitment of the Managers Of the Agencies, the Head of
These Agencies, Is Commendable. Mike Gave the Go‑ahead to Everybody on
the Ground and Now We Need to Get out and Do It. I Think Also That
Public in General Is Paying More Attention And Part of That Is Because
There Are More Endangered Species Listings for Fish. They\'re Coming
along. We\'re Dealing with That in Oregon Right Now. They\'re on Their
Way in Montana, Idaho, and They\'re Kind of Piling up Because Aquatic
Species Are in Trouble. Streams Are at the Bottom of the System. All the
Sins of the Land Come And Visit Them and We Really Need to Look at the
Aquatic Biodiversity in Those Streams to Tell Us If the Health of the
Land Is Getting Better, and That\'s a Very Good Gauge. Also All the
Slides and Debris Torrents and All Those Things That Have Been Unleashed
in the Last Couple Years out of the Federal Lands, You Know, the Pipers
Got to Be Paid. It\'s Coming Due. We Have to Make an Investment. I Think
the Public Is Getting to That Point as Well. But the Question Is, How Do
We Do That? There\'s Lots of Good Words, Lots Of Good Intentions. We\'ve
Always Believed That Watershed Councils Are a Good Way to Approach That
Where You Put All the Users Together, You Sit Down, You Look at Etch
Other Face‑to‑face, You Know, You Know People in Common, You May Go to
Church with Them, You May Have Your Differences, but the Best Way to Do
That Is to Find Where You Do Have Common Agreement, And That May Be a
Very Small Area, but That\'s Where You Need To Work First, Work
Cooperatively, Build Some Trust. It\'s All about Trust. It\'s Trust with
Each Other and The Community. It\'s Trust with the Agencies. It\'s ‑‑
You Know, You Can\'t Write a Recipe on How to Do That. You Have to Get
out and Do It. I Think That\'s Exactly What Mike Dombeck Was Saying When
He Spoke Previously. I Think There Is a Lot of Resources on the Ground.
Certainly the States and Federal Agencies and Scientists Who Work For
Environmentalists Because We Do Have Some Very Good Scientists in Our
Own Right, There\'s a Lot of Resources There. People Have to Ask. I
Think Private Landowners, Once They Realize That They May Be Part of the
Problem, Accept the Responsibility to Step Forward And Help. All You
Have to Do Is Ask. I Think That the Resources Come To You. There\'s a
Lot of Money from the Federal Agencies, Certainly the Crp Program Is One
of the Best Ones out There. Paul Johnson Has Asked Us All to Give Them a
Hand with Enrolling 2 Million Acres in the next Few Years into Riparian
Reserves. Happy to Do That. I Think It\'s Terrific. My Question Is What
Do We Do When There\'s ‑‑ Not Acres. It Was 2 Million Miles. What Do We
Do When There Is 4 Million Miles That Want to Enroll, You Know? I Mean,
God Help Us That That\'s The Problem That We Have to Face. I Hope the
Day Comes When We Do. And When We Do, We Need to Think About Targeting
Those Resources Where They Do the Most Biological Good If There Are
Endangered Species. The Other Thing We Need to Remember Is as We Repair
These Systems, the Kind of Work Wayne Is Doing, It\'s Critical Important
Anyplace We Can Do it Whether There Is Fish or Endangered Species, We
Still Need to Do That Because the Highest Value Resource That Flows off
of Federal Lands Is The Water. Everything Else There, Whether Wood,
Recreation, Fish, Hunting, All Depends on the Water. It\'s the Thing
That Ties it Together. And, We All Need to Recognize That and Work on
It. I Think That the Other Thing That We Need to Be Aware Of, and My Own
Organization Is Certainly Cognizant of That, Is We Need to Find Ways to
Use Our Resources Whether They\'re near Stream Resources or They Are the
Upland Resources So That the Species And the Ecosystem Can Thrive, But
So That the People Can Thrive, Too. If You Don\'t Have Economic Return,
It\'s Not Going to Work. Certainly Some of the Work That Wayne\'s Been
Doing Has Shown Us That That Can Be the Case. You Can Come In, Restore
the Fish Species like on Trout Creek, and Maybe in the End the Forage Is
So Much Better You End Up with More Animals out There. Those Things Can
Happen. There Are Certainly Places Where Grazing in the Future Is Not
Going to Be Appropriate, Depending on What Kind of Species Are at Risk,
What Their Life Cycles Are, What the Grazing Seasons Are. But Overall We
Will Be Able to Do a Better Job and I Am Real Excited and Happy to Work
with Wayne and Do Whatever We Can Do. This Is the Kind of Stuff That We
Need to Be Doing And, You Know, I Don\'t Know If Doc and Connie Are
Thinking about Cloning Work on Their Ranch, but I Would like to See it
Happen Because I Would like to See Doc And Connie Cloned.

Elmore: Thanks, Judy. Connie, You Want to Give Us a Couple Comments.

Connie: a Couple Comments. What I Would like to Say Is Maybe Some of You
Wondering How Did We as Ranchers Get Involved With Talking with the
Environmental Community Might Be One Thing. It Probable ‑‑ Probably Many
of You out There and I Know Here on The Panel, Have Heard of Sacred Cows
at the Public Trough, Denzel Ferguson Wrote It. I Bet It\'s Been Back
10‑plus Years Ago. It Made Doc and I Just Sad and Sick and We Just
Didn\'t Believe What All He Had to Say There. Some of it Was True and
Some of It I\'ll Still Wonder about. But it Was Not Very Complimentary
to the Cattle Industry, and it Started Showing Us How to Look at Some
Problems That Were Going Around Right in Our Backyard That We Weren\'t
Aware Of, and Somebody Was Bringing it Up. So Doc Wrote an Editorial to
the Oregonian in Oregon in Portland And at the Bottom of His Editorial
He Said, If Anybody Would like to Come out to Our Ranch and Help Tell Us
with a We Are Doing Wrong, Please Do So. Well, Do You Know, We Got a
Call. And Was I a Nervous Wreck. All I Knew Is They Were an
Environmental Community. I Found out since the Isaac Walton League Is
Who Called. They Are a Conservation Group. At That Time I Had No Idea
Who They Were. I Just Knew They Were Come to Go Our Ranch. So That
Sunday Afternoon, as Our Three Quarters of a Mile Driveway Here Came
this Van and I Thought, What Are They Going To Be like? I Bet They\'re
Going to Have Long Hair ‑‑ I Was Talking about Men At That Time ‑‑ I Bet
They\'ll Wear Earrings, I Bet They Will Wear Those Funny Shoes, I Can
Call Them Now, They\'re Birkenstocks, and I Was Thinking Back to What I
Thought of as Hippies. Do You Know Who Got out of the Van? There Were
Six of the Nicest Older Gentlemen You\'d Ever Known In Your Life. They
Looked Just like My Father. It Didn\'t Take Us Long to Say Hellos and
Get Comfortable, These Were Just Neat People Really Concerned about
Land. In Three Hours We Went Around Our Place and Visited and as They
Went Back out Our Driveway Late That Afternoon, I Said to Myself, Those
Folks Are Okay. They Had Told Me Some Things That Has Helped Us in
Running Our Ranch Each to this Day That We Learned from Them, and
That\'s Kind of Where the Trout Creek Mountain Working Group That Doc
Kind of Talked with You Just a Little Bit about ‑‑ it Was a Group That a
Little Bit ‑‑ Several Years after Meeting Isaac Walton League Wayne
Called Up One Day, and He Said He Was Going to Go down and Give a Talk
On the Riparians to Some Ranchers in the Area. It\'s the Trout Creek ‑‑
There Is A Lot of Trout Creeks Throughout The West, this Is One Close to
Mcdermott in Southeastern Oregon. Doc Was to Give a Little Talk on The
Uplands and Wayne on the Riparians and it Was in the Mcdermott School
and it Isn\'t a Happy Scene. The Ranchers Were Very Upset, Very
Concerned, a Little Rude, But I Can See Why and Yet Lately We Have Found
out That a Lot of Times When People React That Way It\'s Because
They\'re Really Concerned for Their Livelihood And What\'s Going to
Happen. So That Was One Reason Why They Acted That Way. That Whole
Afternoon Doc Never Gave His Talk. Wayne Was Giving His. There Was
Controversy Going on And There Was Some Other Bureau People in the Room,
and I Call Them the \"Ologists,\" the Hydrologists, and I Get All My
Names and Words and Descriptions Mixed Up. So I Was a Little ‑‑ Didn\'t
Know Who All Was There. The Point Was the next Day We Went out on the
Land and I Could See What They Had Said for 21 Years the Environment Al
Community That this Fish Was in Danger, and None of Us Really Knew Why
in the Ranch Community Because Our Ancestors Had Been Running Their
Cattle and the Range Season Long All That Time Also. So What Were We
Doing Wrong? And There Were Fingers Being Pointed at Us. Of Course, this
Is Something I Kind of like to Say, Fingers Being Pointed at You, There
Is Three Coming Back to Yourself, Any Time You Point a Finger from Here
On, Be Careful What You Are Going to Say. I Am Just about Done. But What
Happened That Afternoon Was That We Got the Environmental ‑‑ the Isaac
Walton League Group Helped with The Trout Creek Working Group, The
Oregon Environmental Council And Oregon Trout and for Two Years We Met
Probably about Four Times a Year, We Would Get in a Circle and Listen to
Each Other With Respect. It Was Kind of Tough on All of Us Because We
Came from Different Backgrounds, but We All Cared about That Land, and
Probably the One Person in Oregon Trout That Helped Us More Than Any of
Them Teaching Us Just What That Trout Needed, but We Also Had a Lot of
the Large Words That Come out of the Bureau of Land Management and I\'ve
Heard Today, but I\'ve Learned to Learn Those Words, But, Boy, Then I
Didn\'t Know it 10 Years Back. Well, When Two Years Had Come up And We
Went on a Tour and We Thought Everything Was Going Well, Do You Know on
this Tour, As We Went Around, the Ranchers Had Taken like Doc Said 3,000
Mother Cows off for a Three‑year Rest. We Went Around on the Tour, and
There Was a Bull, and All of Us In the Ranch Community Know Sometimes
the Bulls Don\'t Stay Quite ‑‑ One Bull on this Whole Big Mountain Area.
Our Environmental Oregon Trout Lady Just Fell Apart and We Thought We
Were Going to Lose Everything. She Said, You Guys Don\'t Care About this
at All. Otherwise You Said You Had Your Cattle off. That Was a Little
Unfair in My Opinion. But She Went on and One of the Ranchers Said,
Kathy, What Do You Want? Just What Do You Want? Now, Think, Two Years
We\'ve Been Doing this? Well, She Said, Britt, I Thought You Knew What I
Wanted. She Said, I Want Baby Fish, Middle‑age Fish and Old Fish Along
These Streams and There\'s Old Fish in Them and They\'re Not Living Very
Well Because They Need Grasses, They Need Young Grasses and Older
Grasses and Middle‑age Grasses and the Grasses Are Gone and They Need
Willows. They Need Baby Willows and Teenage Willows and Middle‑age
Willows and Old Willows and as You Can See There Is Just a Few Old
Willows Here. And They Also Need the Aspens. So She Said, and Britt
Said, Well, Kathy, it Seems to Me That You ‑‑ That All You\'ve Said Is I
Want All Cattle off the Public Lands, and He Said, I Didn\'t Realize
What You Wanted and All We Ranchers Want Is Baby Ranchers and Teenage
Ranchers And Middle Age Ranchers and Old Fellows like Me to Stay Here.
That\'s Why Doc and I Have Been Involved in What We Have Learned So That
What We Have All Learned Today Can Carry On.

Elmore: Thanks, Connie. About of Wave ‑‑ Before We Go to More Comments I
Would like to Take a Couple Comments. I Have John in Prineville. John,
You Are on the Air.

Caller: Hi, Wayne. You Have Made a Good Justification for Allowing
Natural Evolutionary Processes To Let Streams Develop Their Own Way. My
Example Is the Stage 2 or 3 Vertically Unstable Streams You Talked
about. In the Pacific Northwest We May Be Faced with Immediate Needs For
Resident Fish Populations And We\'re Doing a Lot of Work to Restore and
Maintain Habitat and Spawning Resources. How Do You Recommend We Might
Balance These Two Approaches?

Elmore: Well, I Think, Personally, the Way to Balance The Approaches Is
to Look at Those Streams One at a Time and See What the Conditions Are
and What We Can Do. You Can Also Use the Functionality Assessment
Process To Look at Where You Can Help Mother Nature out a Little Bit If
You\'re in One of Those Crisis Situations. Any of the Other Panel
Members Have a Comment on That Question? Does That Answer Your Question?

Caller: Yeah, I Guess You Are I Saying We Need to Be Site Specific?

Elmore: Yes, I Am.

Caller: Okay. Thanks.

Elmore: Let\'s Take Another One, and That\'s Dan in Carson City, Nevada.
Dan, You\'re on the Air. Dan? Dan? Well, I Guess I\'ve Lost Dan. I Hope
Dan Finds His Way out of That Phone Line. Paul, I\'m Not Sure Whether
You Still Have a Time Restraint or Not, but Maybe You Would like to Make
a Comment.

Johnson: Well, I Certainly Would Repeat What Mike Was Saying about the
Importance of Working Together and Just Getting out and Doing It. I Have
a Number of Facts Here, And Some of Them Deal with We Have Very Few re
Soars Right Now, How Can We Get out and Do This on Top of Everything
Else? And I Think in Many Cases It\'s Do the Best You Can and Remember
That Your Job First and Foremost Is to Work Together, in Our Case, with
Landowners to Improve The Resources in That Area of The. One of the
Comments I Mentioned This Morning in My Opening Remarks Dealt with a
Leopold Quote That Said Learn to Read The Land and When You Do I Have No
Fear of What You Will Do to It. And I Know Many Good Things it Will Do
for You. I Think We Have Heard Today a Number of Ideas and Ways in Which
We Can Read the Land. This Whole Effort of Agencies Coming Together Is
Not So That We Can All Go out Together on Every Single Piece of Land
Across the Country, but That We Can Share Ideas and Then Take These
Ideas to People Across the Country, and about 70% of the Land in this
Country Is in Private Hands, and the End It\'s Going to Be up to the
People on The Land to Understand It, to Read it Better, and So What
We\'ve Heard Today and What We\'re Going to Continue to Work on and
Share with Each Other, Train Each Other to Do, Is Something We Have to
Take and Train People On the Land to Do as Well. I Was Thinking as I Was
Sitting Here Just a Couple of Minutes Ago That We\'ve Been on Our Farm
For over 20 Years Now. We Have a Beautiful River Running Through Our
Farm. There Have Been Arguments over The Years on Whether or Not it
Should Be a Wild and Scenic River or Not And, of Course, You Know Which
Side Most People Take. But I Was Thinking, You Know, in Those 20‑some
Years That We\'ve Been on That Farm, Nobody Has Ever Come and Sat down
with Me And Talked to Me about That River and about How My Farming
Operations Impact it in One Way Or the Other. Nobody from Any of the
Agencies That Are Sitting Here Today. And I Think That What We\'re
Dealing with Right Now Is a New Way of Doing Things, and a Very
Important Step Forward That Says That We\'re Going to Go out and We\'re
Going to Work Together With People and We\'re Going to Help Them
Understand the Land. In the End They Will Manage It, But They Can Only
Manage it Well When They Know How to Read and It When They Know What\'s
There, And I Think Today Is a Giant Step Forward in Learning to Read The
River. Thanks.

Elmore: Thanks, Paul. We Have Dan Back. Dan, You\'re on the Line.

Caller: Okay. Connie Fairly Well Made My Point Already, but
Collaboration Is Hardly a New Idea. The past Has Shown over and over
That Collaboration Cannot Work When Individuals Feel They\'re Better off
by Maintaining the Status Quo, and My Real Question Is, Can We Expect
Strong Support For Those Field People Such as Bill in the Saw Tooth
Attempting To Enforce the Law Thereby Creating as an Mutt Fear Where
Collaboration Can Work.

Elmore: Jack, How Would You Like to an Dull That?

Thomas: Mike Is Gone. He Left Me His Proxy to Talk for Him. I Think He
Answered That When He Went out the Door. He Said, You\'ve Got My
Support. I Think That Means That He Will Push That. However, I Think
When You Were Talking about Enforcing the Law, We Have to Enforce the
Law. We Need to Enforce the Law. We Need to Obey the Law. But That\'s
Only a First Step. People That Love the Land Want To Move in the Right
Direction, And We Have to Coordinate and Cooperate to Get Ahead. When
We\'re Dealing with Permittees Either on the Federal Land or Dealing
with Them on Their Private Land, We Have to Understand They Need to Make
a Profit. This Is a Capitalistic Society. We Have to Work Together to
Assure Their Survival as Well as Achieving Our Objectives for Riparian
Management. So Certainly I Suppose Enforcement of the Law Is the First
Thing, but I Will Tell You Just Hard‑core Enforcement of The Law Without
Moving Forward To Some Coordinated and Cooperative Way to Solve the
Problem Is Apt to Just Get More And More Contentious and I Think It\'s
Time We Step Back from Contention and Move Forward with Cooperation.

Elmore: Mat, Did You Have Something to Say about That, Too?

Millenbach: Yes, I Did. As Wayne Has Mentioned, We Have Gotten a Large
Number of Faxes Here, and One of the Ones I Was Looking at Earlier in
Our First Broadcast Addressed the Very Same Issue, and I Would like to
Talk to My Colleagues Who Are Responsible for Managing America\'s Public
Lands. I Have Been Doing this for 25 Years, and the Reason I Do it Is
Because I Love These Lands, I Think They\'re Really Important To Our
People and to Myself and My Family. You Know, We\'ve Talked All Day
About this Idea of Cooperation And Working Things Out, and I Think the
‑‑ I Think If You Think about Process, and We\'ve Talked about Riparian
Process All Day, There\'s Also a Process Of How We Get to Where We Want
To Be on Our Public Lands, and I Think Really the Ideal Way to Start Is
Not by Going out and Laying down the Law. I Think the Description That
the Hatfields Have Just Laid Out, of People Getting Together, Trying To
Solve Problems, and What Generates That Concern, Is it Coming from a
Federal Agency or Environmental Group or from the People on the Land
Themselves, We Need to Start from That Concern, and First of All Try to
Figure How We Can Work Together To Try to Solve Some of These Problems.
I Think What We\'re Finding out In Today\'s World Is That If We Can Do
That, the Long‑term Answers Are Going to Come to Us. Now, the Question
That Comes up For All of Us Who Are in Public Land Management Is What
Happens When That Doesn\'t Work? I Talked this Morning about this Public
Meeting We Had in Terry, Montana, with the Rancher Sitting There Shaking
His Head, I Know this Community Wants to Work on this Problem, but I\'m
Not Going to Help. Sometimes You Do Need to Go out And ‑‑ There and Make
People Do What Their Permits Require and What the Law Says They\'re
Supposed to Be Doing. I Found out over the Years Whether I\'m Working at
the Field Level or Managing a BLM District Or Resource Area or Working
at The Top End of the Agency, One Of the Best Things We Can Do for
Ourselves Is Be Sure with We See Ourselves Moving into a Situation Where
We\'re Going to Be Butting Heads with People Is That We\'re Really out
There Explain to Go People Both Within Our Agency and Outside of Our
Agency What We\'re Doing and Why We\'re Doing It. I Think If You Really
Sit down And Take a Look at What We\'re Doing in These Programs, this
Riparian Program Judge Just a Darn Good Example, Most People Support Us.
They Look at the Things That We\'re About, Providing Clean Water,
Providing Wildlife and Fish Habitat, Providing Forage For Livestock and
So Forth, Stable Soils, They\'ll Support Those Objectives, and What
We\'re Really Arguing about a Lot of Times Is How Do We Get to That. I
Think If We Can Be Good Communicators, as Jack Said Earlier, If We Can
Be Good Salespeople about Why We\'re Doing What We\'re Doing, What
We\'re Trying to Get To, You\'ll Find out That Within the Agency And
Within the General Public We\'ll Get Support for What We\'re Trying to
Do. So I Think That Communication Is Extremely Important. It\'s the
Thing We Need to Keep Our ‑‑ Keep Doing as Well as We Can.

Elmore: Thanks, Mat. We Have Gotten, Not Surprisingly, but Happily a Ton
Of Faxes in and We\'re Going to Try to Answer Some of Those but We
Haven\'t Heard from Gary Yet And I Would like Some Comments From Him and
Then He Has a Couple Faxes He May Want to Answer. So, Gary, Want to Say
Something?

Edwards: I Think Maybe the Wisest Thing for Me to Do Would Be to Maybe
Simply Echo Judy\'s Recommendation about Cloning Doc And Connie. I Guess
I Will Add to a Couple Things, Again Sort of Building Off Mike\'s
Comment about Following the Nike Ad We Just Need to Get out There and Do
It. We Heard a Lot Today about Technologies, but in My Mind That\'s Not
Where the Issue Is. I Don\'t Think There Is Any Question Our
Technologies Are Not Going to Keep up with Us but A Real Commitment Has
to Be How We Are Going to Work Across These Scientific Disciplines, How
We Are Going to Work with One Another and Build That Trust That Judy
Talked about. I Think That Is Going to Be the Key Because Without That I
Think Our Chance for Long‑term Success Is Probably Very Limited. One of
the Questions That Did Come in Earlier Was from Rose in California. I
Don\'t Know If Rose, If You\'re Still out There or Not, but One Of the
Questions You Asked Is: What Is Being Done on the Ground To Encourage
Interdisciplinary Collaboration and You Gave Some Examples, Fisheries
and Wildlife And Hydrology and Soils. I Think the Truthful Answer Is
Probably Not Enough. We Ought to Do a Lot More, and I Think That\'s What
this Is All About. I Do Think There Are Some Examples. I Mentioned
Earlier Today about The Partners for Wildlife Program That the Service
Is Involved In, and One of the Things Involves Many of the Agencies Here
Is the Black Foot Challenge in Montana Where We Have Worked on That
River System, and Not Only on the System Itself but the Tributaries and
the Associated Habitats and Involving a Dozen State and Federal Agencies
as Well as Private Sectors, Private Landowners, Conservation Groups, And
Those Are the Kind of Efforts I Think That Will Provide an Example of
How We Can Go about Doing this. I Guess the Other Response That I Would
Give to Rose Is Not Just Asking Us What We Are Doing, but Ask Yourself,
What Are You Doing? What Can You Do to Make a Difference out There at
That Grass Roots Level?

Elmore: Thanks, Gary. I Have a Couple of Faxes That I\'m Going to Answer
One and Then Ask Doc and Connie on the Other One. This Is from Lander,
Wyoming, And There Is No Name. Are There Any National Efforts To Include
the National Cattlemen\'s Association, National Wool Growers and Public
Lands Council to Join this Effort. The Answer to That Is Yes. We Have
Talked a Lot with the National Cattlemen\'s Association, with the Wool
Growers and Others, and Both at The National Level and at the State
Level. Our Training Cadres, for Instance, Right Here in Arizona, The
State Training Cadre, Has a Member of the Arizona Livestock Association
on the Training Cadre. Doc Has Been on There, Not this Doc, but Another
Doc, Is on There and Is Going Around and Helping to Facilitate That
Training. Another Fax That Came in Was One On Incentives. It Said, Are
There Any Incentives in the States out There to Get Some of this Done?
And My Question off of That Fax Was, What Incentives Really Would
Stimulate or Would They Not Stimulate the Livestock Industry?

Doc: I Guess Probably the Only Incentive That Would Really Be
Significant Would Be Some Kind of Insulation from Bureaucratic Excesses
That Come Down the Pike Unexpected. As Far as Financial Incentives, I
Think Most Ranchers Are Very Aware That the World Has Changed. They Just
Don\'t Have a Clear Picture of How to Respond to It. I\'m Not Sure How
That Would Be Done, but it Seems like from a Rancher Perspective There
Is a New Law or Regulation Comes Every Day That May Completely Change
What You\'re Doing, and If You Were in Some Kind of a Cooperative
Agreement That Was Making Progress on the Ground, That Number One Is a
Great Protection Against Bureaucratic Excess. But If People Knew There
Was Some Security in That, If They Were, Indeed, Making Progress Would
Say Way More than Any Dollar Value. Now, Some of this Fear Is Unfounded,
but a Lot of it Is Very Real.

Elmore: I Would like to Turn That Same Question Around to Judy and Say,
What Kind of Incentives Would the Environmental Community like to See to
Become Involved in this Same Kind of a Program?

Noritake: Well, You Know, I Can Tell You about What the Pacific Rivers
Council Does. We Have a Fisheries Biologist up In Idaho on Willow Creek
That\'s Been Working Cooperatively with Some Ranchers. I Think There Is
BLM Land. There Might Be Forest Service Land. And Involving High School
Students and All That Kind of Stuff. And, You Know, She Does That on A
Shoe String, and the Kind of Stuff That We Need Is Her Salary, You Know,
to Go out and Do That. And If We Had Those Kind of re Courses, You Know,
We Could Get A Couple More Folks like Her. We Love That Kind of Work, to
Be Out There, and If We Can Be the Catalyst, That\'s Fine. If We\'re Not
the Catalyst ‑‑ I Mean, She Lives in That Community, Is Part of That
Community. If She Can Provide the Technical Expertise, You Know, That\'s
Terrific. So I Hate to Say That for Us It\'s Just about Money, but it
Might Be.

Elmore: Yes, I Know That Fisheries Biologist and She Has Done a
Wonderful Job in Pulling That Whole Community Together to Work on That
Watershed.

Noritake: We Want to Clone Her, Too.

Elmore: She Made Me Walk 55 Miles in Four Days with Steve And Some
Others. We\'re Getting Real Close to out Of Time and I Would Really like
To Ask Our Philosopher of the Panel, Jack Ward Thomas, to Kind Of Give
Some Thoughts and Philosophies on What We\'ve Been Talking about Today
and What We\'ve Been Doing. Would You Mind Doing That, Jack?

Thomas: No, I Love to Hear Myself Talk. I Would Be Happy to Do That. I
Have a Pile of Faxes in Front Of Me, Too, That I Won\'t Answer
Specifically, but They All Kind Of Touch on the Same Thing. Some of
Them, Like, My God, How Are We Going to Do this When Our Resources Are
Reduced? I Think We Need to Think about That, Whether That Glass Is Half
Full or Half Empty. When the Forest Service Has 35,000 Employees, That
Is a Fairly Formidable Number of People, and I Will Assure You That
There Are a Number of Very Formidable People Within That Group. Now, in
Some Places They Are Moving Ahead Beautifully. BLM\'s the Same Way.
Others, We\'re Dragging Behind. Well, I Suggest That We Look at The
People That Are Doing Beautifully and Find out What it Is They\'re Doing
Right. I Choose to Look at the Situation as the Glass Being Half Full.
In Full Cooperation I Think We Have the Capability of Stepping Out
Across Those Boundaries. Borrow Somebody. Cooperate. If You Don\'t Have
Somebody That Can Help You, Ask the Nrcs People to Step Across the Line.
If You Can Step Across the Line And Help Somebody Else, and Mike Gave Me
Permission to Say That, Do It. We\'ve Already Looked at Some
Circumstances. For Example, the Entire Northwest West of the Cascades
Have Full Watershed Analysis Underway. It\'s Taken Them Three Years to
Get it Going, and They Have Implemented the Reserves. They\'re Beginning
to Move Ahead With the Riparian Planning. So That\'s a Huge Area in
Which We\'ve Made Progress. The Other One Is That While I Fully Believe
in These Interagency Teams, I Can Tell You That I\'ve Seen a Lot of
Miles of Stream Fixed Without a Full Interdisciplinary Team. We Have
Experienced People ‑‑ There\'s Nothing Mystical about Any of Our
Professions. You Know, I Have Seen Hydrologists Become Pretty Good
Wildlife Biologists. I Have Seen Fisheries Biologists Become Very Good
Hydrologists. We Just Have to Use the Skills And Capability That We Have
and Sometimes We\'re Going to Have to Patch It. But I Think the Public
Is Going To Judge Our Stewardship More in The Immediate Future on How We
Handle Those Streams and Riparian Zones than They Do on Any Other Factor
That We\'ve Got Out There. I Want Us Judged Well. I Want the Industry
Judged Well. I Want Our Agencies Judged Well. We Can Do this. We Have to
Do It. We Should Do It. It\'s Part of Our Job. It\'s Not Something New.
It\'s Not Something Exotic. It\'s Something We Simply Have to Do, and We
Can Do It. We Can Sit Here and Look for Excuses All Day, and That Will
Buy Us Absolutely Nothing with The American Public. They Want to See
Results. I Think We Can Give Them Results. I Think We\'ve Got Experience
Behind Us. And I Think We\'re Moving in the Right Direction. We\'re Just
Not Going to Slow Down, and There\'s No Way We Can If We Wanted To. So,
the Same Thing Won\'t Work Everywhere. You Basically Have to Use the
Resources at Your Disposal, You Got to Cut, Patch and Fit to Make it
Work, One Size Won\'t Fit All. One of the Things That I Found a Little
Frustrating When I Was Chief of the Forest Service Is That Sometimes I
Felt like I Was Supposed to Be Daddy, and Basically about All Daddy Can
Do Is Get You the Resources the Best Way We Can, Push as Much of The
Responsibility down as We Can Get and Free You up and Charge You to Do
the Job, and That\'s Been Done and We\'ve Seen Some Remarkable Success,
and I\'m Absolutely Sure We\'re Going to See More Remarkable Success,
and I Hope at an Accelerating Rate.

Elmore: All Right, Jack. You must Have Stimulated the Crew in the Sound
Booth Because They\'ve Given Us Some More Time.

Thomas: Well!

Elmore: You Were Philosophical into Getting Some More Minutes on the
Air. What I Would like to Do Is We Didn\'t Have an Interactive Segment
with Our Group Across Over There and We Have Some Questions That Came in
and One Of Them Is for Leonard Jolley, And That Is, How Important Is
Flexibility in Designing Grazing Systems, Leonard?

Jolley: Well, Thank You, Wayne. There\'s a Danger of Having Some Of
These Methods of Grazing, Some of These Techniques, Sound A Little Too
Rigid and We\'ve Already Warned Against a Cookbook Approach, Especially
When We Have These Operations Where We Mingle Private and Public Land.
We\'ve Got to Remember, and It\'s Already Been Said, Remember That The
Economic Realities and Logistical Perils Facing the Private Operator, We
Need to Respect That and Somehow Meld This with the Resource Concerns Of
the Public Land Allotments That Are Used Seasonally as Well As the
Specie Level Concerns That We Have. So the Ability of Being Flexible In
Terms of One Size Does Not Fit All When We\'re Talking about These
Riparian Techniques, and Let\'s See If We Cannot Shoehorn People into
the Technique That Happens to Be Our Favorite. Let\'s Respond to the
Necessities And the Realities That Face These Private Operators.

Elmore: Very Good. Thanks. Another One That Came in for Al Over There
Was: What\'s the Difference Between Monitoring ‑‑ What\'s the Difference
Between Doing Upland Monitoring and Riparian Monitoring, Al?

Winward: Okay. There Are Probably Several Reasons but Let Me Give One
Major One. When You Monitor on Uplands, We Usually Go out and Select a
Place to Monitor, and We Assume That Site Is Going to Stay the Same and
Then We Come Back in a Few Years and We Look at That Same Site and We
Look at the Changes, and That Change Is Usually Then Is Related to What
Our Management Has Accomplished Or Not Accomplished. On Riparian Areas
Where We\'ve Talked about Throughout this Session How Much They Move
about And the Stream Channels Move About. So a Site Doesn\'t Stay in the
Same Place. When the Stream Channel Moves, So Does the Water Tables with
It. So If We Go out and Put in a Particular Study Area and We Expect to
Come Back to That Same Area and Get a Feeling for What The Impacts Have
Been from One Of Our Grazing, We Are Going to Have Confusion with What
Are Some of the Changes That Took Place Because That Stream Changed
Places, Too. That\'s One Way We Redesign Some Of Our Monitoring for
Riparian Areas.

Elmore: Thanks, Al. We\'re Going to Take Another Fax That Came in and
I\'ve Asked Judy Noritake to Address It. It\'s from Judy in Denver,
Colorado, and It\'s to Get a Different Perspective on a Very Tough
Question. I\'m Glad She Agreed to Take it On. Thanks.

Noritake: the Question Says: Do You Want to Stabilize All Streams? In
Some Cases We Have Endangered Species Who Are Dependent on Unstable
Streams like the Braided South Plat River. When Should We Leave Natural
Geomorphology to Occur and Now Do Differentiate Between Natural And
Exaggerated Erosion Rates. The Question Is, What Is the ‑‑ What Does
Stabilize Mean? I Think You Have to Have a Feel For What the Geology,
the Vegetative Type, the Rainfall, On Those Specific Locations, What
That Means. It\'s Different in Every Case. I Mean, You\'re Not Freezing
Any Of These Streams in Time. They All Move Around in Their Stream
Channels. They Just Are Different Rates For Different Streams. Something
like the South Plat River, Maybe It\'s at a Rate Evolving at a Rate That
it Needs To. You Have to Understand the Historical Patterns of That
Stream System and Take Corrective Action If It\'s Not Within the Range
of Variability That One Might Expect. So That May Not Be a Very Good
Answer, but You Sort of Have to Reconstruct this Tree Based on All Those
Factors, I Think.

Elmore: Thanks. I Have One Here That I\'ll Answer That Takes Us More
into the Eastern Part of the United States and It\'s from Indianapolis,
Indiana. There\'s No Name. It Says the Focus Every this Training Has
Been Keeping Water On the Land Longer. Is That or Should That Be a
Primary Concern in the More Humid Regions of the Country Like along the
Mississippi? And, Yes, Keeping Water on the Land Longer Means Buffering
Flows and Retarding a Lot of the Damage That We See in the Events Of 100
Years or 200 Years. A Tremendous Amount of Water Can Be Taken out of the
Water Column And Put into the Ground and Stored for a More Safely
Release Of That Same Water at a Later Time Period. We Still Have to
Think about the Capability of the Site Based Upon Constraints. I Mean,
There Are Places ‑‑ If You\'re in the Mississippi Where It Is Contained
Within Dikes and Levees, and There It\'s Going to Be Virtually
Impossible to Get Out of That and We\'re Not Going To Change a Lot of
Those Things, But There Are Areas in the Upland Parts of the Watershed
Where We Can Stop and Buffer a Lot of Those Flows Coming In, And
There\'s a Lot We Can Do with Reducing Flood Damage Once We Start
Looking at Things on a Watershed Basis Instead of Just Looking at Things
Directly on Where Something Happened. Does Anybody Else Have a Comment
On That? Besides Me?

Johnson: I Am Trying to Think Of Farmers in the Midwest Who Depend on
Good Drainage to Keep Their Crop Land in Production, And I Think We\'re
Going to Have To Have Some Good Discussions as We Go along on Functions
and Values of Wetlands and of Riparian Areas and How They Fit Together
with Farming Systems. I Know That in Some Cases There\'s Some Tensions
about That As We Talk about Wetlands and Trying to Restore Wetlands and
Trying to Protect the Wetlands That We Have out There. These Are Good
Issues to Deal With. They Call upon Us to Put the Best Science to the
Practical World, and I Know Some People Are Concerned about These
Issues. I Look at Them as Real Opportunities to Bring Good Science to
Bear on this So We Can Have Productive Land from The Traditional Sense,
from the Traditional Agriculture Sense, But at the Same Time Be Able to
Capture Functions and Values of Wetlands and Water Systems on The
Agricultural Landscape.

Elmore: Excellent Comment. Thanks, Paul. Anybody Else Have a Burning Fax
In Front of Them That They Would Like to Answer? You, Mat?

Millenbach: I Don\'t Know If This Is a Burning Fax but It\'s a Good
Question. It Says Where Does Congress Stand in Relation to Your
Priorities for the Land? We Did Talk about this among Ourselves at Our
Break. I Guess You Kind of Have to Look At it from Several Different
Perspectives. If You Look at it from the Perspective of the Laws That
the Congress Has Passed over the Years, Particularly over the Last 20
Years or So, You\'ll See That There\'s Extremely Strong Support for What
We\'re Trying to Do Here. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act,
the Forest Act, The Clean Water Act That Was Passed Back in the 1970s
and So Forth, All Would Lend You to Think That There\'s Extremely Strong
Support for at Least Legislatively for What We\'re Trying to Do. Now, it
Gets a Lot More Complicated than That When You Actually Watch the Way
the Congress Acts, Particularly Currently, Because, You Know, There\'s a
Lot of Discussion About These Issues. It\'s Not like These Issues Are
All That Easily Resolved or They\'re ‑‑ There\'s 100% Agreement in the
Congress on What We Should Be Doing. There Is Not 100% Agreement in The
Congress on Hardly Anything. So You Have to Kind of Keep That In Mind.
There\'s a Lot of Congress Discussion about the Way We Do Our Job. I
Think If You Were to Go to Almost Any Senator or Congressman Today and
Talk about The Things That We\'re Talking About, the Objectives of with
a We\'re Talking about Here, the Clean Water and Stable Soils and So
Forth, They Would Tell You, Yes, That Is Something That We\'re ‑‑ We
Should Be Doing, and What We\'re Really Arguing a Lot With Them about Is
How We Do That and What the Role of the Citizens Is and What\'s the Role
Of the Private Land Owner, What\'s the Role of the Grazing Permittee or
the Other User of Public Lands. We Have a Fax in Here That Talks About
the Impact of Recreation Use And, You Know, Things like Mountain Bikes
and So Forth. What\'s Our Role in Terms of How We Administer Those Kinds
of Programs? But I Would Say That the Congress Is Supportive of the
Overall Objectives and What We\'re Really Arguing Sometimes About Is How
We Get to That.

Elmore: Well, I\'ve Just Been Informed That Jack Was Eloquent, That He
Really Only Gave Us About 15 Minutes of Running Over, but I Would like
Everybody Out There to Know That the People I Asked to Be on this Panel
Were Asked Really for One Reason, and That Was Their Deep Feeling and
Heartfelt Caring for The Land. I Mean, Everybody Person That\'s Here Has
That Passion Within Them, and What You Heard about Their Feelings about
What Was Going on and the Commitment and ‑‑ of Their Time, of Coming
Here, I Think it Shows That Deep‑felt, Heartfelt Commitment Towards
Caring for the Land and Making Things Healthier and I Want to Thank
Everybody That Did Come down and Took Their Time to Come, Because It\'s
Quite Obvious That We Need to Do Something Together and These People, I
Think, Have Shown Us Someways to Do and That I Want to Thank You Very
Much for Coming and Sharing Your Thoughts and Ideas, but Mostly I Want
to Thank You for Those Feelings. Because They Are Very Obvious to Me,
and Those Do Mean a Lot to Me. And with That, That about Wraps It up for
Our First Interagency Satellite Riparian Workshop. I Would like to
Remind Our Federal Downlink Sites to Have All Viewers Sign the
Attendance Roster. Please Fax it to the BLM National Training Center
Immediately after Today\'s Show. We Would Also like to Hear from Our
Other Viewers. Please Send Us a Fax at 602‑530‑2178. Let Us Know Where
You Are Watching from and How Many People Attended Today\'s Session. To
Help Your Office Participate In Future National Training Center
Broadcasts, See the BLM Satellite Downlink Guide or Visit the NTC Home
Page on the World Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet Address Is www.ntc.blm.gov.
Transcripts of this Telecast and Other NTC Broadcasts Are on the NTC
Home Page. In the Future We Will Plan to Broadcast Additional
Cooperative Riparian Restoration Programs. Keep Checking the NTC Home
Page For Dates and Times. If You Would like to Obtain a Copy of the
Riparian Management And Channel Evolution Video We Showed in Our First
Segment this Morning Call the BLM National Training Center at
602‑906‑5585. NTC Also Has Available a Two‑part Video Series on Riparian
and Wetland Management. This Series Presents Nine Different Cases, Case
Studies of Riparian Recovery Efforts from Across the West. Another Video
That You May Find Useful Which Demonstrates Collaborative Riparian
Restoration Is \"If the Mountain Could Speak,\" the Story of the Trout
Creek Mountain Working Group in Southeast Oregon. Information on These
Videos Is Also Available from the NTC Home Page. I Would like to Thank
Everyone Who Participated in Our Telecast Today and I Would like to
Especially Thank Everyone Who Called in and Faxed Us Questions. This Is
Just the Beginning. We must Work Together to Restore Entire Systems!
Watershed by Watershed. It Cannot Happen Any Other Way. Only Through Our
Combined Efforts and Sharing Our Resources Can We Achieve the Long‑term
Benefits Most Importantly Keeping Water on the Land Longer.