| Article | River Restoration Roundtable participants
Karen Boyd works as a Technical Specialist for Inter-Fluve, a company that integrates biology, hydrology, engineering, and landscape architecture for innovative aquatic resource restoration and enhancement. Inter-Fluve works with private landowners and resource agencies to develop land management schemes which promote natural riparian recovery. In severely disturbed areas, their plant ecologists develop revegetation strategies that include new prescriptions for streamside land use, which may include adjustment of grazing, agricultural, and development practices; channel stabilization; bank reconstruction; and/or the creation of greenways.
Steve Dickens is the Community and Program Organizing specialist for the River Watch Network. The River Watch Network is a nonprofit organization that harnesses the power of people and communities to monitor, restore, and protect the world’s rivers. RWN works with concerned community members to define the issues which are most critical to their rivers; design and execute scientifically credible studies which assess the condition of the river ecosystem; and create strategies for conserving rivers through community action. RWN offers workshops, organizational and technical support and consultation, publications, and other tools that help groups and individuals monitor and protect rivers. Steve Dickens works with broad-based groups of citizens to form river monitoring and protection groups, assisting with many features of organizational and program development.
Leah Graff is the Technical Coordinator for Save Our Streams, a grassroots river conservation program that has projects in 50 states. The Save Our Streams staff helps people to monitor, protect, and restore their waterways through publications, hands-on workshops, and assistance through their toll-free technical hotline 1-800-BUG-IWLA. SOS is dedicated to providing low- or no-cost technical assistance to governments, businesses, and citizens nationwide. Their programs include Stream Doctor, a nationwide stream restoration database and the SOS Macroinvertebrate Key (a web-based key that allows users to identify key macroinvertebrates in the stream environment).
Vaughn Lovejoy and Elise Peterson Vaughn Lovejoy and Elise Peterson work on the Jordan River Restoration project, a project to restore approximately 275 acres of the Jordan River corridor and watershed in northern Utah. A number of cities, counties, state agencies, environmental groups, and federal agencies are cooperating on this project, with $7 million of funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the State of Utah, Utah Reclamation, Mitigation, and Conservation Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The project has a focus on creating habitats for neo-tropical migratory birds and wildlife.
Barbara White and Judy Okay are with the Virginia Department of Forestry, working in Fairfax County. One of the most populous counties in Virginia, Fairfax County has a population of almost a million and an abundance of natural waterways. In response to the need for restoration of these streams and rivers, Barbara White and Judy Okay present seminars and workshops, advise groups on planning and managing projects, and have organized large restoration efforts, including the planting of over 8,000 seedlings in the Difficult Run Riparian Forest Restoration Project. A program called the Urban Riparian Restoration Project helps communities to define characteristics important to healthy riparian buffers, decide on priorities, and focus efforts on priority sites stressed by urban land use and stormwater management practices.
|