In 1996, the Trinity County Resource Conservation District (District) drafted a ten-year revegetation plan for the Grass Valley Creek (GVC) Watershed. GVC is a major contributor of sediment into the Trinity River. It contains 17,000 acres underlain by highly erodible decomposed granite, has been heavily logged over the last fifty years, and has an extensive network of haul roads, skid roads, crossings, and landings created to facilitate timber removal. The District is currently implementing its eighth planting season in GVC and, since the implementation of the plan is ahead of schedule, planning for its last season in the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005. From the fall planting season in 1996 to the fall of 2003, 1,145,400 grasses, shrubs, hardwoods, and conifers have been planted in the watershed.

The District collects seed from federal lands in, and around, the watershed in order to propagate this large quantity of plants for GVC revegetation activities. All plants utilized by the District in its revegetation projects are Trinity County native plants and, in most cases, the seed originates from the county, as well. While the bulk of the plant material used by the District is grown by various nurseries around northern California, the revegetation staff, notably Larry Cooper and Brian Stewart, has established a small, native plant nursery to produce the needed planting stock, especially for the smaller revegetation projects that the District executes in any given year.

One of the most exciting, upcoming projects in the planning stages is the creation of a wetland complex on undevelopable county land in the Trinity Alps Industrial Park. The complex will consist of four interconnected ponds of various sizes and depths. Ann Francis, a Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) botanist, collaborated with the District to design a revegetation plan for the project. Sedges and rushes will be salvaged from the project site and these grass-like plants will be grown in sod-like mats, that are rolled out and secured to the ground. The District will revegetate the entire wetland complex, once the construction is complete, locating plants like the rushes and sedges at the water margin, seeding disturbed areas outside of the wet areas with native grasses and wildflowers, and planting native shrubs and riparian trees to increase the complexity of the plant community.

Every year, the District tends to work with Caltrans to revegetate roadside areas disturbed by roadwork. After sections of Highway 299 were washed out in the floods on New Year’s Day in 1998, the District, under contract with Caltrans, developed and implemented a plan to plant riparian trees along Weaver Creek. Today these trees have grown tall enough to shade the creek and prevent erosion of the stream bank. Other Caltrans revegetation sites include the bridge reconstructions at Rush Creek on Highway 3 and at Little Brown’s Creek on Highway 299. Roadside revegetation tends to be a challenge, because the soils are compacted by heavy equipment and have little organic material or soil structure to help the plants grow.

Finally, the revegetation staff is preparing to work with the Trinity River Restoration Program’s Weaverville Office to revegetate areas along the river that will be affected by Trinity River Restoration projects. Since the dams were built along the Trinity River, the plant community has changed dramatically. The goal of the river restoration is to recreate a better functioning floodplain on a smaller scale given the managed flows of the river. Part of the process is to restructure the plant community to enhance the functioning of the floodplain and provide valuable wildlife habitat.

The District has come a long way since it began restoring the upland forests of the GVC watershed. It now works on more types of projects and in many different plant communities. As a result, the District has been able to expand its nursery facilities and try new methods of growing plants for revegetation projects, such as the willow “orchard” that will be established this year to provide a source of planting materials for some new projects.