PubTalk 9/2002 — Healing the Redwood Creek Watershed

Successes and Failures in a Large-scale Watershed Restoration Program

by Mary Ann Madej, Geologist

• Can we undo the effects of decades of logging and road-building on salmon habitat and redwood forest?
• The Redwood Creek restoration program in California--one of the Nation.s largest and longest-running watershed projects-- was begun nearly 25 years ago
• What do agencies like the National Park Service actually do to restore a watershed?
• The large 1997 floods in the Redwood Creek area provided the first real test of the restoration efforts
• What lessons have been learned at Redwood Creek that can be applied to restoring other disturbed watersheds?