The Watershed Restoration Program of British Columbia: Accelerating Natural Recovery Processes

Abstract

Abstract Until recently, in British Columbia, there was no mechanism to ensure the rehabilitation of resource values adversely impacted by logging-induced landslides, erosion from logging roads, and harvesting of mature riparian trees to the stream-bank. In 1994, the Watershed Restoration Program was initiated under the province’s Forest Renewal Plan to provide an opportunity for diverse stakeholder partnerships to accelerate the recovery of watersheds impacted by logging practices of the past. Several decades of research on watershed processes, limitations to salmonid production in streams and rehabilitation techniques, combined with provincial training initiatives, provide the technical basis for application of a set of integrated restorative measures linked to the new Forest Practices Code. As first priority, the conditions of roads, slopes, gullies, riparian areas, stream channels and fish habitat are assessed. Roads are storm proofed by either reestablishing natural drainage patterns or by deactivation. Hillslope scars are revege-tated with grasses, shrubs and trees to control erosion, thus increasing fish stock productivity, while also improving water quality, forest regeneration and biodiversity. Riparian silvicultural treatments eventually (one to two centuries) restore recruitment of large coniferous woody debris to stream channels and restabilize streambanks. Large wood, boulder clusters and other structural elements that emulate nature are installed in stable stream channels to restore summer habitat and critical overwintering refuges in streams, thus rehabilitating and maintaining fish habitat until logged riparian areas naturally supply mature windfalls. Restoring of fish access and replenishing of nutrients for the food chain are also provided where assessed as beneficial to the functional recovery process. Rehabilitation of off-channel fish habitat, including creation of channel-pond complexes, is one of the primary techniques to offset habitat degradation in hydrologically unstable or non-functional stream channels within logged flood-plains. The program provides an opportunity for innovation and evaluation, as well as a challenge to cost-effectively implement rehabilitation on a sufficient scale to accelerate the recovery of watershed processes to the benefit of fisheries, aquatic and forest resource values in British Columbia’s forested watersheds.