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Sotoyome RCD Newsletter
Summer/Fall 2009
Gualala River Watershed Update
Greetings from the Gualala River Watershed Council! Thanks to the May rains we still have a fair amount of water flowing in the river and the Gualala Estuary is now closed for the season turning the estuary into a fresh water lagoon. Although we did not see many adult steelhead spawning this winter, we are starting to see young of the year steelhead in most of our tributaries. Snorkel surveys planned for August and September will tell us more about this year's populations. About a month ago we finished installing 60 temperature monitoring sites throughout the watershed. These sites will be running until the fall, recording both water and air temperature. Right now and through the rest of the summer we will be busy with monitoring channel morphology. We are over half-way towards our goal of installing 70 reach monitoring sites throughout the Gualala, and are on our twelfth year of collecting data.
This has been a busy year for the GRWC. We just finished a timber road project in the Pepperwood Creek Watershed. This project upgraded 20 miles of road in partnership with the landowner Gualala Redwoods, Inc and the Department of Fish and Game. To date, 144 miles of road over 38,524 acres have been upgraded in the Watershed through similar partnerships, and an additional 99 miles of road have been upgraded through landowner best management practices. This brings the total to 236 miles of road that have been upgraded, abandoned or disconnected by landowners within the watershed; preventing 56,000 dump truck loads of sediment from entering the watercourses. For more information contact Kathleen Morgan at 707 884-9166.
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