The riparian area is very important! This is the area next to the stream which includes the banks and the trees nearby whose roots are fed by the water. In the past the importance of these areas was not well understood. Today it's a good practice to re-plant here so a healthy root system will keep soil from washing away, and a shade canopy will keep the water cool, which is what the salmon need. Needless to say, it's best to avoid harvesting timber from these areas in the first place!

Keep the livestock away! Cows, horses and sheep eat and trample plants and erode stream banks. Sure, they need need water, but a little simple engineering will create ponds and troughs to provide water, and fencing to protect the sensitive riparian area. In our hilly terrain, this also prevents gullies from eating up our land.

Culverts: where the road meets steam. It's best to keep roads away from streams, but where that's impossible, culverts carry the stream under the roadway. They should be large enough to carry the heaviest winter rains. They should not be fish barriers -- not too steep, so the water flows too fast, and not too far above the outfall stream level, so the fish can't jump up into them. The outfall should be far from the road (not like in this picture!) and rocked so that erosion doesn't undermine the culvert and road.

What to do with unneeded roads?All through our area roads were built to harvest timber. Many of these were built without understanding the impact they would have on the land years later. The Eel River carries the third largest load of sediment in the world. Much of this is natural, but a large preventable chunk is the runoff from too many badly-built roads. Unnecessary roads should be "put to bed." Using earthmoving equipment, the grade is changed so the road is less likely to slide downhill. The area can be seeded and planted, and maybe mulch is spread so that plants can grow and cover the old road surface, preventing erosion.

The garbage must go! In the old days, everything in people's houses was made of wood, cloth, paper, iron or glass -- all non-toxic stuff, so it didn't matter much if it was thrown away down a gully. It would all rust or rot and go back to nature. That is NOT true today. Our garbage is filled with plastics, resins and toxic chemicals. Plus, we produce LOTS more of it than our grandparents did. It MUST go to the transfer station. We also need to start cleaning up the illegal and dangerous dumps which are leaching toxic chemicals into the river.

This thing is a trash rack. even if we are careful and don't dump trash on purpose, a certain amount of trash accidentally finds its way into the environment. Maybe it blows out of the back of pickups. Whatever. But one of these gizmos will keep trash and leaves and branches from blocking up a culvert in a storm. When this happens, the water backs up and starts to flow over the road and soon blows out the whole project -- road, culvert, rocks, logs, etc. Put these at the upstream ends of your culverts and clean them regularly.