Upper South Platte Watershed Protection and Restoration Project

Location:

Southwest of Denver, Colorado

What is fostering progress?

One of the key factors in the progress made by the Upper South Platte Project was the group’s decision to directly involve scientists as members of the partnership. Many members stressed how useful it has been to have scientists present who can explain complicated ecosystem processes to decision makers and serve as a resource to answer management questions. Steve Culver, a Fisheries Biologist with the Forest Service, noted, “Our whole project was based on Kaufmann’s research. Kaufmann is a connecting link between research and management in this area. We’ve taken his research and rolled it into active management.” While Kaufmann’s preliminary research helped the group identify the goals of the restoration project, his ongoing involvement has been valuable throughout project implementation, helping the Forest Service, Denver Water, and others plan better treatments for their own lands.

Similarly, the group’s progress has been fostered by their emphasis on cooperative monitoring and the coordination and shared learning it has fostered. In any partnership, participants may have several monitoring initiatives taking place all at once with little coordination across them. In this case, the steering committee underscored the importance of coordinated monitoring by establishing a monitoring sub-committee that provided a forum for experts to talk with one another and identify monitoring goals of mutual interest, design coordinated monitoring projects, and discuss openly with others the results and implications of their findings. Although individual partners on the steering committee typically pay for and carry out their own monitoring initiatives, the monitoring sub-committee allows parties to coordinate their monitoring objectives so that all parties can gain the information they need in the most efficient way possible. Carol Ekarius, Executive Director of the multi-member CUSP, noted, “One group can say we are really interested in phosphorus data, and the other groups would incorporate phosphorus into their monitoring strategy whereas maybe phosphorus wasn’t a question they were interested in.” Wiley pointed out the value of working closely with other monitoring experts and suggested that the process has helped Denver Water think more broadly about water quality management. He noted, “There are things that the group is monitoring that we don’t. We really don’t go and look at the whole like what’s on the land, how are the soils coming off. We just react to what’s in the river. So it has expanded our knowledge.” Wiley also noted that by working within the monitoring sub-committee, Denver Water has been able to learn new modeling techniques relevant to their own concerns: “We are learning about what other modeling techniques exist and what other people we can go to and ask ‘what do you think is going to happen here [as a result of this project]?’”

 

Members’ commitment to working together and building relationships has been another critical factor fostering the group’s progress. Evident from conversations with group members, there is a newfound enthusiasm for working with others that is contagious and widespread. A 2000 summary of the project highlighted the group’s emphasis on getting parties to work together: “Because the forest ecosystem covers various governmental jurisdictions, successful restoration and protection efforts must also employ integrated governance to coordinate the activities of federal, state, and local government entities and to find ways to streamline management and funding.” Fred Patten of the Forest Service stressed that before the restoration project there were many organizations that would have nothing to do with the agency. Today, through this restoration project, the agency has “developed many working relationships with others.” Terry McCann, a Forest Service Public Affairs Officer, underscored the value of the partnership noting, “The relationships that have been established with this program have had a tremendous benefit in other areas aside from the watershed project, whether in dealing with forest fire emergencies or dealing with general fuels treatment. When issues come up, Fred or Steve just have to pick up the phone and can work with many people they’ve developed relationships with.” Steve Culver adds, “Because we are able to work together, it’s more cost effective and the results represent the whole ecosystem.”

 

From her perspective as CUSP Executive Director, Carol Ekarius appreciates the value of this collaborative partnership effort. She noted that the steering committee has been successful because the parties have been pulling in the same direction; they share a broad vision for forest restoration in the basin and firmly believe they are following the right process of working together to achieve that vision. She also stressed that for many project participants, working together has made their jobs easier, not harder. For example, with so many different agencies at the table there is ample opportunity to discuss the pros and cons and legality of different proposed actions, which has helped those who are designing restoration prescriptions such as the Forest Service and Denver Water to quickly adapt their plans for thinning projects with early, valuable input from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Because the steering committee is part of CUSP’s preexisting network of citizens and organizations, it has been easier for the steering committee to communicate the daily workings of the restoration project to others not directly involved in the project.

This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.