Posted on April 3, 2023
Teller Wildlife Refuge is wrapping up a wetlands restoration project this week that aims to transform approximately 9 acres of cheatgrass meadow back into wetlands.
Maps from the 1950s show braided channels of the Bitterroot River weaving through the project area. Until two weeks those were upland fields. The project design was conceived to restore the natural water flow back into the system, allowing existing wetlands adjacent the project area to expand back into their historic footprint.
“Basically, in restoring the hydrology, that’s going to reconnect these old flood channels, so this will be seasonal wetlands,” said Sam Lawry, Teller Wildlife Refuge executive director. “So, from our conservation perspective, we took what was a cheatgrass meadow and restored it into an emergent marsh complex.”
The project design will allow water currently backed up against an existing road to flow through a culvert to the project area, and eventually back into Spring Creek. The project area has been planted with trenches of willows buried 4 feet deep and sticking up out of the ground nearly as tall. The willows will hold back water as it flows both above ground and underground, almost mimicking a beaver dam. That creates saturated marsh areas good for insects, wildlife and native vegetation. Blowdown logs from a nearby copse will also be placed to provide woody debris.
“The best kind of mitigation is restoration, restoring habitat that used to be here,” Tom Parker, principal ecologist with Geum Environmental Consultants in Hamilton explained. “A lot of these floodplain areas used to be connected to the river, this is a good example of an area where that connection has been cut off. This road has kind of functioned as a dike separating the water from this part of the floodplain. By reconnecting that hydrology, we can restore this part of the floodplain to something similar to what it would have been historically. And then that’s habitat, and the more of this type of habitat we have, the more connections you have for wildlife to move through the landscape.”
Teller Wildlife Refuge’s 1,300 acres just outside Corvallis feature diverse habitats along the Bitterroot River riparian corridor. Its emergent and open water wetlands as well as uplands and agricultural fields are home to ungulates, small mammals, birds and amphibians. Over time, the restored area will fill in with cattails, native sedges and other vegetation beneficial to the many species that call the refuge home.
“When this is all said and done, pheasants and other birds will utilize these dense willow thickets for what they call thermal cover and escape cover,” Lawry said. “Of course, songbirds will nest in them; neotropical migrating songbirds use a whole variety of willows for nesting and seeds and insects that are associated with them to feed off of. So as that system matures, the whole root system below the ground, is kind of a fibrous network, from small to larger diameter roots – it acts as kind of a natural barrier. So, groundwater that’s moving as the gravity would want it to move in a certain direction, is all of a sudden kind of blocked a little bit, and it saturates that zone behind it. And then you get more impacts; wetland vegetation associated with saturated soils because that kind of made a little mini under the ground dam.
“With this particular project there’ll be more of an emergent marsh than open water systems,” Lawry said. “A lot of times, when you look at a wetland, you kind of want to see open water, shorebirds and waterfowl sitting on it. It doesn’t necessarily all have to be open water – wetlands can be 100% emergent growth. And it’s a great water quality filtration system to have wetlands in place.”
The project is being conducted in partnership with Geum, Hall Building and Excavation and Montana Freshwater Partners. It was funded through credits used to offset construction at the Ravalli County Airport and along U.S. Highway 93 that damaged existing wetlands. The restored area will replace those impacted acres, offsetting the loss of wetlands in the valley.
“This project is being built with equal or more wetland acreage than what they impacted,” Alyssa Gulley, restoration specialist with Geum said. “So they had to buy some credits, which is through Montana Freshwater Partners, and that’s the money that’s funding this. Along with the credits, there’s also monitoring that goes into it to make sure we establish the right amount of wetland acreage to offset the impact. So this project was designed to try to create a large amount of wetland acreage on this parcel which was mostly an upland field. We have water right on the other side of the road, so by funneling it this way, and not doing all that much excavation, it would sort of flood out and build a bunch of wetlands and waterfowl habitat.”
One of the keys to the credit offset program, according to Lawry, is that when they choose land for restoration, it has to have some kind of protection, like a conservation easement on it.
“So the management of this property, and the values that are being enhanced with this project, are there in perpetuity – it’s a long time,” he said. “Everywhere else, you’re dealing with fragmentation and development and when these guys get together and do this work, this program, it’s for a long time.”
The project will not only benefit the local wildlife and watershed in the long term, but will also serve as an educational tool for students. On Thursday Teller will host a wetlands ecology class from the University of Montana at the reclamation site.
“For Teller’s mission of conservation education,” Lawry said, “these programs are long term not only for the benefit of the fish and wildlife resource and water quality, but that next generation of conservation education.”
