The core of this project is reduction in erosion through trail restoration, relocation, and decommissioning. This District's history is in preservation of water quality. The Weeks Act established the parcel of land along Curtis Creek to improve water quality for wildlife as well as people downstream. Today, the health of the Catawba River Watershed is a key focus area for a large swath of the south that relies on it for clean and consistent drinking water supply.
The waters of Curis Creek, Linville River, and Wilson Creek all form the headwaters of the Catawba River. The river then stretches 300 miles to the confluence with the Congaree River in South Carolina and serves as drinking water for over 2 million people. The river also supports recreation and a diverse ecosystem. This watershed measures over 5000 square miles and includes the Charlotte metropolitan area, many small towns, and farmlands. The significance of this project exists in its impact on the protection of the headwaters of this significant river.
Trail improvements at the headwaters will directly improve water quality for sensitive aquatic species as well as move one trail (Newberry) away from a cultural site. These improvements will reduce sedimentation by relocating specific trail segments away from streams, hardening crossings with armoring, replacing bridges and culverts, as well as updating sustainability on project trails with improved grade reversals and enhanced grade dips. Aquatic species such as native brook trout and rare aquatic species will all benefit from the impacts of this project. Specifically, there will be positive impacts to downstream populations of the two regionally sensitive aquatic species that exist within the Wilson Creek watershed, Ophiogomphus Edmundo, a freshwater mussel, and Alasmidonta varacosa, a dragonfly.
Indirectly, this project will improve the long-term environmental sustainability of the watershed by making these specific trails more resilient to major rain events and flooding. Extreme rainfall events in the Southern Appalachians are increasing due to climate change. Specifically, on the Grandfather Ranger District which sits on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, landslides and large erosion events are increasing in frequency as heavy rainfall events become the norm. Trails with large deferred maintenance backlogs are most susceptible, and can create large sediment pulses into the headwaters of the Catawba River Watershed. All work in this project will increase the resiliency of trails to these extreme events by focusing on drainage and hardening areas where trails cross tributaries.
The Grandfather District of Pisgah National Forest’s legacy stands in its own place in the conservation history. This is the first land protected in the east by the federal government to improve water quality after an era of logging interest depleted these mountains of their resources and their character. The creators of the Weeks Act represented a successful partnership between people who care about the environment and the governmental agencies. This project seeks to bring this conservation ethic into our modern context by solving critical resource issues, connect an expanded user and volunteer group to the forest, and serve as a model of how the United States Forest Service can work with constituents to create socially critical, economically responsible, and environmentally viable recreation opportunities.
Specifically, this project aims to address a backlog of deferred maintenance and prioritizes projects with significant environmental sustainability issues across the district. Addressing these issues as a connected system creates a large-scale improvement to the entire watershed.
By using the most current methods of trail construction and restoration, the project not only solves the existing sustainability issues, it creates trails that are more appropriate for more user groups, improves visitor safety, and requires less maintenance.
By engaging a wide variety of user groups this project brings together a large community, moving past user-conflicts, and coalescing around a common goal of improving watershed health. Beyond the user groups, this project engages a community at large and a number of gateway communities that rely on the forest for social and economic benefits. Engaging historically disadvantaged communities through existing and proven outreach efforts will result in a trail system across the landscape that is socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable.
The actions outlined in this project create the overarching benefit of improving the resiliency of the Grandfather District. Through these actions, this forest will see improved watershed health, enhanced water quality, more accessible and inclusive trail access, and contribute to the economic vitality of the surrounding rural communities. This proposal is an example of how we can do more together. How collaboration can be taken from a local scale to a landscape scale. And how small actions can build upon each other to make a big impact on resiliency and watershed health.
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187 views • posted 05/24/2023