Restoration Update
Restoration Committee……Stan Petrowski
Day after day we hear reports of ecosystem failures and species loss. Anyone that spends time in nature is fully aware that our ecosystems are changing and degrading at a rapid pace. Meanwhile many millions of dollars, from the various State and Federal tax sources, and restoration/conservation institutions is being spent in [...]
Spring 2019
Stanley Petrowski
UW resources are devoted to so many restoration issues that the field seems to be a bubbling cauldron. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up. As issues come to the surface, we address them within our means. From our perspective, the need to act is constant. The Umpqua chub, a small indigenous fish found [...]
Winter 2018
Stanley Petrowski
Umpqua Watersheds has participated in numerous forest collaboratives over the last decade and a half that have served several purposes. Our fundamental purpose is to “restore the rest.” From its inception UW has held restoration ecology as a fundamental principle guiding our desire to find some modicum of common ground for watershed management. [...]
Fall 2018
Stanley Petrowski
A River Dying?
It’s been a difficult summer for the anadromous fish of the Umpqua Rivers. The river was so hot that the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, to their credit, shut down much of the angling of the basin. Even the notoriously beautiful cooler waters of the North Umpqua were restricted [...]
Summer 2018
Stanley Petrowski
Restoration in the Age of Ecological Chaos
I am often challenged during agency and non-agency interactions regarding the efficacy of restoration work. Anyone even remotely aware of what it costs to conduct ecological restoration knows that the costs are exorbitant. The questioning of restoration efforts has caused me to take pause for evaluation. [...]
Spring 2018
Stanley Petrowski
No Water – No Life
It is obvious that water is one of the most critically important elements of creation. It is not so obvious that it is one of the most threatened elements that restoration ecologists and enthusiasts see on the horizon. Throughout the Pacific Northwest, the challenges facing our culture [...]
Winter 2017
Stanley Petrowski
Something Fishy Going on Here
This is the first time I have written two restoration committee articles in one of the 100 Valleys newsletters. This topic is so critically important that I felt it necessitated special attention.
Recently Umpqua Watersheds held its annual strategic planning session for the Board of Directors. During [...]
Winter 2017
Stanley Petrowski
Regaining Some of What Has Been Lost
Beginning in 2012 (I know, that seems like a long time ago), the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) began its process of developing the latest version of the Oregon Coastal Multi-species Conservation and Management Plan. It took two years to come to the [...]
Fall 2017
Stanley Petrowski
Restoring Vital Signs
As a young man newly 20 years of age and just home from the war in Vietnam, I hit bottom. It wasn’t a pleasant experience because it was full of terror and lifelessness. From that bleak place, a slow but steady emergence began – and a healing, though gradual, [...]
Fall 2017
Stanley Petrowski
Restoring Vital Signs
As a young man newly 20 years of age and just home from the war in Vietnam, I hit bottom. It wasn’t a pleasant experience because it was full of terror and lifelessness. From that bleak place, a slow but steady emergence began – and a healing, though gradual, [...]