The road survey is being conducted at no cost to the landowners. At the conclusion of the Survey, the GCWP will furnish landowners with individualized reports on the conditions of their roads with recommendations for maintenance and repair. Any restoration work that is done can have significant tax benefits since Greenwood Creek is a coho salmon and steelhead fishery. The GCWP will be seeing grants and other assistance to help small landowners with restoration projects. GCWP watershed studies can also assist landowners in obtaining conservation easements and can be useful for various land management purposes.
In the course of research for the road survey, it was discovered that neither CDF nor local fire and rescue departments possess a map of the non-industrial roads in Greenwood Creek watershed. An additional benefit of the project is that GCWP will provide copies of the new watershed road map to fire and rescue agencies.
Trimble Navigation, Inc., in Sunnyvale, California, has donated a Trimble Pro X-1, Global Positioning System unit to the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance (RCWA), to be used by the Greenwood Creek Watershed Project and other RCWA projects for natural resource surveys and mapping. This high-end GPS unit will help us produce more accurate maps, and will be available on a loan basis to other environmental groups and to local fire and water districts.
Louisiana Pacific Corporation, a major Greenwood Creek watershed landowner, has donated watershed maps to certain specifications needed by the GCWP and has provided other assistance to the GCWP road survey. L-P will be conducting a survey of L-P roads in the watershed in September-October. Additional cooperation between L-P and the GCWP may include sharing and jointly analyzing road survey data, and joint GPS unit training. The road survey has also been greatly assisted by the donation of parcel ownership information by Mid-Coast Realty's Polly Green in Elk, and by the donation of photocopying at the Greenwood Pier Country Store.
Five local workers were chosen from the many qualified candidates who applied for GCWP road survey field work positions. They are Jesse Russell and David Gurney, who performed the GCWP Stream Survey in 1995; Sally Eggleston, Michael Oliveira and Solomon Lindley. Alice Miller, who is conducting an independent project on the vegetation of Greenwood Creek, has also assisted with the road survey. The field workers received special training from project consultant Dr. Fred Euphrat, of Forest, Soil and Water, Inc. Project mapping is being done by local mapping technician Steve Acker with the assistance of Peter Y. Dobbins' Images in Point Arena.
Greenwood Creek watershed has suffered impacts from a long history of logging, including turbidity problems in the Elk town water system and serious endangerment of the salmon and steelhead fisheries. Logging in the watershed has been the subject of much controversy in recent years, including a 4-day protest in 1990 during which 17 Elk townspeople were arrested for blocking logging trucks. The GCWP, which is funded by the U.S. Forest Service and private donations, is an effort to focus upon long term solutions and involve all stakeholders in planning and implementing a restoration program.
For further information, please call (707)877-3405, or write to: GCWP, Box 90, Elk, CA 95432.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1996
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