CEC’s restoration design team, led by Christy Mower, was hired by the City of Fort Collins’ (Colorado) Natural Areas Department (FCNAD) to design a headwaters restoration project within a prairie region just south of the Colorado and Wyoming border, referred to as Brannigan Springs, located within a 22,000-acre site called Soapstone Prairie Natural Area (SSN). The City of Fort Collins is approximately 30 miles south of SSN.
Innovative Headwaters Restoration Practices
Owned by the FCNAD, the approximately 30-acre project site provided a unique opportunity to leverage low-tech process-based (LT-PBR) restoration practices with the goal of creating deeper pool habitats for aquatic and terrestrial species use and to re-establish wetland and riparian habitats along the streams’ floodplain. A long term and secondary goal of the project is to create habitats for the Northern Leopard Frog (NLF; Lithobates pipiens), currently listed as a Tier 1 species of greatest conservation need in Colorado.
The LT-PBR approach was ideal in this prairie setting to minimize temporary disturbances during construction due to the site’s sensitive wetland and riparian features. To keep the footprint light, AloTerra Restoration Services was hired as the general contractor to install beaver mimicry structures, a key design feature.
Another unique component to our project was the fact that it was in a prairie setting with very little trees or shrubs available to use during construction.
“At our project site, wood is a missing component due to livestock grazing. We are re-setting the system by removing livestock grazing by fence exclusion and using the engineered wood structures to restore the stream channel and encourage the regeneration of native willows, grasses, and wetland plants,” said Bernadette Kuhn, PMP, a senior planner for FCNAD.
Kieran Clute, AloTerra’s Construction Foreman, led implementation working directly with FCNAD’s field crew, which supplied most of the equipment and wood materials for the project.
Kieran continued by stating, that “having such a supportive, collaborative, and active partner like FCNAD resulted in significant savings during implementation.” With CEC’s ecologist, David Stein on-site full time and Christy visiting each week, innovative ideas related to structure construction were provided to improve and facilitate construction completing the project in less than two weeks with a couple weather delays. Christy said, “The best part of the project is that each structure has its own characteristic, personality, and functional benefit, adding to the aesthetics of the site.”
“This is a dynamic space that we are giving a chance to return to its natural state,” added Christof Meyer, President and Restoration Ecologist of AloTerra.
Over the next couple years, the FCNAD will monitor the project site for physical, chemical, and biological parameters to evaluate success. If data demonstrates that the project was a success, many more acres in the SSN will be considered for future applications.
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