The Driftless Area team has been hard at work this spring preparing for a very busy summer. With support from the Wisconsin Council of Trout Unlimited, the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, we have a technician crew collecting culvert assessment data in the Driftless portion of Dane County this summer. Our collaboration with the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission comes through their Wisconsin Emergency Management Pre-Disaster Flood Resilience Grant, a program that Trout Unlimited and the Wisconsin Council supported due to the fish passage, watershed health and flood resilience that come from properly sized and installed bridges and culverts. They recently featured our work in their newsletter.
Our stream restoration specialist, Paul Krahn, is continuing to work with the Nohr chapter and WDNR to complete a restoration project on the Blue River in the Snow Bottom State Natural Area. The project is roughly ¼ mile long and includes shaping, rootwads and log and rock features.
A restoration project in Buffalo County was completed last month on Danuser Creek. The project included a wide variety of habitat features recommended by the WDNR and will be followed up by another upstream section of roughly 1,600’ later this year or early next year. The project included widening the shoulder near the bridge on Palkowski Rd to create a parking place for anglers. You may find DARE Partnership Specialist Peter Jonas parked there on your next trip.
Just over the county line into Trempealeau County, there’s a nearly completed project on a tributary to Chimney Rock Creek. This area provides brook trout nursery habitat upstream from some of our prior restoration sites on Chimney Rock at the Halama farm. The Trempealeau County Tourism Web Map includes these fishing sites.
We’re also working with two landowners on the West Fork of Knapp Creek who are improving their streams and riparian conditions with technical assistance from DARE. This area is relatively high in the watershed and falls within a brook trout reserve. The project is focused on vegetation improvements and wood-based habitat.
A separate article provides an update on the Fancy Creek project, which restores over 1 mile of stream and more than 100 acres of floodplain wetlands.
We have had numerous outreach events over the spring season. In Wisconsin, we celebrated a DARE-funded sculpin research project featured in this article. We also participated in the Coon Creek Confluence event and Reel Recovery. In Minnesota, we engaged youth on water quality and bugs at the La Crescent Waterfestival event.
Our Iowa Engagement Coordinator, Cameron Aker, hosted a tree planting workday on May 17th at the recently completed North Bear Creek project. Sixteen volunteers participated and 150 trees and shrubs were planted.
Members Coon Creek Community Watershed Council in Southwest Wisconsin visited Iowa to learn about various water quality projects. Northeast Iowa RC&D, Iowa Flood Center, Fayette County Conservation, and TUDARE presented to this group at the hybrid event. The group toured a stream restoration project where Cameron discussed floodplain reconnection, habitat improvements, and how these projects reduce sedimentation into our waterways.
On June 6th, TUDARE hosted a grower field day on Patterson Creek, near Waukon. This field day was focused on showcasing the recent restoration project, and how an active cattle operation can work in harmony with cold water fisheries.