Sometimes the right place and the right people come together at exactly the right time to create a stream restoration project that is truly remarkable.
The place is 7200 feet of the North Branch of Wilson Creek in Dunn County, Wisc., on the properties of Bill Manwarren and Josh Edhlund.
Wilson Creek, like many Driftless streams, was straightened on these properties to increase land available for agriculture and to improve efficiency with large machinery. Straightened streams often become featureless, impaired waterways with little habitat and few fish.
“I tried fishing Wilson Creek several times when I first purchased the property (in 1995),” Manwarren said. “I caught some trout but found the creek hard to fish and it seemed there were just a few trout. The beaver dams slowed the stream flow and created a soft bottom that was difficult to wade in. The trees made it very difficult to cast and walk the banks.”
Could the damage done to Wilson Creek be undone to give this portion of the stream a new lease on life? The answer turns out to be yes, when you gather together the right people to get the job done.
Through an impressive collaborative effort between the landowners, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Trout Unlimited, this stretch of Wilson Creek is being completely remeandered utilizing large portions of its original channel. The project is taking place in two phase. The first was completed in August of 2025 and the second will begin in the fall of 2025 and be completed in 2026.
“I was surprised at the scale of the overall project,” said Dale Dahlke, a neighbor of Manwarren and Edhlund and a member of the Wisconsin Clear Waters TU board. “It’s pretty impressive — not the kind of thing that’s done often.”
Altogether 1.36 miles of stream is being restored. Several hundred feet on each side of the bank are being converted to permanent sod, either as restored wetland, native prairie grass or horse/hay pasture.
Dahlke saw potential in these properties several years ago and spoke to DNR Senior Fisheries Biologist Kasey Yallaly not long after Yallaly arrived at the Baldwin field office. Yallaly began conversations with Manwarren, and Dahlke showed him other restoration projects completed on Wilson Creek. This relationship-building resulted in the Wisconsin DNR purchasing a perpetual fishing easement from Manwarren. Manwarren later sold a portion of the property to Edhlund with the easement still in place.
Conversations with neighbors were a significant factor in persuading Manwarren to sign a fishing easement.
“Many friends and family cautioned me on opening the property to public fishing, but I wasn’t too concerned about public fishing,” he said. “Being a fisherman myself made me comfortable with having a fisherman on my land.
“I met Dale Dahlke when I participated on the Wilson Creek watershed project. Dale signed a fishing easement and was impressed with how the project enhanced trout fishing after the improvements. Another neighbor, Dave Klingman signed an easement, and I helped clean off the trees on his stream. Dave shared his experiences on working with the NRCS/DNR.”
When landowners see the results of a stream restoration project on a neighbor’s property, the willingness to open their streambanks to public fishing can become contagious.
“Kudos to Dale who restored the stream on his property,” NRCS District Conservationist John Sippl said. “It became the talk of the town and got things rolling. The landowners like what is happening.”
Shortly after the easement was completed, conversations began among the landowners, Natural Resources Conservation Service and DNR staff. The many technical, practical and financial challenges that needed to be addressed are a great case study of why the planning and design phase of an ambitious restoration project can take years, while the construction phase only takes a few months.
The first question NRCS Soil Conservation Engineer Chad DeWyre asks when considering if it is feasible to remeander a straightened stream is, “Can I put this stream back into its old channel?”
If the answer is “yes,” additional questions follow. Could a design be developed to ensure that the stream bed would remain stable against the stress and velocity of the current utilizing a minimal amount of rock? Could the stream be routed in a way that ensured one landowner wouldn’t lose land to the other? And finally, could a project of this scale be successfully funded?
Eventually, solutions were found for all of these challenges, but it didn’t happen overnight. Technical skills and people skills were both necessary to arrive at a plan.
“Communication is number one,” said DeWyre. “You have to have the right landowner to meander a ditched stream. Many farmers want straight fields, and I get that. We worked through three different design options with the two landowners to arrive at the final design.”
Sippl built a strong working relationship with Manwarren over many years, so the stream restoration project is integrated with many previous projects on his property that reduce erosion and improve water quality.
“I have been working with Bill for several years on upland management, including cover crops and no-till,” Sipple said. “He chose to take his highly erodible land out of production and put it into CRP.”
According to DeWyre, Sippl’s collaboration skills were the real key to making this project happen.
“John does a great job managing NRCS relationships with other government agencies,” DeWyre said. “In the last 10 to 15 years he has built trust with the local people, private landowners and the DNR.”
Characteristically, Sippl deflected credit away from himself and toward other people collaborating on the project.
“The DNR and NRCS have a working relationship built and forged many years ago, so there is a lot of mutual respect,” he said. “Nate and Kasey (Senior DNR Fisheries Biologists Nate Anderson and Yallaly) work well together with Chad in implementing everyone’s ideas into a stream design. Nobody’s ego is at play; there is mutual respect.”
Manwarren said it has always been a dream to get the trout stream restored.
“My wife and I bought the property as a place to enjoy nature and wildlife,” he said. “I’m a fisherman and we like anglers, so we think the stream restoration project is a great fit for the property. The NRCS/DNR staff impressed me with their ideas and plans for enhancing the stream for trout and were very receptive to my concerns while planning the project. I am amazed by the plan they developed and the stream they created.
“I look forward to introducing fly fishing to my grandkids and learning more fly-fishing techniques. I am also looking forward to talking with the fishermen as they fish the creek.”
An influx of conservation dollars from the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act made 2025 the perfect time to begin this large-sale project. Phase one on the Manwarren property was funded through the Environmental Quality Initiatives Program (EQIP) program and Wisconsin Trout Stamp dollars.
Because inflation Reduction Act dollars are no longer available, phase two in 2026 is being funded through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) established between the NRCS and TU’s Driftless Area Restoration Effort and Trout Stamp dollars. Phase two is already underway with tree clearing on the Edhlund property beginning this fall and construction continuing next spring. In addition to remeandering the stream, the second phase will include a 25-acre wetland restoration.
“Long-term, the RCPP is the way we are going to continue stream restoration work,” according to Sippl. “In my opinion, federal funding through EQIP will be increasingly limited. A lot of people are utilizing that money for wetland restoration, pollinator plantings and goat prairies. RCPP dollars are designated strictly toward trout.”
In addition to the right place, people and time all coming together on the North Branch of Wilson Creek, a little bit of fairy dust seems to have been sprinkled onto the construction site at the very end. All of the resource professionals involved have been pleasantly surprised by the speed with which native grasses and forbs are reestablishing post-construction.
Prior to the work being done, the stream bank was a typical mix of non-native Reed Canary Grass and other European species. Sippl speculates that driving the excavator and haul trucks back and forth over the site during the construction phase crimped off the non-native grasses and suppressed their vigor.
The buffer area around the stream is filling in with native prairie woolgrass, sedges, bulrushes, Joe Pye weed, marsh milkweed, skunk cabbage and other natives from seeds lying dormant in the soil.
“The native vegetation in the seedbank got an opportunity to express itself and flourished,” Sippl said.
The way things have come together on this project it’s only natural that the people involved are very excited about how the site will develop in the future.
“I am anxious to see what the stream looks like in a year after the vegetation becomes established and the stream narrows and gains depth,” said DeWyre. “Kasey did a pre-construction fish survey. I can’t wait to see the post-construction survey.”