The stream restoration portion of the Vital Rivers Initiative centers around tangible improvements to riparian vegetation and in-stream habitat.

We work in conjunction with landowners, other conservation groups, public agencies, and citizens to accomplish the following:

• Inventory and monitor riparian and aquatic habitat along Warm Springs, Racetrack, Gold, Peterson, Cottonwood, and Dunkelberg Creeks, including assessing habitat limitations along these creeks.
• Partner with conservation groups to identify fisheries limitations and trout population trends, expand fish monitoring, and correspond monitoring sites with existing sites used by other groups.
• Restore eroding streambanks using riparian fencing to protect habitat conditions for westslope cutthroat trout in Browns Gulch and Dry Cottonwood Creek.
• Install fencing along approximately six contiguous miles of Dry Cottonwood Creek below the North Fork of Dry Cottonwood, spanning four private landowners, State land, and USFS land landowners. Creating new riparian pastures will allow landowners to reduce grazing pressure in the riparian corridor, thereby decreasing livestock damage to riparian vegetation and improving stream bank integrity and overall aquatic habitat.
• Identify and plan riparian restoration projects along the upper and middle reaches of Brown’s Gulch, including designing and implementing riparian fencing and other grazing improvement projects with private landowners.
• Partner with the USFS to remove roads and culverts to improve fish passage in two bull trout strongholds.
• Fund and implement a road removal project in Twin Lakes Creek drainage, a headwaters tributary to Warm Springs Creek.
• Plan and design a project to replace two undersized culverts on private property in Wyman Gulch, a small tributary to South Boulder Creek, which is the most important resident bull trout tributary in the Flint Creek drainage of the upper Clark Fork watershed.