Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Collaboration: A Catalyst for Restoration
NILS D. CHRISTOFFERSEN
The Joseph Creek watershed, in remote and rural Wallowa County, Oregon, begins
in the rolling hill country north of the county's main agricultural valley before drop-
ping through deeply dissected canyon terrain on its way to the Grande Ronde River.
Once an important fishing site for the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce, and later the
setting for extensive homesteading, agricultural development, livestock grazing, and
commercial logging operations by Euro-American settlers and their descendants,
Joseph Creek today is the site of innovation in community-based ecological restora-
tion. This chapter describes how rural community members responded to sudden
changes in their ability to access and benefit from local lands by taking a lead role in
gathering information about, and setting priorities for, ecological restoration needs.
Doing so required extensive collaboration across traditional jurisdictional boundaries
as well as across traditionally adversarial interests. The case of the Upper Joseph Creek
Watershed Assessment demonstrates that national interests in ecological restoration
can be constructively met through the active engagement of people at the local level.
Aligning restoration goals with local benefits helped to foster community engage-
ment, creative problem solving, and sustained interest and dedication in achieving
restoration outcomes.
Background
For thousands of years prior to white settlement of the interior Northwest, the people
of the Nez Perce and allied Plateau tribes depended on the region's runs of anadro-
mous salmon and steelhead as the key component of their diets and livelihoods (Mar-
shall 1977; Walker 1967). The Imnaha and Grande Ronde subbasins, in the region
now known as Wallowa County, Oregon, were particularly important fisheries for the
Nez Perce; in fact, the name “Wallowa” refers to a kind of instream trap the Nez Perce
used to catch fish returning to the county's waterways to spawn. By the end of the
twentieth century the county's historically abundant salmon runs had all but vanished
as a result of habitat loss stemming from dam building on the Columbia and Snake
Rivers, dredging and filling of the Columbia River estuary, and effects higher in the
