For three days starting on Wednesday, March 23rd, the six remaining bags of grass left over from last fall’s volunteer restoration in Musser & Jarvis Creek were spread out up to the wilderness boundary. In addition, 3,000 tree seedlings were planted throughout the non-wilderness section of the Musser & Jarvis watershed! The seedlings were Jeffery Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Sugar Pine and Incense Cedar.
How was this accomplished, you ask.
Through the help of a lot of people and organizations that need to be recognized:
- The grass seed was leftover from last fall’s funding from the Chamber of Commerce.
- The seedlings were a donation from University of Nevada – Reno to the US Forest Service. Annabelle Monti of the Forest Service was instrumental in this effort, from beginning to end.
- Tools were provided by loans from Andy Lovell, the Alpine Watershed Group (Kimra McAfee and Rachel Kieffer).
- The labor came from CalFire and the California Conservation Corp. and was funded by a donation from Richard and Susan Burchiel of Markleevillage. Sierra Riker of Alpine Watershed Group also participated in the planting.
- Sierra Riker also performed the first monitoring of the restoration efforts in the watershed.
As for an update on last fall’s restoration efforts:
The waddles and tree chinking both survived the winter with no damage. There is still very little green in the watershed, with a few exceptions:
- Obviously, the new seedlings are beautiful, standing out in the stark landscape.
- Death Camas is coming up in many areas, especially on the south-facing slopes.
- Some small areas of phlox have sprouted, mostly on the south-facing slopes.
- A couple of small patches of manzanita sprouts from burnt skeletons have appeared.
- AND…. We’ve got lots of new grass sprouting from last fall’s seed-spreading!!!
For those of you who participated on last fall’s last day, you may remember a last ditch effort to get seed down by dragging rakes and spreading seed as we walked out…even that was apparently successful. We can only hope the new sprouts survive the summer.
Upcoming Tree Planting!
As you may be aware, the Alpine Watershed Group along with the Forest Service has planned two (2) community volunteer Tree Planting Workdays on April 9th and May 1st.
We will be planting within the Tamarack Fire burn scar, and due to restrictions on the number of volunteers allowed, RSVP is required. Each workday will include a family-friendly site. – Alpine Watershed Group
Click here to view the flyer and click here to RSVP.
Locations TBD at this point so stay tuned to AWG’s site for more info.
Please get the word out, and pitch in if you can!
With everyone’s help we can facilitate recovery in other burned areas, too.
Markleeville Water Company 
One thought on “An Update on the Musser & Jarvis Watershed Restoration – and Upcoming Tree Planting!”