This morning a small group of us volunteered to help EBMUD with a creek restoration project in Orinda. The current landscape in Orinda has been heavily shaped and degraded by roughly a hundred years of cattle grazing. Over grazing has striped the riparian corridors of the native trees plants and shrubs which originally grew there and has left the streams prone to erosion.

We planted live willow stakes, live branch bundles and a few buckeye starts. We estimate that about 200 feet of creek bed/banks were heavily planted to jump start the regeneration of this seasonal creek. Some of the willows you see in the background were planted there fifteen years ago by the same Ranger and methods used today. This creek feeds into a larger stream that is known habitat of the steelhead trout.

We enjoyed the camaraderie and had plenty of time to speculate about new projects that we can instigate in the watershed.