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Eric Rauch, chapter grant writer, learned this week a $240,000 stream restoration project is on the horizon in Vernon County.
“I’ve written a fair number of grants for our chapter, but this is the largest wildlife habitat incentive program grant ever received in Wisconsin,” Rauch said early Friday.
The Coulee Region Chapter of Trout Unlimited will coordinate the project with federal, state and county agencies this spring.
The project is to be completed over four years and will restore 6,000 feet of stream banks on Coon Creek and Spring Coulee Creek, just northeast of Coon Valley near Hwy. P.
The local chapter received a $180,000 Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The WHIP grant provides technical assistance and up to 75 percent cost sharing to develop and improve wildlife habitat. The remaining $60,000 will be contributed from other sources, including local fundraising.
Not only will the project benefit fish, but invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles and more.
Sam Skemp, district conservation officer for the Natural Resources Conservation Service Viroqua Service Center in Viroqua, Wis., said the project proposal ranked very high because of the number of at-risk species it will benefit. They include the Blanchard’s cricket frog, bullfrog, Blanding’s turtle, four-toed salamander, pickerel frog, wood turtle, redside dace, Louisiana water thrush, solitary sandpiper, eastern red bat, hoary bat, northern long-eared bat, silver-haired bat and approximately 530 invertebrate species such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddis flies.
Streams and riparian zones in what is described as the “driftless area” in Wisconsin, suffer from erosion from agricultural land use. Hundreds of miles of spring creeks have been inundated with soil and fine sediment, which has degraded water quality, increased stream temperatures, damaged aquatic habitat and altered watershed hydrology.
“We want to restore what used to be in the region in the pre-1920s,” Rauch said, adding the local chapter, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture will be the main players in the project.
Rauch said the local chapter must donate $60,000 within four years, although part of that might be in donated labor.
The local chapter plans to begin stream evaluations this spring, he said.
The Coulee Region Chapter of Trout Unlimited has 190 members from Crawford, Juneau, La Crosse, Monroe, and Vernon counties.
Steps of project
Bob Lamb can be reached at (608) 791-8228, or blamb@lacrossetribune.com.
