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Summary of Our Plan for
the La Moine River Ecosystem
The La
Moine River Ecosystem Partnership (LMREP) is a collaboration of more
than twenty-five organizations and dozens of landowners and
residents committed to the protection, restoration, and stewardship
of the La Moine River Watershed and adjacent areas. The Partnership
is a grassroots effort and has been working diligently over the past
2 ˝ years to make opportunities available by developing an
Integrated Watershed Management Plan for the region.
To
accomplish that goal, there have been public planning meetings,
outreach efforts, landowner and resident surveys, and data analysis
and technical review. As major issues and concerns emerged, the
Partnership moved to the development of goals, objectives, and
strategies for the Watershed Plan. The Plan is by no means a finite
document. As new Partnership members and collaborators become
involved with projects and initiatives, and as new issues and
concerns surface, the Plan will change and grow. It is most
definitely a “work in progress,” and as such it will be able to meet
the needs of the Partnership for many years to come. With the
creation of this Plan, the watershed is in a favorable position for
future available funding opportunities. This document satisfies all
the requirements for many funding organizations and will serve to
stimulate additional implementation activities throughout the
watershed.
The issues
combined with several intensive sessions with the Technical Advisory
Committee have resulted in a Plan which focuses on five major goals:
Goal
1
Facilitating the management, restoration, and preservation of
natural communities while enhancing their biodiversity.
Goal
2
Supporting the improvement and protection of water resources.
Goal
3
Advancing efforts that contribute to a reduction in soil
erosion and sedimentation.
Goal
4
Enhancing awareness of issues relating to ecosystem management
and protection.
Goal
5
Promote the use of land and water resources for recreation.
More
specific detail about the Plan, including objectives, strategies and
action items, estimated costs and a projected timeline are provided
in Appendix 1.
The area
currently faces a decline in economic vitality and despite the
existing quality and availability of natural resources, there is
still more work than can be done. So it is important that the
Partnership convey the message that a healthy environment and a
healthy economy are not mutually exclusive, but rather inextricably
woven together. The Partnership seeks to be instrumental in
renewing economic vitality, promoting environmental restoration and
encouraging community involvement in both.
What sets
this watershed management plan apart from others is the depth of
both stakeholder involvement and scientific analysis. Combined with
input from technical advisors and the public, a basin-specific
technique was developed for ranking subwatersheds based on
quantitative and qualitative data. This has resulted in the
identification of three tiers of priority subwatersheds for erosion,
water quality, protection and restoration. The expectation is that
focus on those priority areas will maximize on-the-ground impacts.
In addition, this has led to recommendations for Best Management
Practices (BMPs) within these priority subwatersheds. Current
pollutant loads have been estimated, as well as the anticipated load
reductions associated with the proposed BMPs. More importantly,
specific locations of future projects have been identified along
with a selection of willing landowners. Information about the
greater La Moine Basin as well as these priority subwatersheds is
located throughout the body of this report and the various
Appendixes. Detailed information on the priority subwatersheds,
including maps and data tables, is located in Appendix 2, and
similar information for the BMPs recommended for those priority
subwatersheds can be found in Appendix 3.
There are
copies of maps throughout the body of this main document. Please
note that full-page versions of these maps can be found in Appendix
4. Due to the fact that portions of the LMREP are contained by
County boundaries, it was necessary to expand these boundaries for
planning purposes to accommodate natural drainages. Many of the
maps represent watershed boundaries that extend outside of the
Partnership. The remainder of the maps and information about the
watershed represent natural drainages intersecting the Partnership
boundary.
PURPOSE
____________________________________________________________
The
cooperative La Moine River Ecosystem Partnership was formed with its
purpose being to protect, preserve and enhance the natural resources
of the La Moine River Watershed area as a sustainable ecosystem.
The planning process has addressed habitat/ecosystem issues and
arrived at goals and objectives aimed at multi-objective,
integrated, ecosystem management projects.
The primary
intent of ecosystem management is to develop and implement actions
that identify, locate, protect, conserve, maintain, and restore the
ecological integrity, productivity, and biological diversity of an
area while accommodating human use and occupancy. The realization
of this will require promoting environmental education, public
appreciation for the watershed resources, cooperative efforts
between the agriculture and conservation sectors, cooperative
efforts between landowners and conservation interests and developing
a detailed assessment of watershed resources. The sum of these
efforts must then be translated into realistic and appropriate "on
the ground" results based on best available scientific data and
analyses. The intent of this document is to address all of these
issues
MISSION STATEMENT
____________________________________________________________
The mission of the La Moine River Ecosystem Partnership is to
preserve, protect, and enhance the natural resources of the La Moine
River Watershed area as a sustainable ecosystem.
To read our entire plan, please click
here.
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