Putting the Meadows to Bed Under a Blanket of Snow

December 12, 2024

Restoring Mountain Meadows, our exquisite high elevation wetlands in California, can be challenging due to the short window in which it is possible to complete this work each year. That window occurs from when spring runoff recedes so that they are dry enough and before the rains and snow return each year–about July through early November. For 2024, nature has spoken and the mountain meadow restoration season came to a close last month. Individual ice crystals have come together, blanketing our meadows, tucking them in for a well deserved winter’s rest.

What we accomplished together

Many of these meadows were full of energy and activity just a few weeks ago, as our community of Sierra Meadow restorationists were busy healing these emerald jewels. Looking back since July, when the restoration season started, the numbers are impressive. The Sierra Meadows Partnership, a collaboration of over fourty organizations, planned and implemented restoration at over 50 meadows, covering more than 8,000 acres, from the headwaters of the Pitt River near the Oregon border to the Kern River in the south. We engaged with local communities, including many students in the Feather River watershed through our STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring A Watershed) program, and our many indigenous partners planned and carried out stewardship activities on their priority meadows. The number of partners actively engaged in meadow restoration has more than doubled in the last five years and meadow restoration activities have never been more robust. The Sierra Meadows Partnership, chaired by Point Blue’s Ryan Burnett, has gained great momentum in large part due to the forward-thinking support of the California Wildlife Conservation Board, which awarded Point Blue a $25M block grant to do exactly what we are doing: increasing the pace, scale, impact, and inclusiveness of mountain meadow restoration across the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades of California.

“Trout Unlimited’s Inland Trout Program completed another successful year of meadow restoration. Spanning from Eagle Lake down to the Kern River basin, Trout Unlimited led restoration efforts on 12 new meadow sites totaling over 1,400 acres. This was made possible by the Sierra Meadows Partnership, the US Forest Service and partners, and a dedicated crew of nearly twenty people who worked in the backcountry for over four months.”
– Jessica Strickland, Trout Unlimited

The Many Benefits of this Work

The restoration of these meadows is good news for our local, often underserved, rural mountain communities, as well as all Californians. Tuning these meadows up to perform their important ecosystem services benefits us all. When healthy, they provide: cleaner and colder water, for people and native fish, they rapidly sequester climate warming CO2, they support thriving populations of plants and wildlife, and they provide inspiring places to recreate, engage in cultural practices, and learn. Our Sierra meadow restoration community makes a tangible impact in the immediate sense, as we bring jobs to our local communities, engage those communities in restoration, and inspire the next generation of land stewards. When we come together at a restoration site with a class of local students, when communities engage together in this work with a shared sense of purpose, or when indigenous peoples return to steward their sacred lands, severed connections are reformed. It deepens the work, helping heal past damage, and securing future resilience of our precious watershed, this connected conservation approach to meadow restoration is a profound experience. There is hope that it will build enduring bonds that shape our values which then drive our actions for generations.

“Recently, I had the privilege of engaging local elementary students from Chester, CA to assist us in the restoration of Child’s Meadow, near Lassen Volcanic National Park. Watching their sense of purpose and accomplishment as they took an active role in restoring their watershed reminded me once again why we invest in restoration of our incredible natural resources in California.” – Ryan Burnett, Director of Point Blue’s Sierra Nevada Group and Sierra Meadows Partnership Board Chair

What lies ahead

In the long-term, these restorations mitigate the effects of climate change–providing refugia for people and wildlife from higher temperatures, drought and flood. The Sierra Nevada region supports 50% of California’s plant species and 60% of its animal species. Within the region, the Sierra’s meadows are biodiversity hotspots. They play a vital role in supporting wildlife and plant diversity by providing habitat for all life history stages of many fish and amphibian species as well as birds, invertebrates, and mammals. And since the meadows are at many of California’s headwaters, restored meadows have long-lasting downstream effects. Healthy meadows support sustainable water supplies to rivers and aquifers for people and wildlife.

The challenge we face ahead is keeping up the momentum now and securing more support to expand and strengthen the meadow restoration community into the future. We are over 60% of the way to achieving our goal of conserving and protecting 30,000 acres of Sierra meadows by 2030, but there is much more to do. We estimate that over 100,000 acres of meadows need restoration. We will need to restore more meadows in the coming decades and invest in stewarding those we have already restored. In this work we must continue to support our local communities and partnerships. So while our meadows rest for a long-winter slumber, Point Blue and our partners will be busy planning for an even more impactful 2025 restoration season across the Sierra to connect streams to their floodplains, roots to the soil, species to their habitats, and people to the land and each other.

Want to stay in the loop or get involved?

• Support Point Blue with a generous year-end gift so we can keep this work going far into the future.
• Explore our Climate-Smart Meadow Restoration Program story map to learn more about the amazing restoration work happening throughout California
• Sign up on our email list to stay in the loop on conservation happenings across Point Blue