The restoration project is located at Bennett Vineyards and Wine Company, just west of Cheshire in Lane County. The project is designed to restore stream, wetland, floodplain, and upland habitat along Bear Creek, which drains into the Long Tom River.
The project includes installing log jams in Bear Creek to improve instream habitat complexity, planting native trees and shrubs along Bear Creek to restore riparian habitat, installing basking logs in a pond to improve native turtle rearing habitat, creating suitable native turtle nesting habitat on the hillslope adjacent to the pond, excavating three shallow seasonal pools to provide nesting and rearing habitat for native amphibians, and installing twelve 25’x25′ plots of native forbs in the upland portions of the riparian area.
Project activities address watershed problems including: simplified instream habitat due to decreased large woody debris abundance, elevated downstream water temperatures due to decreased stream shading, insufficient native turtle and amphibian habitat caused by wetland alterations, and decreased native prairie plant abundance caused by conversion of prairie to agricultural land uses.
Project partners include Bennett Vineyards and Wine Company, CREP (USDA FSA, NRCS, and OWEB), US Army Corps of Engineers, and two consulting biologists.