River in Nevada Helps Its Own Restoration

By JON CHRISTENSEN, NY Times
Published: September 24, 1996

Wadsworth, Nev.— THE trembling leaves of a forest of knee-high cottonwood saplings flash a moving mosaic of light and dark green on the bank of the lower Truckee River. Just two years ago, the riverbank was a barren surface of dry, cracked mud and rocks baking in the hot Nevada sun. But an innovative restoration effort has taken advantage of two winters of abundant snowfall and spring floods to bring hundreds of thousands of trees back to this long-suffering river.

''Life is returning after the holocaust,'' said Paul Wagner, fisheries director for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Tribe, whose reservation surrounds the lower Truckee River and the terminal desert lake toward which the water rushes. Pyramid Lake is home to two endangered fish, the Lahontan cutthroat trout and the cui-ui (pronounced ''kwee wee''), an ancient desert sucker found nowhere else. The cui-ui reproduce by spawning in the Truckee, but the trout depend on a hatchery.

All along the lower reaches of the Truckee River, patches of cottonwoods are beginning to cover the raw banks. Unlike the situation in most reforestation projects, however, these trees were not planted by people. The river itself did the work. But it took a concerted effort by the Nature Conservancy, working with the tribe, Federal agencies and local governments, to put enough water in the river to do the job.

These cottonwood saplings grew from seeds that floated down on carefully controlled floods in the last two summers. They are the first visible signs of success for a cooperative effort to make a tightly controlled river that furnishes much water for farms and cities and behave more like a free-running river.

''This is a totally new approach to restoration,'' said Graham Chisholm, special projects director for the Nature Conservancy in Nevada. ''We're not planting trees. We're allowing the river to do what it wants to do. But we're not passive either.'' He said scientists were managing the river to mimic the natural flood cycles that were lost when water was diverted to farms and cities.

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