Embracing our Niche: Science + Community
Left Hand Watershed Center Annual Report 2020
Dear Friends of Left Hand Watershed Center,
A global pandemic and record breaking local wildfires. Wow, what a year. As we adjusted to physical distancing, our watershed experienced the largest fire in Boulder County’s history. The Calwood-Lefthand Fire destroyed homes, burned more than 10,000 acres, and raged alongside other devastating fires in our region and beyond. Yet even with all that we faced and continue to face, our niche of science and community served as a guiding force for our organization.
Community resilience built through our St. Vrain Forest Health Partnership is helping us begin recovery and restoration following the Calwood-Lefthand Fire. Science informed our adaptive management process for assessing and prioritizing watershed health. Community scientists embraced place-based learning in masks and walked away from each experience feeling more connected to their watersheds. Finally, our adaptive restoration experiment continues to quantify how restoration can help us build watershed resilience, particularly with the devastating effects of climate change which we all experienced this year.
Reflecting on 2020 and looking ahead to 2021, we know that science and community will continue to guide us, and we are grateful for all of the partners and supporters who helped us along the way. As we work to protect and restore our watershed through post-fire response and planning, adaptive management, community engagement, and on-the-ground restoration, we need your support more than ever. Please consider investing in tomorrow’s watershed by donating today.
How did science and community guide us?
Jessie Olson, Executive Director
Christopher Smith, Board President
By the
numbers
sites monitored as part of adaptive management process
partners and stakeholders engaged in collaborative basin-scale watershed health projects
community scientists engaged in data collection
new restoration projects complete and one underway
acres of weed control and vegetation maintenance
Incorporating Forests
The Calwood-Lefthand Fire ignited on October 17 and changed the trajectory of our watershed. As we write this report, our organization, stakeholders, and community are still reeling from these events and contending with how to respond. As we face these new challenges, we share immense gratitude for the first responders who protected our communities and kept us updated. We also share immense sorrow for those who lost homes. Yet a small silver lining is that our community’s response to these fires can leverage the recently-formed St. Vrain Forest Health Partnership.
Formed over the past year, the St. Vrain Forest Health Partnership includes more than 30 diverse federal, state, local, and community stakeholders. As the Lead Coordinating Entity, we brought together these stakeholders to agree on a shared vision, mission, and plan for our forests. Though the Partnership’s focus over the past year was on landscape-scale forest resilience, the process of developing this partnership also helped build community resilience. Today we have the foundation and momentum to respond to the Calwood-Left Hand Fire with coordination and efficiency, for the love of our forests and our community.
Expanding Adaptive Management
We continue to use adaptive management to guide us in monitoring and managing our complex watersheds. Our science-based adaptive management process is the foundation of our approach for protecting and restoring watersheds. We use this process to help us understand our watershed’s trajectory toward resilience. As part of this process we spent half of 2019 in the field collecting data related to key watershed health indicators: floodplain connectivity, channel morphology and habitat, riparian condition, and benthic macroinvertebrate community. A fundamental tenet of adaptive management is learning by doing and adjusting based on what’s learned. Lessons learning based on data collected in 2019 are guiding our monitoring and management priorities in 2020. This year also marked three years of adaptive management at many of our Plains and Foothills restoration projects.
A Stewardship Success Story Three years of weed control, reseeding, and data collection proved successful at our 63rd Street restoration project where dense native grasses have replaced weeds.
Engaging Community
In 2020, we engaged our community to protect our watershed through place-based participatory learning opportunities. Despite new circumstances, diverse community members embraced health and safety protocols to collect scientific data for three weeks this summer in Left Hand and St. Vrain Creeks. In June we oversaw the successful continuation of one of our keystone community science projects – Catch the Hatch! 30 volunteers tracked Pale Morning Dun mayfly emergence in Boulder, Left Hand, and North St. Vrain Creeks as an indicator of watershed health. Finally, community scientists across four watersheds gathered in early September to celebrate watershed health as part of our annual Watershed Days Bio-Blitz. Though it looked different from 2019, participants walked away better informed and engaged in watershed science and watershed health.
“The Watershed Days event was amazing. Thank you to all of the informative group leaders and organizers. I learned a lot and have a newfound appreciation of the value of water in our community.”–Watershed Days Participant, 2020
Restoring Watersheds
Last year we considered the possibility that restoration could save the world. Though the challenges we face today are big and complicated, we still believe that restoring to the future is our watershed’s best defense in the face of climate change, floods, fires, and droughts. Our adaptive restoration experiment is helping us plan for these challenges by quantify the benefits of vegetation diversity and physical complexity across the floodplain, incorporating different climate change scenarios. Our newly completed restoration projects are improving watershed health by increasing floodplain connectivity and essential habitat for aquatic and riparian species. Finally, our “working river” projects are helping reconnect and restore fish habitat by finding ways to address the needs of fish and water users. All of these on-the-ground efforts are helping prepare our watershed for the challenges of the future, so that it may recover and bounce back from disturbances.
Reflecting on
What’s Ahead
As we continue our work to protect and restore watersheds, we will maintain our existing work with science and community while expanding in key areas related to adaptive management and forest health.
Forest Recovery, Restoration, and Planning
We are adding recovery and restoration from the Calwood-Lefthand Fires to our existing forest health efforts through the St. Vrain Forest Health Partnership. Moving forward, we will increase our efforts to address on-the-ground recovery and restoration, as well planning for landscape-scale forest health.
Adaptive Management at Scale
We are expanding our adaptive management efforts to create a new basin-scale adaptive management framework that will be shared by diverse partners who collect watershed health data in the basin.
Financial Summary
2019 Revenue
Grants
$1,395,390
Donations- Unrestricted (Board Partners, Individuals, and Corporations)
$49,483
Donations- Restricted (Board Partners, Individuals and Corporations)
$18,100
Fee for Service
$17,990
In Kind (Office Space)
$32,108
Total Revenue
$1,513,071
2019 Expenses
Program Service Expenses
$1,437,638
Management and General Expense
$32,449
Fundraising Expenses
$8,269
In Kind (Office Space)
$32,100
Total Expenses
$1,510,456
Financial Summary
2019 Revenue
Grants
$1,395,390
Donations- Unrestricted (Board Partners, Individuals, and Corporations)
$49,483
Donations- Restricted (Board Partners, Individuals and Corporations)
$17,990
Fee for Service
$18,100
In Kind (Office Space)
$32,108
Total Revenue
$1,513,071
2019 Expenses
Program Service Expenses
$1,437,638
Management and General Expense
$32,449
Fundraising Expenses
$8,269
In Kind (Office Space)
$32,100
Total Expenses
$1,510,456