The Use of Active Watershed Management to Achieve or Accelerate the Accomplishment of Watershed Goals

The first examples of active watershed management were largely designed to achieve economic objectives. These examples have left a legacy of impacts from denuded slopes and eroded soils to channelized and simplified streams. As a result there is an unspoken paradigm in watershed management that "mother nature knows best" and that natural systems provide more aquatic values than managed systems. Yet the legacy of impacts will take from decades to centuries to restore through passive processes, a delay that society is probably unwilling to accept. Instead, active watershed management can be used to accelerate this process. In fact, active management is essential in order to achieve the multiple resource values, both environmental and economic, provided by watersheds. To achieve these resources values, we must select a set of conditions rather than any single state. Examples of active management are provided. These include creation of off-channel habitat, placement of large woody debris (LWD) in streams, re-establishment of woody riparian vegetation and shade along streams, active road restoration efforts, and control of exotic species.