Watershed Health Implementation Strategy
Wy'East is partnering with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to demonstrat a new concept in watershed planing to develop an implementation strategy.
This innovative demonstration project is targeted in the Lower Crooked River Watershed in cooperation with the Crook Soil and Water Conservation District. The purpose of an implementation strategy is to improve the effectiveness of the conservation implemented through NRCS programs.
The project uses a watershed approach to provide information and assistance to enable locally led, watershed scale conservation efforts. The NRCS watershed approach combines locally-developed watershed health goals, community leadership, and sound principles of watershed planning to strategically apply conservation. Conservation, when implemented strategically, effectively addresses the causes of watershed problems, not just symptoms, overcomes obstacles to implementation, makes progress measurable, and promotes iterative improvements to the implementation strategy.
An Implementation Strategy uses available information and a series of collaborative, community-based, and iterative steps to:
- Identify local goals and measurable objectives
- Prioritize critical areas and the best sequence for implementation
- Identify the conservation activities that need to occur to solve resource problems and meet local goals
- Coordinate among all the entities doing conservation
- Identify potential funding sources
- Develop criteria to measure progress
- Evaluate progress to facilitate adaptive management and sustainability
An Implementation Strategy is intended to provide an approach, or series of tactical steps, to get conservation on the ground in the most effective and efficient manner.