CapitalPress.com
February 5, 2016
Project has many partners
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CREEK from Page 7
and had a hard time getting
back out. His fences were fall-
ing into the stream,” Banks
said. “So he met with a group
of us to discuss a stream resto-
ration project.”
This project has many part-
ners interested in protecting and
enhancing habitat for Yellow-
stone Cutthroat Trout.
“We had participation from
Southeast Idaho Flyishers; Sim-
plot; Idaho Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality; U.S. Forest
Service (the property borders
the Forest Service on its west
end); U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice; Darden Co. (owners of the
Red Lobster and Olive Garden
restaurant chains), who donated
money for the project; Trout Un-
limited; and the local school dis-
trict from Bancroft (North Gem
High School),” Banks said.
The entire high school — 65
kids in grades 9 through 12 —
came out twice to help. Their
service, called Cowboys in Ac-
tion, helped plant willows and
lay out the fence, and helped put
up some of the buck-and-pole
fence along the riparian area.
“Mike and Roxy had decided
they needed to put the channels
back into a more normal, mean-
dering course, after looking at an
aerial photo from 1941, in the
U.S Forest Service archives,”
Banks said. “It showed what the
stream looked like originally.”
The project was coordinated
by the Portneuf Soil and Water
Conservation District in cooper-
We Are Now
Manufacturing
ation with the Caribou Soil and
Water Conservation District.
Banks wrote a grant that provid-
ed most of the funding.
“Donations from various
partners made up the difference,
along with inputs from Mike and
Roxy. They supplied equipment,
posts for the fence, helped us
plant trees, and a host of other
things,” Banks said.
“We found a contractor,
Rockin’ T Construction, in
Swan Valley, owned by Troy
and Tara Hicks. Tara is the exca-
vator driver and she’s a magician
with that machine. She put both
channels back the way they were
originally, restoring more than
6,000 feet of stream channel,”
Banks said.
He took photos before and
after — six weeks after it was
inished, six months after and a
year after.
“The amount of growth in
that new riparian area is incred-
ible. We planted willows, and
fenced off each channel on both
sides,” he said.
This took more than two
miles of fence.
Mike and Roxy had a corral
next to one channel so they re-
built the corral away from the
stream.
“Since we’d fenced the cattle
away from the stream we drilled
a well to supply stock water,
put in 1,500 feet of pipeline and
three water troughs. Fencing off
both stream segments created
fence for three different pastures,
so we placed a water trough in
each pasture,” Banks said.
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