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Ecosystem Restoration on Paint Rock River Preserve

 

Cole Springs—Before

Before restoration
© The Nature Conservancy

Cole Springs—After
After restoration
© The Nature Conservancy

 

 


Acquired in 2003, the 323 acre preserve protects more than 1½ miles of frontage along the Paint Rock River and remnant patches of mature bottomland hardwood forest.

Purchased as a restoration demonstration site, about 280 acres have been enrolled in the USDA’s Wetlands Reserve Program and are being reforested with bottomland hardwood forest trees including overcup and cherrybark oaks. To date 11,000 trees have been planted, with the remaining trees to be planted this winter.

Cole Springs Branch, a Paint Rock tributary, flows through the preserve. In the 1960s a major ditch almost a mile long was cut across the original meandering stream channel, impairing the ecological function of the floodplain forest and the river.  In August 2006, Conservancy and USDA-NRCS staff and contractors completed the final phase of plugging the ditch at multiple points, and guiding the stream back into the original meanders, thus restoring stream flow to more than 2 miles of Cole Springs Branch.

For more details or questions contact:
Keith Tassin
Director of Stewardship, Birmingham office
(205) 251-1155 x104.