From the Sky-Hi Daily News (Reid Armstrong):
The easement, which was recorded June 23, will protect for perpetuity some 17 riparian acres on property owned by Eric and Kathy Pietz. Another 70 acres on the neighboring Devil’s Thumb Ranch, which was placed into a conservation easement between 2007 and 2008, completes the corridor. “This is something we’d been working on for several years,” said Cindy Southway of Conservation Assistance who helped guide the project. The conservation easement wasn’t part of the original plan for the quarter-mile river corridor, which has been completely restored in the last two years through a wetlands mitigation project funded by Rendezvous…
The property didn’t always have a rich wetlands habitat. Two years ago, that 600 foot stretch of river was 75 feet wide, shallow, steep and was considered to be very poor fish habitat. In fact, said project manager Geoff Elliott of Grand Environmental Services, satellite photos indicate that section of river might have been straightened at some point to help transport logs through the Fraser Flats down to the lumber mill in Tabernash…
Elliott said that he spent three years studying the Fraser River in different places, determining what features helped create a healthy river. He took along a fishing guide who showed him the best fishing holes in the area, and Elliott studied their geometry and then recreated them in the restoration project. The project, which was funded entirely by Rendezvous as part of its development permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, involved creating multiple bends in the river and adding features to improve fish habitat and water quality, such as pocket and shallow rapids and spots where the river will actually spill out of its banks and feed the wetlands…
The project more than doubled the length of the river, creating an ‘M’ out of what had once been an ‘I,’ and narrowed the channel down to 35-45 feet, allowing the water to flow deeper and cooler. Elliott said that two years after the completion of construction along that section of river, willow and other riparian plants along the river banks are thriving and the wetlands are growing. Within just one year, the river had been recolonized by the bugs that are the backbone of hearty fishery habitat — stone flies, water beetles and worms among other. And now, there are even signs of brown trout spawning in the new habitat.