Description
Start Date-End Date: 06/23/2018-06/24/2018
Land Manager Office: USFS - Conejos Peak Ranger District
Land Manager Contact: Jeremiah Martinez
Funding Partner: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, USFS - Conejos Peak Ranger District
Programmatic Partner:
Summary: Remove fencing from the Rio de los Pinos inlet to improve human and wildlife safety.
Description: About the Stewardship Site:
Located in the southern portion of the Conejos Peak Ranger District, the Rio delosPinos has its headwaters in the South San Juan Wilderness and drains southwards into the Trujillo Meadows Reservoir near the Rio Grande National Forest. This highcountry reservoir is 69 surface acres in size and offers mountain views as well as fishing for browns, rainbowsandoccasional brook trout. Volunteers will camp in the adjacent campground.
About the Volunteer Experience:
Volunteers ages 16+ will spend the weekend camping near the Trujillo Meadows Reservoir and removing barbed wire fencing from both sides of the Rio de los Pinos inlet as well as the perimeter of the campground to improve human and wildlife safety. Tasks will include cutting and rolling wire, removing wooden fence posts, and piling materials for later removal. Our volunteer Crew Chefs will provide breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday as well as breakfast and lunch on Sunday.
About the Overall Impact:
The barbed wire fencing poses a significant threat to visitors and local wildlife, but the U.S. Forest Service has limited resources to remove it. In doing so, volunteers will have an immediate impact on the natural environment and eliminate this burden from U.S. Forest Service staff.
Thank you to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for their support in making this project happen!
Need-to-Know Details:
Minors:Youth under 18mustbe accompanied by an adult 21 years or older on overnight projects.
Parking, Food & Facilities:Volunteers will camp at the Trujillo Meadows Campground, which will be either a short walk or a several-minute drive to the work site(s). Pit toilets will be available at both the campground and the worksites, and our volunteer Crew Chefs will provide breakfast, lunch,and dinner on Saturday, as well as breakfast and lunch on Sunday.
Cancellation:Our land manager partners rely on VOC volunteers to accomplish critical stewardship needs, and our projects often have wait lists. If you need to cancel, pleasecontact Jamie Burkeat 303-715-1010 ext. 116 as soon as possible so we can free your spot for another volunteer and have a full workforce.
Latitude/Longitude: 37.052725, -106.458248
Additional Information:
Camping Available: Yes
Physical Difficulty: Moderate
High Altitude Project: Yes
Desired Number of Volunteers: 35
Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 71
Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 1
Total Volunteer Days: 72
Total Unique Volunteers: 40
Total Volunteer Hours: 804
Staff Hours: 35.5
Stipend Hours: 0
Project Summary: The Trujillo Meadows Restoration project focused on removing old, non-functional barbed wire fencing from the inlet stream into Trujillo Meadows Reservoir and around the Trujillo Meadows Campground. The fencing along the inlet stream was a significant entanglement threat to wildlife and needed to be removed to help protect animals, such as elk, in the habitat. The fencing around the campground is intended to keep cattle out of the area, but the fencing was extremely damage, non-functional and only serves as a wildlife threat at this point. The area is a significant summer range for elk, especially elk cows and their calves, and removing fence here helped to save elk lives in the future. This project served to restore the wildlife habitat in the area to safe conditions, as well as improving recreationalist safety at the campground and during fishing near the reservoir.
Successes and Challenges: HUGE success in removing a huge amount of nasty, old fence. No one got hurt. Accomplishments that CPW staff have wanted removed for 15 years and never had the resources to do so.
I should have had more fence for them to remove - either that or recruit less people for a project with this amount of work in the future.
One section of fence that was supposed to stay in place (short-term only - it needs to be removed int he long-term) was removed. I need to make sure I have more explicit guidance for crews.
Lessons Learned: VOC volunteers are super effective and hard working and I need to identify projects that have larger work loads or recruit smaller numbers of people in the future to make sure we have close to 2 full days of work.
Special Notes:
Stewardship Education: Visit to volunteers by a CPW staff member who visited each crew to say thank you and tell them about how important the area was for summer range for elk cows and their calves and how they were literally saving lives by removing the fencing.
2 Conejos Peak Ranger District staff (Rio Grande National Forest) attended the project for half of Saturday.
Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers:
Description of Accidents/Incidents: 2 people got their fingers caught in t-post pullers that slammed shut on them. They were both fine, but it was painful and a good FYI about teaching people what to look out for when using these.
Description of Work Completed: Removed 6,644 feet (1.26 miles!) of old, non-functional barbed wire fencing, including multiple h-braces and their structural wire crosses.
Hauled all metal t-posts and wire coils out of the area for removal by Forest Service staff.
Details
| 16 and older |
