Wood River Land Trust (WRLT)

Land acquisition/protection regional planning efforts in response to the rapid growth and change in the Wood River valley, wrlt embarked on a new initiative to elevate the need for regional planning across jurisdictions. Wrlt initiated a robust community process that included community listening and visioning sessions and brought together staff from city and county planning departments throughout the valley to discuss issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries in an effort to develop a regional vision for the future of our valley. Wrlt's focus is to use regional planning as another conservation tool to protect the natural resources on which our community relies. Bullion street conservation & community housing project in 2022, wrlt purchased a 15-acre property on bullion st, contiguous with the hailey greenway. Per the restrictions of the gift, approximately 8 acres of the site will be held for conservation purposes and incorporated into the hailey greenway (securing public access to the greenway from bullion street and protecting mature cottonwood forest and riparian habitat), and up to 7 acres that are adjacent to city services will be made available for workforce housing. This fiscal year, wrlt worked with architects and engineers to develop conceptual designs for the workforce housing project. The team worked with input gathered from community listening sessions, focus groups, and meetings with neighbors. This work is still in progress. Preserve croy canyon in fy 2021-22, wrlt worked with the city of hailey to engage the community in a master planning process for the croy canyon corridor, which includes property owned by the city of hailey as well as wrlt's simons/bauer preserve. This process resulted in the identification of goals for the corridor, and eventually to the city entering into an agreement to sell a conservation easement over their property to wrlt to be managed consistently with the simons/bauer preserve. This campaign was completed in fy 2022-23 and wrlt purchased the conservation easement which gives wrlt the right to manage the property for public recreation and wildlife habitat protection. Queens crown wrlt completed the purchase of the queens crown property, a 281-acre property with significant habitat connectivity for big game, upland birds, and greater sage-grouse, and an opportunity to expand public access to surrounding lands owned by the bureau of lands management. Pioneers alliance wrlt staff's collaborative work with the pioneers alliance has brought together ranchers and property owners to protect approximately 90,000 acres in the pioneer mountains-craters of the moon landscape through the natural resources conservation service's agricultural lands easement program. In 2022-23, wrlt continued to work with private landowners in this landscape to restore riparian habitat. Wrlt also continued to collect information on greater sage-grouse populations and worked with landowners to restore habitat on conserved lands project development in 2022-23, wrlt worked with willing landowners to develop conservation projects that will conserve wildlife migration corridors, riparian habitat, upland game habitat, critical sage grouse habitat, and areas for public recreation.

Land stewardship staff monitored all 44 of the Wood River Land Trust conservation easements, totaling 13,171 acres to ensure compliance with individual easement restrictions/language and to note any changes in the property. All monitoring data, such as photo points, were reported and entered into the permanent record. Wrlt continued to manage and steward our 16 fee simple properties located in and adjacent to the Wood River valley. These preserves are maintained in their natural state and/or restored to a healthy landscape. Stewardship staff addresses such ongoing problems as noxious weeds, trash, unwanted vehicle use, erosion and trail upkeep. Wrlt also continued developing the community orchard at the Colorado gulch preserve this fiscal year, and installed additional improvements around the popular bow bridge in the draper preserve to restore areas around the bridge that were experiencing erosion and being damaged by users. Wrlt also supported the university of Idaho's rinker rock creek ranch by partnering on projects to remove dilapidated barbed wire fencing and replacing it with electric let-down fencing that allows for better wildlife movement through the ranch. Southern Idaho Land Trust in fy 22-23, wrlt provided contract monitoring services to the southern Idaho Land Trust to monitor their conservation easements held in the magic valley area.

River health & restoration in fy 22-23, wrlt completed the Colorado gulch restoration project, removing rip rap and fill from the River and providing new side channel habitat to alleviate flood flows and enhance fish spawning and rearing habitat. Wrlt also continued the design and planning for the River restoration projects within the hailey greenway (heagle park side channel restoration), and in bellevue (bellevue side channels project). Wrlt continued working with the city of hailey, blaine county, and the flood control district 9 to move the restoration of lions park at the hailey greenway forward. The goal of this multi-year project is to restore floodplain connectivity and function and mitigate flooding that occurs in communities downstream because of degraded River function. In fiscal year 2021-22, wrlt contributed to the city of ketchum's successful campaign to acquire the warm springs preserve to forever be maintained as a public park. This year, wrlt worked with the city of ketchum on a robust community process to develop the master plan for the warm springs preserve. The plan identified opportunities to restore warm springs creek and its floodplain, and provide universal access improvements and amenities for the preserve. Wrlt is focused on the creek restoration and will continue to work with the city of ketchum to raise the funds and implement the restoration project. Wrlt also began a robust monitoring program to fill gaps in monitoring data for the big Wood River basin: installing data sensors at multiple points along the big Wood River to collect real-time temperature data to monitor and report on River conditions; and continuing a multi-year macroinvertebrate trend monitoring program. Wood River water collaborative together with our partners at trout unlimited and the nature conservancy, Wood River Land Trust continues to help facilitate the Wood River water collaborative (wrwc). There are 75 partners in the collaborative representing diverse interests including: senior and junior water users, agriculture, groundwater districts, municipalities, state legislators, the Idaho department of water resources, the Idaho water resource board, county and state agencies and other non-profits. The objective of the wrwc is to ensure sustainable water use for farming and ranching; to preserve safe, clean drinking water to meet the needs of the Wood River watersheds; and to conserve riparian and River habitat for fish and wildlife that rely on the big Wood River, silver creek, little Wood River and their tributaries.

Community engagement a community that enjoys and loves the Land will work to protect it. Research shows the best way to get people to care about the Land and our environment is to encourage meaningful experiences in nature. We bring people to the Land and educate the community's youth on conservation through programs like hosting field trips at our preserves and hosting volunteer work parties to improve our preserves. Activities this year included a citizen science bird monitoring program in partnership with the cornell lab of ornithology, and volunteer work parties in wrlt's preserves to improve habitat, remove old barbed wire fencing to prevent wildlife collisions and entanglements with fencing, and manage trails.