Keeping water in the system ‘just a little bit longer’

Shawn Conner of BIO-Logic, Inc. constructs a low-tech rock structure, called a Zuni-bowl, with the help of volunteers.

Agricultural producers around the Gunnison Valley will carry on the fight against the drying West this summer with the help of a local environmental group. Months ago, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District received over $25,000 for low-tech mitigation projects meant to help ranchers, swamped with the daily demands of cattle or hay, restore meadows that have dried over the years. The funds will support wet meadow restoration for three landowners, the Cranor Ranch, Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy and a third, unnamed ranch. 

Last year, several environmental and ag organizations — American Rivers, the Colorado Ag Water Alliance and the Nature Conservancy — came together to write a proposal to the Colorado Water Conservation Board to corral public funding for ag producers grappling with drought. A goal of these projects is to incubate ideas in order to test their effectiveness long-term, said Greg Peterson, executive director of the granting organization, Colorado Ag Water Alliance. 

“Most grant programs, federal or state, can be quite cumbersome for a lot of ranchers,” Peterson said. “So we wanted something that was quick and flexible, and could also be used to fund these somewhat experimental projects.”

Months later when the funds came in, the water alliance and partners selected 30 projects in counties on both sides of the continental divide, ranging from wet meadows in Gunnison to biochar and compost in Larimer and contours and ditches in Pitkin. The projects are meant to identify practices that keep farms and ranches profitable during drought.

Hannah Cranor, a third-generation member of the Cranor Ranch in Gunnison, said she hopes the treatments will help the grass grow, ultimately creating more feed for their animals. The family have been seeing the water table drop for years, and despite their ongoing efforts to make ditches more efficient, it’s hard to keep up. 

“I work full time off the ranch and on the ranch. I simply wouldn't have had time to put together something like this,” Cranor said. “So it's cool that we can work with the Upper Gunnison and they can do the heavy lifting and help us.”

Wet meadow restoration work has already been occurring in the valley for over a decade, said Cheryl Cwelich, water resource specialist at Upper Gunnison. Ten years of experience gives the organization a leg up in being able to implement projects with greater certainty. At its core, the work is about restoring water on landscapes where the channel has become unnaturally eroded, she said. 

In an undisturbed setting, water flows from the sagebrush down into wet meadows and into gullies, slowly percolating through the system. But poorly planned trails and roads cause water to channelize and down cut through wet meadows, robbing the system of water along the way. Drought then exacerbates this drying of the land, a process known as aridification.

“We're losing that ability to naturally or temporarily store water up here,” Cwelich said. “We're dealing with these climate change impacts we were predicting 10 years ago, but they're happening now. We're seeing that this landscape is truly drying out.”

An Upper Gunnison crew will use Zeedyk-style rock structures, named for veteran southwestern forester Bill Zeedyk who noticed how Ancestral Pueblo rock structures helped heal the unnatural gullying in the landscape, to control erosion. Rocks help slow down and spread out the water, she said, starting redeposition of sediment in the gullies, essentially “keeping that water in the system just a little bit longer.”

The Zeedyk structures put in nearly a decade ago in the valley are already showing success, she said. Crews return to see those areas greening-up as unnatural gullies refill with sediment and the meadow becomes more resilient to drought. In 2023, the crew is looking at new areas to expand impact using structures that have been proven over time, combined with other holistic land management practices including seed collection and cheatgrass removal.

Healthy wet meadows have broad impacts along the food chain, Cwelich said, providing ample forage for livestock and wildlife, and for the federally-protected Gunnison sage-grouse, whose chicks need energy and water when they hatch. 

“When we are walking the landscape, and you see these wet meadow systems, they’re like these little green gems in the sagebrush ecosystem,” she said. 

The team will go out this coming spring and start with site analysis, before designing the projects and later, implement those designs. 

Successful projects will be scaled up, Peterson said. Data collection will be used to assess whether or not the projects are viable in the long term. Projects that show tangible benefits for ranchers and meet the needs of the environmental community may be implemented at a larger scale around the state, creating a roadmap for decades of drought mitigation in the future. 

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)