Bonneville Environmental Foundation Model Watershed Program: Funding scientific, long-term, and adaptive river restoration

In 2004, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) launched an innovative and experimental Model Watershed grant program designed to promote long-term, scientific, and results-based watershed restoration.  The goal of BEF’s Model Watershed Program is to advance an iterative restoration strategy that allows tribal and community groups to monitor and evaluate restoration effectiveness, then adjust restoration practices based on measured results.  In order to enable such an objectives-oriented and monitoring-intensive approach over a long period of time, BEF commits funding, the services of an independent scientific review team, as well as institutional support to a Model Watershed Partner for ten successive years.  Over time, BEF expects to test this new funding practice and demonstrate that long-term, adaptive management leads to increasingly effective and accountable watershed-scale restoration. To date, BEF has committed to provide 10-year funding and support to five Model Watershed Partnerships throughout the Pacific Northwest, which are located in the lower Kootenai River and Benewah Creek in Idaho, the Chinook River and the Entiat River in Washington, and the Deschutes River Basin in Oregon.  By 2010, BEF expects to have established a total of twelve Model Watershed Partnerships, some of which may be located outside of the Pacific Northwest.  This poster describes the strengths and weaknesses of the Model Watershed Program and provides examples of long-term, watershed restoration monitoring plans and initial results from current Model Watershed Partnerships.  More information is available at www.b-e-f.org/watersheds/.