Micah Creek

Last fall Cour d’Alene farmer, Larry Mundt undertook the Micah Creek restoration project. This is Micah Creek. We're standing next to. We're farmers here. We have a beef cattle operation cow-calf operation and we do grass hay. We do about 400 ton of hay a year average. The Idaho Legislature put up some money to do water quality issues specifically for agriculture, and we applied for the money to do restoration projects on Micah Creek. Part of what we're trying to do is reduce the erosion. In fact, rip wrap is our chosen method. There's places where the alder has collapsed in along the stream and we've removed the collapsed alder. Well, there goes the shade and it's impacting my fences. We have riparian inclusion fences on all of this. There's almost two miles of fence on North Fork and South Fork and Micah Creek, and as the alder collapses, it starts to impact the fencing. And so I'm going to either have to move the fence or repair the problem. So I applied to the Basin Advisory Group to do 300 feet of rip wrap. Also do twelve hundred feet of vegetation management. What I'm trying to do is address the root cause. Oh, what's causing this? Well, if we get an early snow and the alder collapses in the stream from the weight of it, then when high water events come, the alder is laying in the stream and it diverts the stream and forces the water into one bank or the other. Creating big blowouts. But this is an example of how farmers are so committed to conservation efforts.