Project Update: Yocha Dehe Riparian Restoration
Since July 2024, the Yolo County Resource Conservation District (RCD) in partnership with the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, is working across three sites on tribal lands to manage invasive weeds, restore habitat, and mitigate flood and wildfire risk. The extent of Cache Creek in Yolo County is impacted by arundo donax and other invasive species that impact ecosystem health and cause erosion. Thanks to funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Yocha Dehe Riparian Restoration project is working to restore riparian habitat along an extent of Cache Creek that is often used by tribal citizens for walking and other recreation.
The goals of the project are to:
- significantly improve habitat quality for wildlife by installing native plants;
- increase the availability of important plants for Tribal cultural and educational uses
- reduce wildfire and flood risk; and
- involve Tribal community in restoration and stewardship.
To include tribal citizens who use this area, Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation Environmental Department and the Yocha Dehe Wintun Academy have worked alongside the RCD to host students and tribal citizens to install native habitat, including culturally significant plants to the tribe. In total, Yolo County RCD staff and tribal citizens have installed 3,100 plants and four pounds of native plant seed. The RCD also hosted plant and wildlife identification events, including a bird identification workshops with the Yolo Bird Alliance.
Native plant species that were planted include:
- Mulefat
- Blue Elderberry
- California wild rose
- Red bud
- Deergrass
- Creeping wildrye
- Blue wildrye
- Valley Gumplant
- Yarrow
- Mugwort
- Narrowleaf milkweed
- Showy milkweed
- Dogbane
- Arroyo willow
- Mulefat
- Arroyo lupine
- Sky lupine
- Red maids
- Goldenrod
- Tidy tips
- California goldfields
In addition to installed plantings, the RCD has seen natural native recruitment after light disturbance, like scraping of soil to spread native seed. Plant recruitment after light disturbance shows that Cache Creek has a hidden reserve of viable seeds already present in the soil. After disturbance, whether that be flooding, scraping, vegetation removal, or fire, the seed bank is exposed, light increases, and moisture conditions change. This flush after disturbance can be a positive and a negative – weeds pop up in restoration sites and need careful management so weeds don’t outcompete the seedling native plants. RCD staff work to control milk thistle, Italian thistle, yellow starthistle, poison hemlock, stinkwort, horehound and bigleaf periwinkle in restoration sites.
Broader weed management across the sites has focused on arundo donax, tamarisk, perennial pepperweed, and tree of heaven. In total, five acres have been treated. All four weeds are fast-growing invasives that displace riparian vegetation and degrade habitat for native plants and wildlife. Treatment methods to control these invasive weeds will include herbicide application and mechanical removal (hand pulling or mastication). To manage tamarisk, trees were masticated to cut trees to the ground. Tamarisk mastication clears aboveground biomass to reduce wildfire risk.
The RCD looks forward to supporting stewardship on Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation tribal lands! Work will continue until December 2027 and is funded thanks to the Bureau of Indian Affairs through a direct contract between the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the Yolo County RCD. For questions about this project, please reach out to Noreen Mabini, RCD Project Manager, at mabini@yolorcd.org.
This project is funded thanks to a grant from the Bureau of Indian Affairs through a direct contract from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.
