Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2007

Conservation Corps worker planting vegetation
Nearly 15,000 willows and cottonwoods are being planted along the once-barren banks of the Truckee River.

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Nevada
From Red Rock Canyon to Pyramid Lake, The Nature Conservancy and its partners have been protecting Nevada's Last Great Places since 1967.

Truckee River Project
Flowing east from Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada to mythic Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River is the lifeblood of arid Northern Nevada.

Press Release
Partners Protect 3,344 Acres of Truckee River Canyon

Enlarge this photo
Bulldozers restore a bend in the river, which was channelized in the 1960s in an attempt to control flooding. Trout and other fish are now running the river again.

Restoration crews are working to rebuild wetlands and natural vegetation along the Truckee River at the Conservancy’s McCarran Ranch Preserve.

On its plunge from Lake Tahoe to Nevada’s Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River flows past a sewer plant, a dog-food factory, a bistate landfill and the site of the Mustang Ranch, the nation’s most infamous brothel. These waters have been as viscous as oatmeal and blamed for contributing to a typhoid epidemic—hardly the pristine watershed conservationists usually seek to preserve.

Yet here in the shadow of Reno’s sprawling casinos, The Nature Conservancy is devoting nearly two decades and $25 million from public agencies to restore a 12-mile stretch of the Truckee to a healthy ecosystem that supports native fish and wildlife. It’s a gritty project with 40-ton trucks dumping rocks into the river and bulldozers muscling meanders back into the channel.

For the Conservancy and its partners, the work is demonstrating the power of nature to heal a collapsed ecosystem—with a little help. “Together we’re making it whole again,” says Michael Cameron, the Conservancy’s Nevada rivers program director.

For millennia, the 110-mile river has linked the towering forests of the Sierra Nevada with the austerity of the Great Basin. Cascading out of the mountains into the arid region tucked under the Sierra’s rain shadow, the Truckee is a flowing oasis watering desert lands before it empties into Pyramid Lake’s briny waters.

However, dam building, agricultural diversions and urban development have soured the lower Truckee, claiming 90 percent of the willows and cottonwoods flanking its banks and pushing wild Lahontan cutthroat to the brink of extinction. The coup de grace was a 1960s flood-control project that straightened the river into a 200-foot-wide ditch. Left in the wake were isolated pockets of aging cottonwoods, truncated deer corridors and a nearly lifeless stream.

The Conservancy acquired the McCarran Ranch 15 miles east of Reno to start reconnecting the river to its floodplains. In 2002 crews planted 15,000 cottonwood trees and other plants. The next year, they constructed wetlands and fish-friendly riffles in the river. Rainbow and brown trout returned almost immediately. A willow flycatcher reappeared in breeding season for the first time in more than 30 years.

Last year, the Conservancy took on four more miles, digging a new bend in the river, raising the riverbed and restoring riffles with enough rocks to cover three football fields 10 feet deep. Eventually, 800 acres along the river will be restored as part of a network of floodplains.

No one expects the Truckee to be truly wild again. This is a working landscape where fish, wildlife and people share the benefits, says Cameron. “We’re correcting mistakes of the past, and we’re doing it together. It gives one hope.”

— Jane Braxton Little

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos © Scott Sady/Reno Gazette-Journal (bulldozers); © Andy Barron/Reno Gazette-Journal (planting vegetation); © Scott Sady/Reno Gazette-Journal (Truckee River)