These days, one part of Warriors Mark Run in Huntingdon County has been anything but peaceful.
A backhoe rumbles in the water, scooping rocks. A chainsaw buzzes nearby. At times, the normally tranquil creek running through the Colerain Center for Education, Preservation and the Arts’ property sounds like a construction zone, but that’s the temporary price for building a brighter future — a healthy riparian ecosystem.
Located about 19 miles from State College, the nonprofit center near Spruce Creek is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and other partners to not only improve Warriors Mark Run’s trout habit, but also protect the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Under the service’s Fish and Wildlife Partners Program, which helps landowners restore wetlands and other important habitats, the project is stabilizing banks to prevent erosion, removing invasive plant species and adding rock dams and other structures that provide trout with shelter and increased oxygen flow. Work began July 10 and continued the week of July 24-28.
“Colerain Center is so fortunate to have this opportunity for restoration and improvement of this segment of the Warriors Mark Run,” said Donnan Stoicovy, president of Colerain’s board. “We have been worried about several sections along the stream where there has been significant bank erosion. This important stabilization and realignment of the stream will ensure a healthy ecosystem both in the water and on the land surrounding it and will prevent erosion. The removal of the invasive plants has opened up the property to native plantings that will support wildlife and insects. We are excited to watch and steward the revival of this area along the stream.”
Ultimately, the impact will extend for hundreds of miles. Less silt from erosion also means cleaner water, with fewer nutrients and chemicals from run-off — first in Spruce Creek; then the little Juniata, Juniata and Susquehanna rivers; and, eventually, the Chesapeake, where shellfish and other aquatic life are imperiled by excess sediments and toxins.
“Doing a single stretch of stream will improve upstream and downstream,” said Bob Vierck, a former Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited president helping direct the project as a veteran stream restoration consultant. “If you can address an entire section of our watershed, then you’re making significant multiple benefits for the Chesapeake Bay and everything in between.”
It’s all being funded by an $809,256 grant secured by the conservancy from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Growing Greener program, covering the center’s nearly 300-yard stretch of the creek as well as two other sites immediately upstream and another on Standing Stone Creek in Huntingdon County.
Also involved in the project is Pheasants Forever, a nonprofit wildlife conservation group that teamed with Fish and Wildlife to seek the Growing Greener grant and supplied the equipment for the project.
At the Colerain Center site, the provided backhoe, skidder and other machinery are being put to good use. Addressing erosion is a priority because an adjacent road borders one bank, restricting the stream’s flow. To stabilize both banks, workers are installing mud sill cribs made from logs and rocks that also provide shelter for trout at the water’s edge.
“Stream restoration, basically, you have to solidify the banks,” said Dave McMullen, a local fly-fishing guide and independent stream restoration consultant helping to direct the project. “You make the banks strong so they’re not going to move and then, along the way, you work on the fish habitat.”
Reducing silt from erosion is key because trout need rocky bottoms for spawning, and macroinvertebrates, an important food source, do not flourish in muddy water.
“Sediment fills in the spaces between the bigger rocks so you don’t get the macroinvertebrates living in them,” said Jennifer Farabaugh, who wrote the grant as the conservancy’s watershed manager for the Chesapeake Bay.
In addition to the stream improvements, invasive plant species such as American bittersweet and Tatarian honeysuckle have been cleared from the banks and nearby woods. The goals are to prevent vines and other invasive species from damaging trees and to open up space for native plant species that provide better food and habitat for birds and insects. For example, mayflies, a trout favorite, eschew invasive plants, McMullen noted.
“If you can get the invasive species off the bank and the native ones back, theoretically, the insect population should be much healthier,” he said.
As per a separate arrangement, State College-based ClearWater Conservancy will assist Colerain Center with native plantings later, supported by a grant from Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources as part of the conservation easement plan on Colerain’s property, both for its historic and its environmental properties.
All the while, Vierck said, the project has taken care to protect the remnants of a mill raceway in the stream, one of several archeological sites on a property where a 19th-century ironmaking village stood not far from Huntingdon Furnace. As with the many stream projects he has assisted over the years, Vierck finds conservation work even more satisfying than casting for trout.
“Anybody can catch a fish, but to be able to think you’re going to leave the world, maybe not better off, but no worse with all the other things that are making it worse, is special,” he said. “If we can make this part better and another part better, that’s meaningful for our children and grandchildren.”
McMullen feels the same pride.
“I’ve been a professional guide since 1981, and I’ve stood in these streams and I’ve watched them change and get worse,” he said. “The guiding is still very satisfying for me, but going out here and rebuilding a stream that hopefully will last, in this form, for 50 years or more, it’s sort of the next step. I can go out and guide people who say, ‘Oh my god, this is beautiful! Look at that habitat!’ and I can say, ‘Yeah, I helped rebuilt all this.’”
The Colerain Center for Education, Preservation and the Arts is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit near Spruce Creek supporting conservation, environmental education, historic preservation and the arts. More information is at www.coleraincenter.org
