SUMMARY OF THE FILM AND THE ISSUES
It is safe to say that almost everyone lives in a habitat that has been damaged by modern industrial life. The extent of that damage varies greatly – urban areas are mostly developed for human living and working, while suburban areas often retain some of the characteristics of the pristine landscape. Rural communities usually look the most like the original landscape, and can still support the plants and animals that were part of the original ecosystem, unless the land and rivers have been damaged by careless logging, mining, agriculture, or other human activities.
As awareness of environmental issues grows, more people are becoming aware of the extent of the damage done to their local environment. As they start asking questions about why the natural landscape around where they live is the way it is and how it got that way, the question eventually arises: What can be done about it?
Thinking Like A Watershed explores what the citizens of one rural community in Northern California have done over the past twenty years to restore the natural world in which they live. It shows how they initially discovered the environmental problems in their valley, which was heavily logged in the 1950s and 1960s, how they initiated efforts to restore habitats, and what they are continuing to do today.
When a wave of “new settlers” – part of the back-to-the-land movement in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – moved to the Mattole valley, they noticed that the native salmon were rapidly dwindling. They started asking government officials, local old-timers, biologists, and other experts what was going on
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They found out that the careless logging of the steep hills, combined with the area’s high rainfall, resulted in major floods that washed large amounts of debris into the creeks and the river. Fine sediment choked the spawning gravels where the salmon lay their eggs, and the large amounts of excess soil and garvel made the water too shallow and warm for the fish to survive.
These new settlers were mostly activists from the cities looking for a quiet, clean place to build a small cabin and raise vegetables and kids. They applied their activist skills to trying to save the salmon.
First, they built innovative streamside hatchboxes to raise baby salmon to supplement the dwindling wild stocks. But the salmon populations continued to decline. The new settlers became aware that salmon don’t just live in water, that they need certain types of places, known as habitat. And they found out that what the earlier settlers called the valley was called a watershed by scientists. The plant and animal communities live together in an area of land, all of which drains into one river and affects the salmon habitat.
Their growing understanding of the ecological systems of their watershed led them down a path of discovery that has enriched their lives and motivated them to undertake the long process of restoring their entire watershed.
Ecological restoration is a growing movement worldwide. More and more people are taking responsibility for the care and stewardship of their natural environment and learning how to “think like a watershed.”