Maintenance includes all of the activities you will have to do to keep your site healthy as it grows in to a mature ecosystem. Even though you put in a lot of time and energy during the site modification stage you can expect to see a re-establishment of invasive species, especially if you are working in an urban setting. The truth is you will probably have to do some form of maintenance throughout the life of your site. The good news is if you do a good job you will have to do less and less of it as the site starts to take on a life of its own and is able to push out competing species and becomes well established in its new site conditions.
This is why you will want to develop a solid stewardship plan. A stewardship plan is a set of actions tied to certain benchmarks and thresholds. Benchmarks are targets that you establish to ensure that your site is reaching its goals for success. Thresholds establish a level of tolerance for conditions that negatively affect the progress of your site. These indicators will be tied closely to your monitoring schedule as the results of your monitoring will tell you the type of action that is required to keep your project moving on its desired trajectory.
We know this can sound overwhelming, but the truth is you have control over the whole process. The important part is to ensure that you have a long term plan in place so that you and the volunteers that help you can feel secure that the project will still be thriving well in to the future and that others will be able to benefit from the information you gather over the years when designing their own projects. This way, even if you do make mistakes or haven’t seen the results you were expecting, your own efforts will still have real value to the restoration community as valuable education.
Download a table for recommended native woody species cover and invasive species thresholds from WSDOT .
Download “Woody Vegetation Performance Criteria for Wetland Mitigation Sites in Washington”.
Download riparian restoration guide lines from British Columbia.
