Habitat Restoration
The Yuma Heritage Area has championed a wetland and riparian habitat restoration project for the East Wetlands, including returning the Colorado's water flow, in a multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort. In 2004, heritage area partners secured a Clean Water Act permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin restoration work. More than 200 acres (0.81 km2) of nonnative invasive species vegetation have been removed and more than 130 acres (0.53 km2) have been replanted with cottonwoods, willow, mesquite, native bunchgrasses, and palo verde trees. A one-mile (1.6 km) length of back channel has also been excavated, and some 20,000 new trees were planted in 2006.
To date, ten different funding sources have provided almost $6 million toward the eventual goal of $18–20 million to complete the project. The current executive director of the heritage area is Charles W. Flynn.
Read more about this topic: Yuma Crossing
Famous quotes containing the words habitat and/or restoration:
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)