Watershed Restoration
Because every living thing depends on water.
Clean, reliable water supports our homes, farms, and local economies, along with the fish and wildlife that share our watersheds. By restoring streams and protecting the places where water is stored and flows, we safeguard the resource everyone relies on.
In California, drought threatens all of it. We work to keep more water on the landscape and in our waterways, so there’s enough for our communities, our fish, and our wildlife to thrive.
What is a Watershed?
A watershed is the entire land area that drains to a common waterbody.
Mountain ridgelines channel rainfall and snowmelt into streams, creeks, and rivers, which ultimately flow into estuaries, bays, and the ocean. Our work spans the entire watershed—from ridgetops to valley bottoms.
Watersheds are complex, interconnected systems made up of aquatic, riparian (stream-side), and upland habitats that all influence one another. This makes a holistic, watershed-scale approach essential for effective restoration.
How We Restore Watersheds for Ecosystems and Communities
Restoring the Uplands
Uplands are the higher-elevation areas of a watershed that drain into water bodies. When these landscapes are healthy, native plants and intact soils act like a sponge—soaking up rainfall and reducing runoff and erosion. This rainfall recharges local groundwater, feeds springs, and helps keep streams flowing when aquatic species need it most.
We restore degraded landscapes by planting native vegetation, reducing impacts of livestock grazing, and using process-based solutions that slow, spread, and sink water into the ground. These techniques reduce erosion, improve soil health and natural plant recruitment, and help more water stay in the watershed for fish and wildlife.
Protecting our Interconnected Water
Did you know that groundwater and surface water are connected?
Streams are not isolated channels of flowing water—they are part of a larger network of water moving both above and below the ground. Beneath and alongside a streambed, surface water and groundwater continuously exchange. In some places, groundwater feeds streams and helps sustain flow during dry periods; in others, stream water seeps into the ground and replenishes groundwater. Because these systems are interconnected, groundwater withdrawals can reduce the water available to streams, while changes in streamflow can influence groundwater levels.
We increase streamflow for fish and wildlife by taking a whole-watershed approach to water management. This includes helping landowners find solutions to reduce groundwater use that pulls water from connected streams by developing alternative water sources and usage patterns, protecting existing water resources, and implementing strategies that improve water storage and availability throughout the watershed.
Restoring Aquatic and Riparian Habitats
Aquatic habitats include streams, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and ponds that provide habitat for fish and other aquatic species. Riparian habitats are the vegetated areas that border these waterways and waterbodies. These areas support water-dependent plants that provide shade, shelter, food, and breeding habitat for many species including birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals.
Aquatic and riparian habitats face numerous challenges, including habitat loss, reduced streamflow, poor water quality and warm temperatures, excessive erosion and sedimentation, simplified stream channels, and barriers that fragment habitat.
We focus on restoring the function of aquatic and riparian habitats, so that they can continue to sustain themselves long after we’ve left. By increasing habitat complexity, remediating fish passage barriers, improving water quality, and restoring native riparian vegetation, we help stabilize streambanks, shade and cool waterways, restore connectivity, and provide critical habitat for fish and other wildlife.
Encouraging Community Stewardship
People and wildlife need the same things — clean water, productive land, and resilient landscapes. Healthy ecosystems are the foundation of water security, food production, and community resilience: biodiverse landscapes filter and store water, moderate urban temperatures, support the pollinators that underpin agriculture, and buffer communities from drought and flood. In turn, communities play an essential role in protecting and restoring the watersheds they depend on.
We engage communities to develop solutions that improve watershed health and resilience. This includes creating watershed restoration plans with local stakeholders and landowners, developing creek care guides for creekside residents, supporting beneficial land management practices, promoting urban greening and tree planting to reduce heat impacts, and encouraging water reuse to conserve local water supplies. We partner with landowners to identify restoration opportunities and implement projects that benefit both people and ecosystems.
Optimizing Working Lands
Agricultural landscapes provide essential benefits for both people and nature. They produce the food and resources our communities rely on while supporting local economies and helping shape the character of our region. We recognize that these working lands are both valuable and necessary—and that conservation and restoration can go hand in hand with productive land management.
Small changes in land management and the addition of restoration features can improve biodiversity, support pollinators, increase water retention, reduce erosion, and enhance the overall function and resilience of these landscapes.
Over time, these investments help working lands withstand drought, floods, and a changing climate, protecting the soil and water that future harvests depend on. Restoration also honors a long tradition of agricultural stewardship. For generations, farmers and ranchers on the Central Coast have cared for the land knowing that their livelihoods depend on its health, and supporting that ethic helps ensure it is carried forward to the next generation.
We partner with landowners and agricultural producers to improve water resilience and implement practical conservation solutions that benefit both the land and the people who depend on it.
Restoring Estuaries
Estuaries are where freshwater meets the ocean, creating some of California’s most productive and diverse ecosystems. These dynamic habitats serve as nurseries for young fish, feeding grounds for wildlife, and essential stopover sites for migratory birds. Along the Central Coast, estuaries also provide critical habitat for sensitive species such as steelhead trout, tidewater goby, and Pacific lamprey. Juvenile steelhead that grow larger in productive estuaries are more likely to survive their time at sea and return to spawn, and many other species important to commercial and recreational fishing, such as California halibut, depend on estuaries during early life stages.
We develop and implement estuary restoration projects that increase habitat complexity and restore the natural processes that make these ecosystems thrive. By creating a greater variety of habitat features, we provide more niches, refuge from predators, and opportunities for native species to feed, shelter, and reproduce.
Estuary restoration can include reconnecting fragmented pieces of aquatic habitat, creating new alcoves or channels, adding woody habitat features that provide refuge from predators and improve system complexity, and restoring marsh plains and riparian zones. These improvements help rebuild self-sustaining, resilient estuarine ecosystems that support coastal fishing communities, recreation, and tourism, and the local economies that depend on them.
We Restore Habitats for Threatened Species Like These
Steelhead trout
Federally Threatened / Endangered
South-Central California Coast steelhead (threatened) and Southern California steelhead (endangered) are an essential part of our region’s natural and cultural heritage, connecting our creeks, estuaries, and ocean ecosystems through their remarkable life cycle. Steelhead and rainbow trout are the same species with different life histories. Rainbow trout spend their entire lives in freshwater, while steelhead (like salmon) are anadromous, meaning they migrate to the ocean for part of their lives before returning to freshwater streams to spawn. Once abundant in Central Coast creeks, these iconic fish are now rarely seen due to decades of habitat loss and degradation.
Despite these challenges, steelhead continue to persist in our watersheds. Dried-up streams, barriers that block migration, and simplified channels have reduced access to critical habitat, resulting in less biodiversity, poorer water quality, and fewer places for steelhead and other native species to survive.
We work to restore the conditions steelhead need to recover by removing fish passage barriers, reconnecting habitat, restoring stream complexity and habitat diversity, and increasing water quantity and quality. Steelhead are highly sensitive to changes in their environment, making them a powerful indicator of watershed health.
By restoring habitats to the level needed for steelhead to thrive, we also create healthier ecosystems that support a wide range of native species.
California red-legged frog
Federally Threatened
Once widespread throughout much of California, California red-legged frogs are now a rare reminder of the state’s rich aquatic biodiversity. They are the largest native frog in the western United States and rely on connected streams, wetlands, and upland habitats to breed, forage, and take refuge.
Amphibians provide a powerful reminder of how important connected aquatic, wetland, and upland habitats are for species survival. Habitat fragmentation and development can disrupt the movement and life cycles of species that rely on multiple habitat types to live and reproduce.
We work to reconnect habitats and retain more water on the landscape to ensure waterways and wetlands persist into the summer, providing the aquatic habitat young frogs need to complete their transformation from tadpoles to adults.
Southwestern pond turtle
Proposed Federally Threatened
Southwestern pond turtles have inhabited California’s waterways for millions of years. Like many amphibians and reptiles, southwestern pond turtles depend on a connected network of streams, wetlands, and upland habitats throughout their life cycle. They spend much of their time in water, but return to land to nest, often traveling up to one-third of a mile from their aquatic habitat to lay eggs. When upland areas are degraded or developed, turtles lose critical nesting habitat needed to successfully reproduce.
These turtles also face challenges from invasive species, including nonnative turtles that compete for habitat and basking areas, and bullfrogs that prey on their eggs. We help restore the conditions these turtles need by removing invasive species and improving habitat complexity, including adding woody debris and natural basking areas where turtles can warm themselves, boosting their immune systems.
Our Watershed Services
Watershed Service
Watershed Planning & Assessments
We develop watershed management strategies based on hydrological, geomorphic, and biological assessment data. Our approach integrates watershed process analysis, habitat condition data, stakeholder input, and implementation constraints to prioritize and design restoration actions.
Services:
Watershed-wide planning and assessments
Watershed prioritization frameworks and restoration strategies
Watershed and estuarine restoration planning
Adaptive management frameworks
Restoration effectiveness monitoring
Geospatial analysis and mapping
Watershed Service
Streamflow Enhancement
We develop water management strategies to improve streamflow timing and magnitude, increase drought resilience, and balance ecological and consumptive water needs. Work integrates hydrologic analysis, groundwater-surface water interaction assessment, and stakeholder coordination to identify and implement streamflow enhancement opportunities for agencies, landowners, and water districts.
Services
- Streamflow enhancement planning
- Environmental water demand analysis
- Water budget development
- Groundwater–surface water connectivity assessments
- Water storage and groundwater recharge planning
- Sustainable agricultural water management
- Drought resilience planning
- Water rights strategy support
- Water retention and infiltration planning
Watershed Service
Hydrology, Geomorphology & Water Quality Monitoring
We apply hydrologic, geomorphic, and water quality expertise to understand watershed processes, identify limiting factors, and provide the technical foundation needed for effective restoration and resource management. Our field-based assessments and monitoring programs support informed decision-making from project planning through implementation.
Services
- Hydrologic, hydraulic, and geomorphic assessments
- Instream flow studies and rating curve development
- Sediment transport analysis
- Channel stability and erosion assessments
- Water quality monitoring and diagnostics
- Monitoring plan development
- Field data collection strategies
- Geospatial analysis and mapping
Watershed Service
Aquatic, Riparian, and Upland Habitat Restoration
We restore aquatic, riparian, and upland habitats by assessing limiting factors, identifying opportunities, and designing and implementing projects that improve habitat connectivity, quality, and availability. Habitat restoration supports native fish, herpetofauna, birds, and other sensitive species. We specialize in finding win-win solutions, working closely with landowners, agricultural producers, and local communities to understand their needs and design projects that complement surrounding land uses and community priorities.
Services
- Fisheries and aquatic habitat assessments
- Fish passage barrier assessments, modification, and removal design and implementation
- Aquatic habitat restoration design and implementation
- Riparian restoration, native planting, and invasive species management
- Streamflow enhancement planning and implementation
- Floodplain reconnection and wetland restoration
- Low-tech, process-based restoration (BDAs, PALS, and gully treatments)
Watershed Service
Water Resilience for Working Lands
We partner with landowners, agricultural producers, and communities to develop practical conservation strategies that improve water security while supporting productive working landscapes. Our approach integrates land management, water resources, and ecosystem restoration to create lasting benefits for people and nature. The result is restoration that lasts, because it improves habitat while also supporting the livelihoods, water security, and quality of life of the people who live and work on the land
Services
- Property-scale restoration and water management planning
- Sustainable agricultural water use planning
- Sustainable land use planning on working lands
- Integration of agricultural operations with watershed restoration goals
- Landowner engagement and collaborative planning
- Riparian and ecological landscape design
- Greywater and rainwater catchment system design and installation
Watershed Service
Project Development & Environmental Compliance
We support projects from concept through implementation by helping partners secure funding, navigate regulatory requirements, coordinate stakeholders, and successfully deliver restoration outcomes. Our collaborative approach brings together agencies, Tribes, landowners, and communities to advance impactful conservation projects.
Services
- Project planning, design, and implementation support
- Environmental permitting and regulatory compliance (CEQA, USACE, CDFW SAA, RWQCB 401, Coastal Development Permit, etc.)
- Grant proposal writing and funding strategy
- Stakeholder group management and facilitation
- Landowner outreach and engagement
- Interpretive signage design and development
We Partner with Landowners on Restoration
We work with private landowners, land managers, and public agencies across the Central Coast to restore and strengthen the lands they steward. We identify practical actions that enhance biodiversity, improve water resilience, and restore natural processes, and help secure the funding needed to put those actions into practice.
By incorporating habitat enhancements, water conservation strategies, and regenerative practices, we can strengthen the ecological function and resilience of working landscapes while creating healthier habitat for local species.
Invest in the Next Generation of Stewards
The California Conservation Corps’ Watershed Stewards Program (WSP) gives young adults hands-on experience restoring and protecting California’s watersheds. Each year, CLC mentors WSP Corpsmembers, building the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to launch careers in conservation.
