Page 17 - Sierra Meadows Strategy

Guiding Principles
The Sierra Meadows Partnership participants recognize a number of important principles that will help guide successful implementation of this Strategy. These are broadly described in this section.
Successfully increasing the pace, scale, and ef cacy of meadow conservation will require a holistic approach that addresses:
1. Natural, biophysical and social sciences, 2. Policy/permitting,
3. Funding/investment,
4. Reaching across land boundaries,
5. Capacity building, and 6. Political support.
While we have emphasized the biophysical and natural roles played by meadows, we recognize the importance of these iconic places to human socioeconomic as well as human-ecological interactions. The broad and diverse Sierra Meadows Partnership can assist in developing capacity, working with regulators and funders, and build upon the convergence of support across
the State.
In developing plans to implement meadow conservation at broad scales, it is best to use a scienti cally based and structured approach to move from identifying desired conditions to achieving outcomes. Where meadows and their watersheds are functioning well, they can be identi ed as areas for protection. This protection may mean active management of activities within the watershed or reliance on natural processes to maintain
the meadows. Speci cally, desired conditions can be clearly articulated through speci c, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound (SMART) objectives and associated metrics. Actions can be designed to achieve objectives (e.g. provide ow access to 50 - 100 percent of old oodplain), and outcomes
(e.g. improved meadow condition, recovered plant community.) These metrics can be evaluated against desired conditions and adaptively managed based on the extent to which they achieve outcomes. In all instances, participants should strive to use and contribute to the best available scienti c information (BASI). At each step in project development and implementation, multiple scales should be considered such that strategies, objectives, actions and measurements of outcomes can be understood at the scale of the individual meadow, the watershed (~HUC12), province/mini-region, and the Strategy Area. Moreover, ecosystem service production is an effective means of indicating meadow function where the linkage between function and service is well understood (e.g., increased groundwater storage or increased downstream water quality). This is based upon
the recognition that ecosystem services are provided by functioning ecosystems.
Conservation is undertaken through a series of phases:
1. Pre-restoration site assessment,
2. Assessment of sources of stress, limiting factors and
constraints on natural vs. assisted recovery, 3. Development of measurable objectives,
4. Planning, design and permitting,
5. On-the-ground restoration,
6. Post-restoration monitoring, and
7. Adaptive management over the short and long term.
These conservation actions should be designed to allow
natural processes to develop and maintain dynamic meadow ecosystems, rather than focus on building or maintaining a
static system (e.g., use remnant channels where possible rather than constructing or armoring channels that do not move;
allow for beaver activities to effect channel migration and local ponding). Diverse restoration and/or enhancement methods
can be applied, as tailored to site-speci c conditions, and new ideas and methods should be encouraged and systematically monitored to compare and optimize for the most effective methods for the range of conditions, site histories, geographic locations, and institutional capacities. We suggest that restoration be implemented using multiple tools and using adaptive management of activities in watersheds across the Strategy Area to include both private and public lands.
Once a meadow has been restored, it will need to be adaptively managed along with other functioning meadows to ensure
that the bene ts to wildlife, plants, recreation, grazing and downstream water users are provided over the long term. In addition, practitioners should recognize and adapt to changing conditions and their effects on meadow processes (e.g. climate change effects on hydrologic regime). In this way, meadow conservation should provide for resilience and adaptability to climate change.
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