Restoring Ackerson Meadow: A Historic Milestone in Headwaters Conservation
Construction and revegetation at Ackerson Meadow are complete, and now it’s time to let nature do the work it does best! This marks a huge milestone in the movement towards headwaters restoration in California’s Sierra Nevada, with the Ackerson restoration standing as the largest full-fill meadow restoration in the Sierra Nevada and the largest wetland restoration in Yosemite National Park’s 135 years. When meadow restoration began as a practice in the Sierra roughly 45 years ago, a project of this size was a pipe dream for restoration practitioners, with significant hurdles to funding, permitting, and cross-agency collaboration standing in the way. But now, 150,000 cubic yards of soil and 434,000 wetland container plants later, water is flowing across the entirety of this fully restored meadow. Now the project’s partners, Yosemite National Park, Stanislaus National Forest, Yosemite Conservancy, American Rivers, and anyone who values clean water, healthy rivers, and thriving wildlife can celebrate.
The work at Ackerson is a gift that will keep on giving to generations of recreators, wildlife enthusiasts, and downstream water users. The benefits of restoring mountain meadows are both significant and wide-ranging, and a restored meadow has a sort of multiplier effect on the surrounding landscape and watershed. A healthy, fully restored Ackerson is projected to store 70.8 million gallons of groundwater each year, or enough water to satisfy the daily use of almost 250,000 households, while filtering out pollutants before flows enter the South Fork Tuolumne River. Of course, California is known as a global biodiversity hotspot, and Ackerson Meadow is home to nearly 60 species of birds and provides refuge for threatened and endangered species such as the Little Willow Flycatcher, Great Grey Owl, and northwestern pond turtle.
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But Ackerson is also a gift for scientists and agencies who want to see this sort of work fine-tuned and expanded. We will monitor the site over the coming years, and the findings will feed into this ‘meadow movement’ organized by the Sierra Meadows Partnership, as we quantify the benefits of restoration: hydrological changes, soil carbon sequestration, and habitat recovery for endangered species.
Outside of the direct benefits to rivers, ecosystems, and the scientific community, Ackerson is both a milestone and a launching pad, setting the table for expanded public-private partnerships with the federal land management agencies and nonprofit conservation organizations. Through our years of project management, we demonstrated how a nonprofit like American Rivers can bring technical expertise, fundraising capacity, and the flexibility to achieve conservation outcomes in short order. These partnerships and this project have shown not only the power of collaboration across different sectors, but also how a common vision can be approached from different angles, leveraging our collective expertise to the benefit of the communities we live in, the wildlife we cherish, and the rivers that are the lifeblood of California.
Ackerson Meadow Restoration Project
Learn more about the Ackerson Meadow Restoration Project and it's extraordinary benefits to wildlife, climate resiliency, water quality and supply, flood attenuation, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity.
