History

The Cottonwood Creek Watershed Group (CCWG) is an organized association of landowners, residential home owners, business owners, and other private parties. The group's goal is to work together to maintain, conserve and restore a healthy and productive Cottonwood Creek Watershed. CCWG was formed in 1998 through the volunteer efforts of landowners. Implementation of the group's goals and objectives received a large boost in 1999 when CCWG received a CALFED grant to formally create the organization (i.e. hire a watershed coordinator, develop articles of incorporation, create a board of directors, obtain non-profit status, etc.). Since that time CCWG has provided environmental education via monthly stakeholder meetings and a quarterly newsletter to all residents in the watershed and other interested parties. In April, 2002 a watershed assessment was completed, and in cooperation with the public school system, a comprehensive environmental education program for all schools and home school students in the watershed has recently been developed. Currently, CCWG is also actively addressing fire and fuel loading concerns within the watershed. To summarize, CCWG is broad-based, is very active and works in a collaborative fashion with its technical advisory committee. This committee is comprised of federal, state and local agency representatives and provides natural resource expertise to the watershed group.

Cottonwood Creek is located in northern California and is a westside tributary to the upper Sacramento River . It lies within Shasta and Tehama counties; Cottonwood , the main town in the watershed, lies along Interstate 5 halfway between the cities of Red Bluff and Redding . Approximately one third of the watershed is comprised of public lands, predominantly U.S. Forest Service land, as well as lands managed by U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The balance of acreage within the watershed is predominantly comprised of private land, including timberland, small rural subdivisions and agriculture; both irrigated and grazing range land. A wide variety of habitats occurs within the watershed, including mixed conifer forest, chaparral, blue oak woodlands, valley grassland, and riparian forest, to name several.

Cottonwood Creek and the main tributaries, which flow over 100 miles through the watershed, provide important spawning and nursery areas for listed species including, Spring-run Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha , federal and state listing as Threatened); Central Valley steelhead ( Oncorhynchus mykiss , federally listed as Threatened), as well as fall and late fall run Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ). It also contains several other federally listed species (either known to occur, or, at minimum, has habitat for the species), including northern spotted owl ( Strix occidentalis caurina , federally threatened), California red-legged frog ( Rana aurora draytonii , Federally Threatened), Valley elderberry longhorn beetle (Desmocarpus californicus dimorphus , Federally Threatened), and bald eagle ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus , federally Threatened).

Cottonwood Creek is the primary source of spawning gravel for the Sacramento River , providing almost 85% of the gravel introduced between the towns of Redding and Red Bluff.

On April 20, 2000 the Cottonwood Creek Watershed Group established a formal partnership with the Evergreen Union School District . The partnership created an educational outreach for students in grades K-8 and helped establish two service learning programs that combined watershed education with real life projects. Since that time CCWG has made numerous attempts to extend its educational programs to other K-8 students in the watershed, and has worked with various other public schools on a less formal basis. CCWG also has an active partnership several home schooling families within the watershed. Through this partnership we are currently offering California State standards based science curriculum, with pertinent field experiences to nearly 25 home schooled students throughout the watershed.

For More information on the history of the Cottonwood Creek Watershed itself, please call the Cottonwood Creek Watershed Group at 347-6637, where there are many books available to be checked out.