Milestone Reached in Riparian Forest Buffer Restoration
Bay partners now more than halfway toward 2010 restoration goal
Riparian forest buffers improve water quality while providing habitat for wildlife and fish.
December 2006 -- Bay Program partners are roughly on track to meet their goal of restoring 10,000 miles of riparian, or streamside, forest buffers by 2010, according to new data from the USDA Forest Service.
In 2006, 731 miles - approximately the distance between Boston, Ma., and Raleigh, N.C. - of riparian buffers were restored in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., bringing the total number of restored miles to 5,337 since 1996. This is about 53 percent of the Bay Program's 2010 goal.
Pennsylvania led the forest buffer restoration effort this year, with 617 miles restored in that state. In Virginia, 83.7 miles of buffers were restored, and 28.7 miles were restored in Maryland. The headwater state of New York also made a large contribution to forest buffer restoration, with 205 miles restored there.
Riparian forest buffers are vital to the health of the Bay watershed because they:
- provide habitat for wildlife
- stabilize stream banks from erosion
- keep stream and river waters cool, an important factor for many fish
- naturally absorb nutrients and sediments, improving water quality in neighboring streams.
Bay watershed forest buffer restoration is made possible by tremendous efforts on the part of state natural resource and forestry agencies, federal and local governments and numerous grassroots and non-profit groups.