Stream restoration - ranunculus

[martin_b]

Today a friend and I moved some ranunculus from one of the tributaries of my home stream to the main stem where they were much needed due to the farming industry's "maintenance" of our waterways.

I have recently learned that if you plant ranunculus in front of the Bur-reed (Sparganium) that plague many of our streams and call for heavy weeding to preserve the draining of the farming fields, the ranunculus will outcompete the Bur-reed. This is very good, because ranunculus don't restrict the draining capabilities of a stream because it moves up and down with the water levels as opposed to the Bur-reed that grow quickly and restrict waterflow, thus no weeding is nescessary and draining of the water is preserved when ranunculus os the dominant species.

Furthermore you could ask for no better plant than ranunculus in a stream since it provides excellent cover for fish and is a great place for aquatic insects to live. Now I'll wait a few days and see if this moving of ranunculus will be a success, and if it is, we will start a major planting out :)












Martin

[Satoshi]

Martin

Great job!
I'm impressed by the fact that there is no man-made structure in the stream. If it was in Japan, the stream banks would have been changed into concrete walls.

Satoshi

[martin_b]

Satoshi,

Concrete walls? I've never seen concrete walls on the banks of the streams you post pictures of? Do you mean it is like that in Japan where there is farming along the streams?

Martin

[Satoshi]

Satoshi,

Concrete walls? I've never seen concrete walls on the banks of the streams you post pictures of? Do you mean it is like that in Japan where there is farming along the streams?

Martin

Martin,

Exactly. When there is farmland around a stream, people often make the stream into a concrete ditch to stabilize the flow and to avoid erosion in Japan. They even sometimes pave the bottom of the stream with concrete. In those streams, trout cannot live, and hence, I don't fish them and don't post the picture of them. There are some places where part of a trout stream has become such ugly ditch.

Satoshi

[martin_b]

I'm very interested in seeing a picture of such a concrete stream, Satoshi. Do you have any?

Here in Denmark where 70% of the land is cultivated (and thus needs to be drained) there is a constant war going on between us fishermen and the farmers who need to cultivate their land in order to survive. In the particular stretch of stream in the pictures we struggle with a farmer who plow very close to the stream (closer than the 2 metres dictated by law), resulting in the banks eroding and eventually the stream widens and dirt and sand falls into the stream covering up the gravel that the trout use to spawn. I'm actually thinking building a concrete wall next to the stream would be beneficial here - not pretty, though ;)

Martin