Basins of Relations: Starting and Sustaining Community Watershed Groups

OAEC Co-Founder Brock Dolman coined the term “Basins of Relations” in the mid-1990s to invoke the importance of human relationships within a physical watershed. Brock asserted that these relations must unite to restore degraded basins. They must come together and “think like a watershed,” to borrow a phrase from the community-based watershed and salmon restoration work of the Mattole Restoration Council and Mattole Salmon Group in Humboldt County. He posited that this could be accomplished by organizing the landowners within a watershed—from ridgeline to reef—a practice that was not happening significantly in California in the mid-90s. At the time, he was particularly focused on recovering the coho salmon population, which had dropped to fewer than a dozen by 2000 in his own Russian River Basin of Relations. He knew people coming together at a watershed scale was crucial to changing that trajectory.

In 1999 OAEC launched the “Basins of Relations” training program to carry out this vision. The four-day residential training brought together teams of adults from high-priority salmonid-bearing watersheds in the North and Central Coastal California regions. The program provided training and follow-up resources to conduct watershed system research and monitoring, implement hands-on restoration efforts, and organize community education projects. The program ran for ten years and trained over 150 individuals from 40 watersheds. The California Department of Fish & Wildlife and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission provided funding for the program over various years.

Participants in the “Basins of Relations” Training Program benefited from on-site field-based learning at our 80-acre OAEC site headquarters in the Dutch Bill Creek watershed. They observed upland erosion control, roof water harvesting, gully stabilization, fish-friendly roads, and groundwater recharge structures. Off-site, field-based learning also occurred, including spending time with restoration contractors and landowners visiting their local instream habitat and fish passage restoration projects. Guest experts provided an opportunity for students to develop a working relationship with a diversity of agencies and technical support providers. They also met with professional trainers who demonstrated experience in group facilitation, strategic planning, decision-making conflict resolution processes, and organizational development. Additionally, each watershed group was provided with technical materials in the form of a reader on which to base their watershed planning and restoration activities.