Helping South Dry Creek Not Live Up to Its Name

In a year defined by severe drought, water has become a rare sight across much of Sheridan County. Yet along South Dry Creek, water is still moving through a wet meadow where Sheridan Community Land Trust, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and landowners John and Vanessa Buyok are working to keep it on the landscape longer to improve the habitat.

“In a year this dry, South Dry Creek really shows the value of these wet places,” SCLT Director of Conservation and Resource Management John Graves said. “If we can slow that water down, disperse it across larger areas and keep it in the system longer, the benefits extend well beyond the creek itself and into the adjacent landscape, helping reestablish diminishing cottonwood and riparian areas.”

That is the goal of SCLT’s ongoing South Dry Creek wet meadow restoration project. The project will rehabilitate wetland and riparian habitat along 3,280 feet of South Dry Creek. Crews are using a variety of low-tech restoration techniques, including 32 wicker weirs or one-rock dams, eight hardened livestock crossings and two woody debris gully treatments.

The idea behind those treatments is relatively simple: slow and spread the water.

“We’re not trying to stop the water,” Graves said. “We’re giving it more time to spread out and soak into the soil, letting natural processes do much of the restoration work for us.”

By reducing the power of water moving through the channel, the structures can help stabilize erosion, capture sediment, and give water more time to soak into streambanks and surrounding soils. Over time, that can encourage wetland and riparian vegetation and help moisture remain on the landscape longer.

In Sheridan County’s semi-arid sage-steppe grasslands and foothills, those relatively small pockets of moisture can have an outsized impact.

“A healthier wet meadow benefits the entire landscape,” Graves said. “It can mean better forage for livestock while also providing the water, vegetation and habitat wildlife and birds depend on, especially during drought.”

The work is rooted in partnership. SCLT is grateful to John and Vanessa Buyok for their commitment to the long-term stewardship of their land. The Buyoks have partnered with SCLT to permanently protect portions of their property, and restoring wet meadows and riparian areas of South Dry Creek is another investment in the health and productivity of that landscape for generations to come.

The project is being led by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Pheasants Forever, John Buyok, and SCLT, with support from the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, Mule Deer Foundation, Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust, World Wildlife Fund, Northern Great Plains Joint Venture, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and John and Vanessa Buyok.