ON HIGHWAY K JUST SOUTH OF BARNEVELD -- This little quarter mile of the Pecatonica River is wild. It smells like forever, and scrub brush crowds to the edge of the water.

But it's not wild enough.

The Nature Conservancy, the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association, the state Department of Natural Resources and UW-Madison are partners in a project started last week to restore this bit of river about 30 miles west of Madison within the 50,000 acre Military Ridge Prairie Heritage Area in Dane and Iowa counties to its most natural state.

The reason: partly to re-create a habitat for plants and wildlife, partly to help ease the damages of flooding down river, sponsors say.

Instead of just cleaning the stream and adding rocks for trout to frolic, more than 150 years of sediment and growth are being scraped from a quarter-mile of the riverbed, said Baraboo-based Steve Richter, The Nature Conservancy's conservation director for the region.

The end result should be a cleaner, more uncluttered stream that connects easily to the rest of the marshland around it, similar to a quarter-mile project done by a conservancy partnership two years ago slightly south of here, Richter said.

"We want to take what we learned here beyond the site, broaden it out on a statewide and regional level so this would be an effective tool or strategy to provide not only habitat, but some of the ecological services of flood control," he said.

Stewardship funds

The Nature Conservancy owns the land, purchased, at least in part, with a grant from the Wisconsin Stewardship Fund, Richter said.

Total budgeted cost of the project is $25,000, said Robert Hansis, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources basin team supervisor for the project, but that doesn't include a plethora of in-kind contributions.

Hansis said the Pecatonica restoration should become a model for other small stream restoration work.

"Everything we've seen so far shows that we can reduce erosion and flooding and benefit wildlife both in the river and along the banks," Hansis said. "We will look for opportunities to apply what we're learning on the Pecatonica elsewhere in Wisconsin."

Hansis said the Pecatonica starts in two branches -- one in Barneveld, the other north of Darlington. The branches join in Argyle and head into Illinois where the Pecatonica meets the Rock River, then on to the Mississippi River, Hansis said.

Richter said the Pecatonica is still a fairly significant river as far as biological health.

"This is one branch of a river that all our organizations feel is still significant as far as providing trout and other aquatic diversity," Richter said. "It's a neat river, and it happens to be on conservancy land, where we can try these things that you maybe couldn't try on a privately owned piece of land."

Over the next few weeks, heavy equipment will continue to remove excess topsoil from the site, recontouring the land across that stretch of river and spreading native plants and seeds in what remains, said conservancy spokesman Chris Anderson.

Richter said trees that are choking the stream will be removed.

"Right now, on the banks along the stream, the trees don't allow anything to grow," he said. "Sediment sloughs off, clouds up all the water, and provides no habitat for aquatic animals to grow and live."

Heightened interest

Jeff Nania, executive director of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Foundation, said the project is attracting a lot of interest because of the recent flooding and heavy snow in the state.

In the modern setting, high water moves through a riverbed with steep banks created by sediment, trees and other growth from the European settlement of the land, Nania said.

The water can't find its own natural floodplain and rushes down river with high volume causing flooding downstream, Nania said.

"But these (project) sites are taking the storm waters and spreading them out," Nania said. "The approach we are using here is really a true eco-system based approach to restoration. We are treating the entire site. This is where we want to go (in the future) for restoration. We know that our restorations are much, much more successful when we look at the entire project."

Project results will be monitored. For example, Eric Booth, a doctoral student at UW-Madison, has already sunk several wells in the current project -- his academic interest is how water moves through the surface and the subsurface of the soil.

Hansis said the project required permits from the town of Brigham (a driveway permit) and Iowa County (highway access and flood plain zoning). The average landowner with a navigable stream would also need a permit from the Department of Natural Resources, he said. "If done properly, we would certainly encourage it."

Properly means a design that would work, positive impact on fish and wildlife and proper erosion controls measures, he said.

Booth said 200 years ago, the area around the stream was a floodplain wetland, from valley wall to valley wall. Beginning in the 1830s, poor farming practices resulted in sediment being fed down into the streams and settling on the riverbank, the topsoil raising the surface farther away from the ground water.

It's that topsoil that is being hauled away and given to area farmers, Hansis said. The banks are being gradually sloped. "In doing so, the banks won't be washing away and contributing to downstream sediment," Booth said.

Added Hansis, "We think it's cutting edge."