REGENERATIVE ACTION

Wildcat Yr 1 Work Session

Wildcat Bluff Discovery Center, Amarillo Texas

dates

January 19 to February 1, 2024

participants

IMPACTS

- Stormwater harvest to rehydrate proximate landscape (increase biomass, biodiversity...) and recharge to the High Plains Aquifer System
- Built 80 leaky weirs, a series of bunds by the windmill and then planted many hundreds of young native perennials.
- An outdoor classroom of sorts. We've engaged with over 30 volunteers, and educated approximately 50 visitors.

We had a crew of 3-5 (8 of us total, cycling thru) working daily at Wildcat for nearly 2 weeks. Our main focus was along the stretch of W Amarillo Creek where we built 80 leaky weirs to serve as natural infrastructure in dryland streams, to retain storm-water & sediments, allowing native riparian vegetation to grow which is expected to perpetuate and attenuate the benefits over time. We also built a series of bunds along a degraded slope below the windmill, where trails and the dirt road meet and below historic clay mining sites (for brick).

We choose to do intensive work during the late winter, because plant & soil life is pretty dormant and so we can finish (including planting) before the start of the rainy season (70% moisture from May to September which corresponds with growing season).

Here, to glimpse some results! Kirk, our valued crew member and summer intern (thru Ogallala Commons thanks to sponsor, The RANGE) runs to the Bluff whenever we get rain, which isn't as often as we like. Here, we see the structures functioning to slow & spread storm-water, so it can soak into the ground - to rehydrate the landscape :)

You can see a map of the structures on our website, about midway down the Projects page. https://www.ogallala.life/projects

It got impressive media attention, and we are about to launch some preparatory materials for year 2 works, which should help sustain the public profile enlist further support. For example see:

https://www.amarillo.com/story/news/2024/01/28/west-amarillo-creek-restoration-underway-at-wildcat-bluff-center/72342678007/

https://www.newschannel10.com/2024/01/30/west-amarillo-creek-restoration-wildcat-bluff-begins/

https://www.myhighplains.com/water-and-drought-on-the-high-plains/wildcat-bluff-discovery-center-ogallala-life-looks-beavers-natural-infrastructure-for-the-water-future-of-the-high-plains/

magenta

@LlanoWill awesome report and even more awesome teamwork!! Wish I was there to participate IRL. Yes, please do wait on the bounty claims for now - Inverter Network is launching the bounties workflow on mainnet Optimism next week, so we need to wait for that. (By EOY we plan to directly integrate that step into our app here.) Heads up that each participant will need to have their Optimism address in their Bloom profile in order to receive rewards. We can do your first one in real-time online together next week to make sure it's all set for you. But you can keep doing the impact reports here for now. This report looks good, I like the linking to where they can learn more and showing your press as one of the outcomes too!

LlanoWill

Huge thanks to @Markmonger - our primary & most experienced contractor! He drove the excavator, which we used for 1.5 days. It was definitely worth it. The structures we built were 2-4x bigger than those we built without heavy equipment in the prior year.

LlanoWill

Do ya'll want us to submit these yet (bounty aka local action reward) or do we just need get impact reports submitted? I tried to submit, but it isn't recognizing the walletIDs. Should I do so via Sepolia, or Eth? @magenta