Forest Buffer Restoration

Riparian, or streamside, forest buffers provide habitat for wildlife, stabilize stream banks from erosion and keep river waters cool, an important factor for many fish. Well-maintained forest buffers also naturally absorb nutrients and sediments, helping improve water quality in neighboring streams and rivers. To help protect these valuable functions, state forestry and natural resource agencies, federal agencies, local governments, and numerous non-profit organizations are busy restoring riparian buffers throughout the watershed.

Current Restoration Goal

Bay Program partners have been working since 1996 to restore riparian forest buffers in the watershed. Their original goal of 2,010 miles of buffers by 2010 was met in 2002.

In 2003, Bay Program partners established an expanded riparian forest buffer goal to restore 10,000 miles of forest buffers by 2010. Through August 2007, approximately 5,720 miles of forest buffers had been restored in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. A stream bank or shoreline must be buffered by at least a 35-foot-wide area of woody vegetation to be counted towards this goal.

The 2007 Forest Conservation Initiative committed the partners to maintaining restoration progress beyond 2010 with a long-term restoration goal of 900 miles of forest buffers per year, until 70 percent of all stream miles in the Bay watershed are buffered.

In addition to the 10,000-mile goal, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia have proposed in their tributary strategies to restore some 50,000 miles of riparian forest buffers to help reach water quality goals for major rivers that drain into the Bay.