The Puzzle Creek Conservation Bank provides credits to offset western Joshua tree and desert stream impacts for infrastructure development in the Mojave Desert. Developing infrastructure in sensitive environments, such as the Mojave Desert, can result in project permitting that requires environmental mitigation of unavoidable impacts to sensitive resources, like Joshua trees.
The Park Creek Station Wetland Mitigation Bank site was selected because we believe there is an excellent and unique potential to improve wetland, riparian and stream functions on a site with significant natural, cultural and open space values. Located where Park Creek punches through the Park Creek Hogback, the site has excellent restoration potential of wetland, riparian and stream resources of the type that are increasingly scarce along the northern Front Range, where most streams of this sort no longer have their natural flows or follow their natural stream course.
The establishment of Park Creek Station is expected to result in:
- 1.25 mile of restoration along Park Creek
- 57.5 acres of wetland restoration and establishment
- 52.7 acres of riparian restoration and establishment
- 253.5 acres of priority buffers
- 141 acres of additional high-quality buffers
- Whole-site natural resource management program
- Substantial functional uplift to the Park Creek system
- Restoration and conservation of landscape-level wetland diversity, including functional uplift of multiple hydrogeomorphic and vegetation community types
- Excellent habitat interspersion functions and reference-standard buffer conditions
- Potential refugia for sensitive and listed species
- Increased habitat potential for state and federally listed species
- Restoration and management of multiple levels of biological diversity
