This Small Sierra Meadow Helps Supply California’s Drinking Water. Crews Are Bringing It Back to Life.

Mountain meadows cover a sliver of the Sierra Nevada, but they do outsized work for the rest of California. Crews are proving that this summer at Pickel Meadow, just north of Yosemite, where a restoration project is reshaping 3 miles of the West Walker River and its floodplains.

The trouble traces back 20 years, when Caltrans built a berm after a nearby landslide. The structure squeezed the river into a narrow channel that carved deep banks, cut water off from the floodplain and left much of the meadow dry. Removing it is the centerpiece of the work.