GREENSPRINGS — Lush green grass rose to the belly of the horse Frank Lang was riding along the banks of Jenny Creek.

It may not have tickled the horse but it did Lang, professor emeritus of biology at Southern Oregon University.

"It looks like they are really using their heads on how they are going about their restoration efforts," he concluded as his horse stopped to munch grass.

Lang was referring to the 1,200-acre former Box-O Ranch now in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management acquired the former ranch in a land exchange on July 19, 1995.

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Since then, the agency has been working to restore the land which it said had been overgrazed for decades.

Lang and Dave Willis, the chairman of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council who led the effort to create the monument, established in June 2000, rode into the Jenny Creek area to check on the restoration progress.

They found a stream meandering through the high mountain valley, surrounded by lush grasses, alder, ash and willows. The stream periodically exploded with activity as the horses approached waterfowl such as the common merganser, a freshwater duck that nests in large tree cavities.

"It’s a wonderful work in progress," Willis observed. "It’s amazing what happens to the land when the BLM manages for habitat rather than hamburger."

The swap, which had been opposed by a local coalition of private property owners, included a fair-market exchange of 931 acres of BLM land in the Lake Creek drainage about 10 miles southeast of Eagle Point. The former ranch was surrounded by public land on three sides.

At the time, federal officials said overgrazing had caused the stream to become wide and shallow, threatening the habitat for the native Jenny Creek sucker, redband trout and a tiny fish known as a speckled dace.

The fish represent isolated populations since they can’t negotiate Jenny Creek Falls downstream near the California state line. Both the sucker and trout are listed by the state of Oregon as sensitive species.

The northwestern pond turtle, listed by the state as critical, also inhabits the area.

The stream’s poor health eight years ago was evidenced by its temperature, which rose 10 degrees in the two-mile stretch through the old ranch site, recalled Rich Drehobl, manager of the BLM’s Ashland Resource Area.

"The ranch had been leased out year round for decades — the cattle were really hammering the riparian area," he said. "It had been denuded.

"The wet meadows were gone. The water table had dropped. The stream had been channelized, wiping out the riparian zone. "

Since acquiring the old ranch property, the BLM has used low-intensity burns to battle noxious weeds like yellow star thistle, broadcast native grass seed, removed berms which had channeled the stream and cut notches in ditches that had been diverting water from the natural wetlands.

Nearly $34,000 has been spent on planting and protecting tree seedlings along the streambank.

Drehobl organized what he called the Jenny Creek Riparian Enhancement Volunteer Days early each fall, providing an opportunity for local residents to join in the restoration effort.

"We’ve had ranchers, loggers and environmentalists working side by side," he said. "It proved to be a good education tool for everyone."

Once the recovery project is completed for the Jenny Creek area and a grazing impact study is finished on the monument, the BLM will decide whether to allow cattle to graze again at the former ranch.

"It’s recovering nicely, but we still have a lot of work to do," Drehobl said. "We’re still working on getting the stream back in its natural condition.

"We have no plans on developing the former Box-O Ranch — we’d like to keep it wild as possible," he added. "Exploration and discovery is the monument’s theme. We’d like to follow that theme."

The theme was followed by Lang and Willis as they rode into the watershed restoration project.

Lang, whose short essays on nature can be heard regularly on "Nature Notes" aired on Jefferson Public Radio, hadn’t been to the area in about four years.

"They did a great job of removing the star thistle around the old ranch headquarters," he said. "There used to be a lot of it here."

While the star thistle has retreated, the natural vegetation and wildlife appears to be advancing.

The day started out with a garter snake slithering under a manzanita bush on a dry ridge, carrying a half-swallowed Oregon fence lizard in its jaws. The blue belly had gone belly up.

A brace of baby quail, barely fledged, shot from underfoot as the horses approached the streambank.

A green heron with its tannish green head and back burst out of the tall grass growing on the edge of the stream.

Taking a detour away from the creekside, Lang and Willis rode into a little plateau containing a white oak savanna rising over the west side of the valley.

Some of the oak sprouted from stumps, indicating a fire moved through the area in the distant past, Lang said. Native Americans periodically burned the local forests to improve hunting habitat.

Several turkey vultures floated overhead in slow, lazy circles, looking for a summer snack.

They didn’t have far to look. Willis’ dog, Mojo, killed a ground squirrel before the visitors returned to the stream for the homeward journey.

Chicory with royal blue blossoms greeted them. Some folks dry it and use it as an additive for cowboy coffee.

Yellow monkey flower swung in the breeze.

A carpet of timothy pasture grass, which Lang said likely was planted by ranchers, covered some of the drier wetlands.

"Timothy makes terrific hay," he explained.

But native bunch grass has made inroads along the savanna. And Great Basin rye grass, another indigenous species, thrived in six-foot-tall clumps along the stream on the north end of what was the old ranch.

Oregon ash, planted alongside the creek, was green with foliage.

"They’ll provide a lot of shade and cover," Lang said. "They planted it in a place where it’ll do its very best in these wet soils."

He spoke of the wetlands fed by mountain springs seeping into the pasture.

"I expect the water temperature is still up, but it will be going down as the trees grow and provide shade," Lang said. "The fish will benefit from this."

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com