Key Project Purposes include:

1. Improve habitat quality and increase the amount of native bosque plant communities (i.e. cottonwood, willow, New Mexico olive and other native species), while creating greater stand diversity in terms of stand age, size and composition within the bosque (a mosaic).
2. Promote bosque habitat heterogeneity by recreating pockets of new cottonwood, willow and other native species throughout the Proposed Action Area, where root zones reach the shallow water table.
3. Implement measures to reestablish fluvial processes in the bosque, including removal of non-functional jetty jacks, bank destabilization, and high-flow/side channel creation to promote overbank flooding.
4. Create new wetland habitat, while extending and enhancing high quality aquatic habitat in existing wetlands.
5. Reduce the fire hazard in the bosque through the reduction of fuel loads, to include exotic species identified as hazardous.
6. Recreate hydraulic connections between the bosque and the river consistent with operational constraints.
7. Protect, extend and enhance areas of potential habitat for listed species within the existing bosque.
8. Develop and implement a long-term operations and maintenance plan, which incorporates long-term monitoring of proposed restoration features.
9. Coordinate and integrate project implementation and monitoring with other, ongoing restoration and research efforts in the bosque.
10. Create opportunities for educational or interpretive features, while integrating recreational features that are compatible with ecosystem integrity.
11. Continue to engage the public in the restoration of the bosque ecosystem by garnering input and involvement.