A10
News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Tribal fish restoration work highlighted
Awarded $4.9
million in federal
money
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
Undammed and with no
fish hatcheries, the 284-mile
long John Day River is the
third longest free-flowing
river in the Lower 48 and has
great potential for important
fish restoration efforts. Con-
gress designated the lower
half of the river as Wild and
Scenic in 1988.
The Confederated Tribes
of Warm Springs is a lead-
er in fish restoration work
on the river through its John
Day Watershed Restoration
Program. Amy Charette, the
Contributed photo
Two excavators lower a root ball at a Confederate Tribes
of the Warm Springs instream restoration project to
increase fish habitat and cover on the Middle Fork of the
John Day River in 2015.
Tribes’ watershed restoration
coordinator, updated the
Grant County Court on the
program.
The restoration program
has seven full-time staff in the
John Day office, established
in 1996, and 10 more in Prai-
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
Amy Charette, the watershed
restoration coordinator for
the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs, speaks to the
Grant County Court April 11.
rie City to maintain a native
plants nursery and manage
Tribal properties in the upper
watershed.
The Tribes acquired the
3,445-acre Forrest Conserva-
tion Area on the main stem
of the John Day River east of
Prairie City in 2002, where
the nursery and McHaley
Pond are located; the 33,557-
acre Pine Creek Conservation
Area in Wheeler County near
Clarno in 1999 and 2001; and
the 1,022-acre Oxbow Con-
servation Area along the Mid-
dle Fork from Bridge Creek to
Camp Creek in 2002.
The Forrest property in-
cludes a 786-acre parcel on
the Middle Fork between
Bates State Park and Caribou
Creek. They also manage the
Nature Conservancy’s Dun-
stan Homestead Preserve on
the Middle Fork.
Charette said the resto-
ration program receives most
of its funding from the Bon-
neville Power Administration
through the 2008 Columbia
Basin Fish Accords, which
provided the program about
$2.3 million per year for the
past 10 years.
The objective of the Tribes’
fisheries habitat program
is to maintain and restore
high-quality aquatic habitat
to support fish populations,
including spring chinook,
mid-Columbia steelhead, bull
trout, Pacific lamprey and
westslope cutthroat trout. The
program seeks to foster part-
nerships to achieve holistic
watershed-scale benefits, she
told the court in her presen-
tation.
Two significant problems
for fish in the John Day wa-
tershed are higher water tem-
peratures and lower stream
flow in summer. When asked
by Grant County Commis-
sioner Jim Hamsher if con-
structing water impound-
ments would help with stream
flow, Charette said the Tribes
“prefer other strategies,” such
as using shade and water re-
tention to keep headwater
stream flow cold.
Projects that support water
retention strategies include
creating wet meadows at high-
er elevations, reconnecting
floodplain areas to streams,
planting in riparian areas and
supporting construction of
beaver dams, which hold back
stream flow without blocking
fish passage, she said.
Steelhead spawn in tribu-
taries, while chinook spawn
in the mainstem of the rivers,
Charette said. The watershed
generally has good spawning
habitat but lacks sufficient
habitat for juvenile rearing,
she told the court.
Two ways to deal with that
problem include removing
fish-passage barriers, such as
replacing or modifying any
culverts where fish must jump
more than six inches to pass
through, and putting woody
debris such as root balls in
streams to increase stream
volume, Charette said. The
woody debris will not block
fish passage but will help re-
tain stream flow and provide
juvenile rearing habitat.
In 2016 and 2017, the res-
toration program protected
1,325 acres of riparian hab-
itat by erecting 10.46 miles
of fencing; addressed five
fish-passage barriers and in-
stalled 2 miles of irrigation
pipe; improved 11.3 miles of
in-stream habitat by install-
ing 256 log structures, cre-
ating 235 pools and 15 rock
weirs for grade control, and
removing or modifying 73
legacy weirs; removed juni-
per on 838 acres and invasive
or hardwood species on 137
riparian acres; reconnected
the floodplain to streams on
13.7 wetland acres with side
channel construction, levee
reduction and other projects;
and completed 143 acres of ri-
parian planting on 10.2 miles
of streams.
The watershed restoration
program changed its emphasis
in 2017 to more monitoring,
Charette said. The program’s
funding sources, including the
BPA, wanted to know how
successful the different resto-
ration projects have been, she
said.
In cooperation with Ore-
gon Department of Fish and
Wildlife personnel, the Tribes
will utilize a structured im-
plementation focus for resto-
ration and monitoring in the
Middle Fork from 2019 to
2021 and in the Upper John
Day River from 2022 to 2024.
“We’ll focus on larg-
er-scale projects and plan lon-
ger ahead of time,” she told
the Eagle.
The program has also been
awarded $4.9 million from
the federal Natural Resourc-
es Conservation Service for
a Resources Conservation
Partnership Project from 2018
through 2022. This includes
$1.1 million for irrigation
efficiency projects and $2.7
million for conservation ease-
ments, along with technical
assistance for project partners
and the NRCS.
“Private landowners apply
to the NRCS for this money,”
Charette said. “All of this is
on private land.”
Overall, the Tribes are see-
ing good work by landowners
and agencies in the John Day
watershed, she told the court,
but changes are coming in
funding and requirements.
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