SF Cottaneva Watershed Habitat Enhancement

This project will add 77 structures containing 223 pieces of LW on South Fork Cottaneva Creek and Slaughterhouse Gulch. Forty-three of the structures containing 141 LW pieces of which 93 are key pieces, will be installed along 1.40 miles of the SF Cottaneva Creek, while 34 of the structures containing 82 LW pieces of which 82 are key pieces, will be installed along 0.78 miles of Slaughterhouse Gulch. LW structures will be composed of redwood and Douglas fir logs, and logs with rootwads, anchored to live trees along the stream banks. This project will provide habitat to central California coast coho salmon and steelhead, which have been documented in the project reach. Additionally, 220 redwoods and 50 native shrubs will be planted in the riparian zone along the project reach.

Adding these structures, including 175 key pieces, will benefit salmonids by enhancing pool area and depth, increasing shelter complexity, sorting substrate for spawning habitat, increasing the frequency of floodplain and side channel inundation, aggrading the channel, capturing large and small wood, and providing velocity refugia during high flows.