Upper Sandy River Basin Habitat Restoration Project - Camp Creek and Still Creek

The Freshwater Trust (TFT) and US Forest Service (USFS) are taking the lead on the Upper Sandy River Basin Habitat Restoration Project - Camp Creek and Still Creek project on behalf of the Sandy River Basin Partners (the Partners). The Sandy River originates on Mt. Hood and flows 56 miles northwest before entering the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon. The proposed project will address primary limiting factors by increasing off channel habitat/floodplain connectivity and large wood abundance on Camp Creek and Still Creek; two priority tributaries of the Zigzag River (an upper Sandy sub-watershed). Proposed work is on public land managed by the USFS located near Zigzag, Oregon in Clackamas County.

Sandy River salmon and steelhead populations have declined over the last century due to degradation of habitat and other factors. The Partners have identified the upper Sandy sub-watershed among the top areas providing high quality habitat for the basin’s native fish. The Partners are aligned on a near term goal of restoring this priority watershed to advance Sandy basin-scale restoration.

Restoration actions to be undertaken as part of the proposed project include tipping mature conifers to add key pieces of large wood to the stream channel and placing large wood via heavy lift helicopter to construct large wood jams. The design intents of these actions are to increase habitat complexity and diversity and increase side channel/ floodplain hydrologic connectivity to benefit salmon and steelhead. This project is part of a larger, multi-year, watershed-scale restoration effort and builds on similar successful projects completed in the basin by TFT and the Partners since 2008.

Sandy River basin spring Chinook, coho, and winter steelhead are negatively impacted by loss of habitat. This project will restore habitat elements believed to be most limiting to these fish.

Proposed actions on Camp Creek include large wood placement via heavy lift helicopter and large wood habitat placement via excavator. The project proposes to increase large wood levels to increase habitat diversity and complexity and increase floodplain connectivity/off-channel habitat. Proposed actions on Still Creek include large wood placement via heavy lift helicopter and tipping whole trees into the stream channel via skidder. The design intent is to increase large wood densities with a resultant increase in channel habitat complexity and diversity, and side-channel/off channel habitat. These actions are designed to address primary limiting factors for Sandy salmonids as well as restore natural processes at the reach-scale to restore natural processes so high quality habitat is self-sustaining.

Restoration objectives to address limiting factors were developed via restoration planning documents. Plans identify current conditions for limiting factors (eg. large wood abundance), historic conditions, and restoration potential (the difference between current and historic conditions). This approach provides numeric targets that allow the Partners to develop project objectives that are directly tied to watershed objectives and Sandy basin-scale goals. In addition, monitoring of fish and habitat response makes it possible to adaptively manage the implementation of the restoration plan over time. The proposed project will implement analogous actions that TFT, USFS, and BLM have used successfully to restore habitat elsewhere in the basin on behalf of the Partners. Effectiveness monitoring and observational data demonstrate that these actions have consistently achieved the desired habitat and fish response.