Pysht River Restoration Support Project

This project provided a portion of the sponsor match for RCO’s Pysht River Floodplain Restoration: Phase III (Project #15-1061) and is part of a long term effort to improve salmon habitat in the mainstem Pysht River and its major tributaries. In this project the Tribe constructed 35 engineered logjams, installed 350 of floodplain fencing and conducted riparian revegetation in the mainstem Pysht River between river mile 7.2-9.0. The PCSRF contribution to this project was expended in 2016 and 2017. This project will provide a portion of the sponsor match for RCO’s Pysht River Floodplain Restoration: Phase III (Project #15-1061) and is part of a long term effort to improve salmon habitat in the mainstem Pysht River and its major tributaries. In this project the Tribe constructed 35 engineered logjams, installed 350 of floodplain fencing and conducted riparian revegetation in the mainstem Pysht River between river mile 7.2-9.0.

The Lower Tribe, RCO, and NWIFC had dialogue to ensure treatment and funding metric duplication are not occurring. While the aggregate project entails riparian planting and floodplain fencing RCO will report these treatments. NWIFC reporting captures a prorated share of the instream treatments based on fund contribution from this project, which equates to approximately 15% of the aggregate funding.

This project will improve floodplain habitat conditions on a 1.8 mile reach of the Pysht River. The project will occur on a combination of ownerships including lands recently purchased for conservation by North Olympic Land Trust using SRFB funding. Since 1994, Merrill and Ring and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe have conducted a series of cooperative restoration projects focusing on adding large woody debris (LWD) into channels and riparian restoration at multiple sites in the watershed. On the south fork Pysht River (Phase 1), LWD has been added to ten reaches between river mile 0.5-7.0. On the mainstem Pysht River, LWD (Phase 2) has been added on one reach (river mile 10.0-11.5). Monitoring has shown that these projects have been successful in restoring channel and riparian habitat features favored by salmon for spawning and rearing. Because of historic logging and stream cleaning practices, the entire watershed is considered chronically deficient in in-channel LWD (McHenry et al. 1994, WRIA 19 Salmon Recovery Plan). Additionally, the age and composition of riparian forests is currently not adequate to support habitat forming processes which would result in the natural addition of wood to the river.