Cispus-Yellowjacket Phase 2 Restoration

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service and Cascade Forest Conservancy, restored salmon and steelhead habitat by building nine in-stream structures in 1,400 lineal feet of the main stem Cispus River and Yellowjacket Creek to scour pools, sort gravels, support floodplain forest succession, and provide cover for adult and juvenile fish. The main stem structures were positioned to maintain approximately 1,000’ of side channel habitat in the depositional mouth of Yellowjacket Creek throughout a range of flows, providing rearing habitat for spring Chinook, winter steelhead, and coho. Volunteers with the Cascade Forest Conservancy and Cowlitz Indian Tribe staff planted locally adapted native trees and shrubs to accelerate riparian restoration along disturbed areas and new channels. The project site is located south of Randle, Washington, in eastern Lewis County, adjacent to the Cispus Learning Center, an outdoor education facility that hosts kindergarten through 12th-grade students year-round. The funding for this project was provided by PCSRF and the Washington Recreation and Conservation Office using PCSRF or PCSRF-matched state funds. To prevent double-counting, the metrics were roughly halved between the PCSRF and PRISM databases. PCSRF metrics include five structures in 700 of main stem Cispus River and Yellowjacket Creek, and 500 of side channel habitat.

The Cispus-Yellowjacket Phase 2 Restoration project includes actions that will alter physical habitat conditions to form a resilient, forested floodplain island network, increase side channel habitat, improve instream habitat diversity, increase wood loading, increase pool area and residual depth, generally increasing the quantity and quality of holding, spawning, and rearing habitat throughout the project reach. We expect these changes to drive biological outcomes including increased spawning success and improved juvenile survival rates for listed salmon and steelhead populations.



Contractors will install nine large engineered logjams in the main stem Cispus River and Yellowjacket Creek. These logjams replicate conditions expected in unmanaged watersheds, and restore habitat-forming processes at the site scale. Coupled with the logjams, we propose to grade side-channel openings to encourage immediate channel formation and function. This will provide cool, shaded rearing habitat for juvenile salmon and steelhead year-round (see attached preliminary designs and basis of design report).



Since the Cispus is now relatively protected by Forest Service management, we anticipate progressive improvement in habitat forming processes over time. Left alone, however, this reach would require hundreds of years to regain its structure and function. This project will jumpstart the recovery process, providing the stream channel structure lost through over a century of human interference.