Cispus-Yellowjacket Phase 3 Restoration

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service, proposes to restore salmon and steelhead habitat by building 18 in-stream structures in 1,900 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 will be positioned to form and maintain a multi-thread channel planform in the depositional mouth of Yellowjacket Creek throughout a range of flows, providing rearing habitat for spring Chinook, winter steelhead, and coho. Tribe staff or partners will plant 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, and outdoor education facility that hosts kindergarten through 12th-grade students year-round. The funding for this project is being provided by Tacoma Power (prospective as of PCSRF grant acceptance), PCSRF, and the Washington Recreation and Conservation Office using PCSRF or PCSRF-matched state funds. To prevent double-counting, the metrics are being roughly halved between the PCSRF and PRISM databases. Anticipated PCSRF metrics include nine structures in 950 lineal feet of main stem Cispus and Yellowjacket creek.

The Cispus-Yellowjacket Phase 3 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 18 large engineered logjams in the main stem Cispus River and Yellowjacket Creek. These logjams replicate conditions expected in unmanaged watersheds, restoring habitat-forming processes at the site scale. This will provide cool, shaded rearing habitat for juvenile salmon and steelhead year-round.

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.