Cooley West Fork Little Bear Creek LWD

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) will design and construct habitat treatments on a 0.90 mile segment of the West Fork Little Bear Creek located near the confluence with Little Bear Creek in the Bear Creek drainage of the Potlatch River watershed. Current habitat conditions include a flow-limited river segment that exhibits elevated summer water temperature, lacks pools and thermal refugia, contains little instream woody material or other lateral habitat, a disengaged floodplain, and limited overstory shading from riparian vegetation.


Project actions prescribed to increase habitat capacity for juvenile steelhead include: 1) placing unanchored large trees to provide immediate habitat complexity throughout the property, increase sheltered pools, complexity, sediment sorting, and improve floodplain inundation, 2) install beaver dam analogues (BDAs; listed as ‘other engineered structures’ on metrics) to raise the surface water elevation of the river and improve river and floodplain function, 3) streambank stabilization through use of logs and vegetation, 4) grass seeding and plantings of native herbaceous and woody species including cottonwoods to rehabilitate the riparian zone.

The NOAA recovery plan for Snake River Basin steelhead (NMFS 2017) identified impaired fish passage, reduced stream complexity and channel structure, excess fine sediment, elevated summer water temperatures, diminished streamflow during critical periods, reduced floodplain connectivity and function, and degraded riparian conditions as the primary steelhead liming factors in this watershed. While previous projects on the West Fork of Little Bear Creek (PCSRF 010 11 CW; PCSRF 006 13 CW) and its main tributary (PCSRF 004 11 CW; 014 13 CW: 014 16 CW) have focused on addressing passage barriers, the Cooley project will focus on creating pools, increasing stream complexity, floodplain connectivity and function, and decreasing summer water temperature.


Restoring natural river processes and function will directly increase habitat capacity for juvenile steelhead. The impact of this project should be detectable as it is located in the tributary with the highest densities of steelhead in the Potlatch River Basin (Knoth et al. 2021). Further, there is potential for similar treatments in the 3.5 river miles immediately upstream of the project as this project will demonstrate the efficacy and low risk of this process- based approach to steelhead habitat improvements to interested landowners.