Bear Creek Steelhead Monitoring

This project is located on Bear Creek, a tributary to Bridge Creek in Southwest Wheeler County. Large sections of Bear Creek are currently the subject of restoration efforts designed to increase juvenile steelhead rearing habitat quality and quality. The monitoring plan has been designed to fill several information gaps that exist concerning the relationship between juvenile steelhead habitat use in intermittent systems, and restoration practices being implemented to improve intermittent stream habitat quality. These information gaps include:

1. What are the movement patterns of juvenile steelhead rearing within stream reaches that are seasonally intermittent, and does movement or lack of movement influence steelhead productivity (i.e., growth and survival)

2. Can beaver dam restoration structures alter the timing and delivery of flow such that the duration and extent of surface flow is enhanced within seasonally intermittent stream reaches to the benefit of juvenile steelhead.

3. Do beaver dam restoration structures impede juvenile steelhead movement during intermittent or low flow periods, and does decreased movement result in greater mortality and a negative impact to steelhead populations.

The monitoring project will leverage existing beaver dam restoration implementation on the Canyon Creek Ranch on Bear Creek, where greater than 70 beaver dam restoration structures have been installed from 2017 - 2019. The projects also includes existing monitoring and an established experimental design for studying restoration impacts. Monitoring will largely consist of capture, tagging, and resight of juvenile steelhead using passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to document the movement, growth, and survival of steelhead in stream reaches with and without BDA structures.

Partners include Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, EcoLogical Research, NOAA, Canyon Creek Ranch, and Mid John Day-Bridge Creek WC.

The monitoring project data will inform several critical gaps in the current understanding of salmonid habitat use within seasonally intermittent streams, and the impacts associated with restoration with these systems.

Specifically, the monitoring project has been designed to track the movement, survival, abundance, and growth within stream reaches that experience seasonally low and/or intermittent surface flow. The project will show when and if steelhead move out of intermittent stream reaches as surface flow is diminished during summer draught periods. These conditions are common within the study area on Bear Creek.

Further, the study design will follow steelhead movement patterns within reaches with beaver dam restoration structures (treatment) and those that have no flow impoundments. This contrast will allow the project to determine:

1. If beaver dam structures effectively increase the duration and extent of surface flow, and thereby increase habitat availability for juvenile salmonids during draught periods.

2. Do beaver dam structures prevent juvenile steelhead movement out of reaches as flow is diminished, and thereby having a negative impact on juvenile steelhead survival.

Explicitly answering these questions within the context of an experimental design will determine whether beaver dam restoration structures offer an effective approach to increasing juvenile salmonid habitat availability during summer draught periods, and make apparent any risks associated with this restoration practice.