Meadow Creek Restoration Effectiveness Monitoring

This work will occur along Meadow Creek, Upper Grande Ronde Basin, Near Starkey, Oregon. This area functions as spawning and juvenile rearing habitat for Snake River Basin summer steelhead, and as juvenile rearing habitat for Snake River Basin spring Chinook salmon. Summer steelhead and spring/summer Chinook are listed under ESA as threatened species. Historic splash-dam and railroad logging eliminated most in-stream woody debris in Meadow Creek and substantially reduced potential for future recruitment. Historic conversion of shrubs and conifers to livestock forage substantially reduced canopy cover, increasing stream temperatures, and diminishing function of many desired stream characteristics. Meadow Creek has recently undergone extensive in-stream restoration of large wood, and recent plantings of 60,000 shrubs and conifers were made to accelerate riparian recovery. A new grazing system for cattle began in 2017, designed to support riparian recovery by cattle spending more time in uplands and less in riparian areas. This project will continue effectiveness monitoring of salmonid habitat responses and other resource responses to restoration, and to evaluate the compatibility of new cattle grazing practices and wild ungulate grazing to support riparian restoration for salmonids. Habitat responses include a suite of riparian vegetation responses including greenline condition, streambank alternation, stubble height, woody species height, shrub cover, and browse intensity. Additionally, we will continue to monitor cattle, elk, and deer use of the riparian area to link herbivory effects to the rate of recovery following restoration.

A major benefit from effectiveness monitoring of this long-term restoration experiment is a well-documented set of cattle grazing practices and associated management tools of direct relevance to management of millions of acres of public range allotments where cattle grazing is a dominant land use and where salmonid recovery is a primary goal and riparian restoration is urgently needed. This set of grazing practices include those found to be effective on a practical scale in maintaining cattle use in upland areas and away from riparian areas to support salmonid restoration Results will be summarized annually for use by range and fisheries managers and the diverse set of stakeholders involved in grazing management.

In addition, research results will indicate what level of return a rancher (and salmon recovery) would receive from active strategies to maintain cattle in uplands through active herding and use of upland water and nutritional supplements. There will be economic analyses of the cost effectiveness of these practices and in relation to compliance with standards for greenline stubble height and streambank alternation. These results can be compared with the economic return of simply establishing exclusion fencing of the riparian area and the time required by range riders to monitor the exclusion fencing for breaches, which typically occur weekly throughout the grazing season, owing to both wild and domestic ungulate breaches, resulting in considerable effort to monitor and repair fences and herd trespass cows out of riparian areas. All of this information will be extremely useful for planning salmonid restoration projects on both public and private lands in making decisions on what approach grazing management (more intensive herd management vs. riparian exclusion) is more effective and cost-efficient.