North Fork Salmon River Restoration – Cole Property

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) will perform restoration work and habitat treatments on a 0.6-mile segment of the North Fork Salmon River located in the Salmon Basin. This project is located on private property near North Fork, ID. The project goal is to improve spawning, summer rearing, and overwintering habitat for ESA-listed Snake River Chinook salmon and steelhead in the North Fork Salmon River. Currently, due to human practices, the North Fork Salmon River has very little habitat complexity, the channel is over widened, shallow and uniform. It contains little instream woody material or other lateral habitat, has a disengaged floodplain, and has limited overstory shading from riparian vegetation. IDFG will install engineered log jams to provide cover, slow velocities instream, and back up water to promote lateral side channels to inundate, improve lateral habitat through excavation of side channels, and install channel spanning weirs, partial channel spanning weirs, and boulder fields to increase the amount of habitat available to fish. Riparian and streambank stabilization planting will be completed in the fall after construction.

The project will increase habitat complexity, create pools, provide cover, provide staging areas for adult migrations, recruit spawning gravels, add lateral habitat, increase side channels, and create overwinter and summer rearing habitat for ESA listed Sp/Su Chinook Salmon and steelhead. As spawning and rearing conditions improve, the number of juveniles surviving in the North Fork to pre-smolt and smolt stages is expected to increase. Native plants, shrubs, and trees will also help provide bank stabilization, future material recruitment, and shade for the restoration site.