Cabin and Johnson Creek Restoration Project

The Tribe proposes to restore fish passage, complexity and biophysical connectivity in Cabin and Johnson Creeks with the removal of barriers and placing wood to increase stream roughness, leading to increased sediment aggradations. Additional treatments to the riparian forests along these select reaches will accelerate natural forest succession, creating a future source of large wood to the system over time. Engineered log jams are proposed at key locations along the channel to maximize accommodation space for sediments and where overbank floodwaters are able to spread out. Channel spanning logjams are proposed to mimic larger wood accumulations and obstruct much of the channel, eliciting sediment deposition and channel bed aggradation, providing more spawning-suitable gravels. This project is another step forward in a multi-phased, process-based restoration approach to increase the productivity of the upper watershed. The log structures will restore instream structure to create stable spawning substrate, increasing egg incubation survival rates and create complex rearing habitat to increase over-winter survival of rearing winter steelhead and coho salmon populations.

The Cabin and Johnson Restoration project is focused on restoring fish passage, instream complexity, and floodplain connectivity in Johnson and Cabin Creeks, tributaries to the Grays River, Pacific County, Washington. The proposed instream work at Johnson Creek includes disassembling three existing debris jams blocking fish passage between RM 0.7, 0.92 and 1.0. The extracted logs will be placed downstream and, in the channel, resulting in a fish-passable, complex channel. In nearby Cabin Creek, crews will construct sixteen engineered log jams (ELJs) instream, place 140 whole trees in the active channel and floodplain and conduct 5.6-acres of riparian forest enhancement. The cumulative effects of these restoration actions will restore instream structure to create stable spawning substrate, increasing egg incubation survival rates and create complex rearing habitat to increase over-winter survival of rearing winter steelhead and coho salmon populations.