Rudio Creek Stewardship and Restoration Assessment

This project served to identify fine scale restoration needs across the Rudio Creek Drainage, taking a ridgetop-to-ridgetop approach in both Rudio and Gilmore Creeks. This project applied the North Fork John Day Watershed Councils Stewardship Planning Framework to 4 private properties and most of the BLM land in the Rudio Creek Drainage. In doing so, NFJDWC was able to collect fine scale information about on the ground conditions and make recommendations on activities to help mitigate limiting factors within the system both in the context of Watershed scale restoration goals and individual landowner goals. As part of the project NFJDWC, with the assistance of Monument Soil and Water Conservation District, were able to collect baseline rapid geomorphic assessment data in the upper reaches of Rudio Creek and develop a restoration action plan.
Of the original 8 landowners interested in this project, only 4 continued to cooperate with the planning and assessment project. The acres reported at actual accurately represent the extent of this project’s footprint.

As a result of topography and the elevation of its headwaters relative to its mouth, the Rudio Creek subwatershed encompasses important thermal refugia containing critical habitat for chinook salmon and ESA listed Mid-Columbia steelhead. Rudio Creek contains spawning and rearing habitat for steelhead as well as spawning, rearing and migratory habitat for chinook salmon. Gilmore and Rudio Creeks provide important cold water inputs for the North Fork John Day, further enhancing habitat more broadly in the system. The stewardship planning process would provide a road map for all of the restoration actions necessary to enhance instream habitat and maximize cold water inputs, improving water quality within and beyond the system of interest.