Lower Clear Creek Restoration Phase 2

Metro imjplemented a habitat restoration project on its 685-acre Clear Creek Canyon, Clear Creek North and Jonsson Center natural area properties on lower Clear Creek near Carver, Oregon. The designs were based on the results of an existing conditions and site analysis and aim to take advantage of site opportunities to improve habitat conditions while minimizing cost and disturbance to recent tree/shrub plantings.

The projects primary objective was to improve the complexity of aquatic habitats in Clear Creek to benefit Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, steelhead, cutthroat trout, bull trout and Pacific lamprey. The project is needed to mitigate for legacy impacts of timber harvest, splash damming, and land clearing in order to improve habitat complexity and set the stream on a more positive trajectory.

The project included helicopter-placement of large wood, intended to improve habitat complexity and restart channel processes that create complex habitats, along approximately three miles of lower Clear Creek. Project partners include Metro, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and Clackamas River Basin Council.

The proposed actions for the Lower Clear Creek Phase II project have been developed to benefit Chinook Salmon, coho salmon, and winter steelhead. Two categories of large wood structures, habitat complexity large wood structures and 3- and 4- variant large wood structures, will be placed via helicopter in Clear Creek throughout the project area. These structures are intended to provide immediate habitat benefit for target fish. Habitat complexity large wood structures and the anticipated scour pools are also likely to provide cover and feeding zones for age 1+ Chinook, Coho, and steelhead, provide juvenile rearing and adult holding habitat, promote gravel sorting, and lead to increased spawning habitat. Habitat complexity large wood structures – The 3- and 4-log variants of the habitat complexity large wood structures proposed throughout the length of the project area to provide cover and complexity in existing pool habitats within the Clear Creek channel. These structures are intended to drive geomorphic processes that will create and sustain habitat in the coming decades. The 3- and 4-log variant habitat complexity large wood structures will provide cover and feeding zones for age 1+ Chinook, Coho, and steelhead, provide juvenile rearing and adult holding habitat, promote gravel sorting, and likely lead to increased spawning habitat.