Carlton-Rook Habitat Improvement

Sufficient large wood in streams has been identified as a key component of high-quality spawning and rearing habitat for Oregon Coast coho. The Upper Deadwood Creek 6th-field sub-watershed has been identified as a high priority for restoration to support recovery of Oregon Coast Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) by local, state and federal entities. The Carlton-Rook Habitat Improvement project plans to utilize ground-based equipment (excavator) to add large wood to a privately owned stream reach in the Upper Deadwood Creek 6th-field HUC (171002060602). The logs added during this phase of the project will augment previous large wood placements in the basin and are important for later phases and restoration actions. Specifically, this project reach will tie into a future upstream USFS floodplain reconnection project and will provide synergistic benefits between the two stream reaches.

The Carlton-Rook Habitat Improvement project (Project) is in the Deadwood Creek sub-basin and seeks the address the primary limiting factor for coho salmon production, as identified by the Siuslaw Coho Partnerships Strategic Action Plan for Coho Salmon Recovery, which is the lack of instream habitat complexity. The goal of the Project is to restore natural habitat forming processes associated with instream complexity via the placement of large wood placements in Deadwood Creek. The placement of the large wood structures will be designed in a manner that mimics natural log jams and wind-throw events which supports the development of natural habitat forming processes that create and maintain high quality habitat for a variety of aquatic species, including OC Coho. By enhancing the instream complexity through placing large wood material, a diverse hydrologic regime will be established with localized areas of (relatively) high to low velocity resulting in gravel aggradation in some areas, scour in other areas, and localized gravel sorting patterns which is beneficial to creating and maintaining OC Coho spawning and rearing habitat. As a result of the restoration efforts, the site will experience and increase in the available spawning and rearing habitat for OC Coho as well as a myriad of other native aquatic species that thrive in newly created niche habitats.