CTUIR Ceded Area Subbasin Priority Natural Resource Acquisitions VIX

The project works in conjunction with each of the CTUIRs Subbasin Anadromous Fish Habitat Projects to identify and seek permanent protection for high value habitats and water rights through fee title acquisition and conservation easements and purchase of grazing and forest management rights to provide watershed conservation benefits. This project works with willing sellers and focuses on the working landscapes that typically characterize the ownership of our rivers and floodplains today. Most of these properties currently are in agricultural production as ranches or farms, or are under timber management. Unlike residential or industrial-zoned lands, there often is minimal physical infrastructure on these properties. Ideally, properties will contain no physical infrastructure, but more often they include a single residence, barn, or the assorted outbuildings that are associated with an agricultural operation. To the extent possible, physical infrastructure is removed from the floodplain after acquisition, habitat conditions are restored, and the property is protected in perpetuity.



Special emphasis is placed on targeting stronghold habitats of high value and areas of high restoration potential benefiting the productivity of ESA-listed Pacific salmonids, as described in habitat objectives and restoration strategies in the 2004 NPCC Subbasin Plans, and the Mid-C Steelhead and Snake River ESA Recovery Plans. Once protected these resources provide the foundation to enhance physical and ecological processes and leverage other cost share funding. This is the eight iteration of this project.



This proposal includes securing fee title acquisition or conservation easement opportunities for land, water, grazing or timber rights benefiting ESA-listed fish and tribal First Foods. The project applies to the CTUIR ceded area subbasins (Umatilla, Walla Walla, Tucannon, Grande Ronde & John Day) focusing on water, land, and resource acquisitions to protect and/or restore ecological and physical processes important to aquatic Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed species and other native aquatic species important to CTUIR. Priority stream acquisition and conservation reaches will be selected based largely on past planning (NPCC Subbasin Plans, ESA Recovery Plans, etc.) and consistent with the CTUIR River Vision which emphasizes natural floodplain function.



Please note that estimates have not yet been made of the total miles of stream or habitat acreage to be protected because specifics are not known, but will be entered at the project completion.

Benefits will be achieved through the protection and restoration of natural physical and ecological processes and resulting habitat and water quality improvements. Impacts from development and resource extraction actions that might degrade aquatic habitats and limit fish production will be eliminated. ESA species: summer steelhead and bull trout; other species: spring Chinook, coho salmon, pacific lamprey, freshwater mussels, and other miscellaneous resident fish.