Restoring the river

Up in the mountains in Olympic National Forest during August, the noise of huge machines digging up dirt and moving trees can be heard.

This is part of the Skokomish River restoration project, and the work underway now is being done near the confluence of the Upper South Fork Skokomish River and Church Creek.

The project, near U.S. Forest Service Road 2361, involves crews taking trees that were brought in and placed in locations along a stretch of the Skokomish River to try to connect the two flood plains on either side of the river.

According to U.S. Forest Service Fish Biologist Brian Bair, the flood plains experience degrees of flooding. Bair said Q2 floods occur every other year, in November and December. Q100 floods are damaging floods that occur once every 100 years, and are much larger than Q2 floods. He said a Q100 flood occurred in the 1990s.

When old-growth trees were abundant, they would naturally mitigate flooding.

"In the 1970s, the idea that a healthy stream was a clean stream, we were kind of our own worst enemies," U.S. Forest Service Fish Biologist Marc McHenry told the Journal. "Back in the '70s, we were pulling out wood from rivers. This project is trying to reverse that issue ... when large key pieces are moved, it has a really lasting effect on stream channels. ... We don't really have access to these really large old growth trees so these jams are trying to emulate key pieces or having places where it will trap mobile wood. We are identifying low gradient areas in places where wood would naturally occur and accumulate so we are basically trying to work with the natural wood loading system to create these logjams."

About 1,600 trees are equal to one old-growth tree and the Forest Service brought in 2,200 trees to one site to ensure enough trees were available to execute the plan, according to Bair.

"Last year, we pushed over trees in the lower South Fork Skokomish watershed and basically stockpiled and we moved them up via log truck to a stock site adjacent to the river - about 1,000 trees, more with root wads that were moved up last year to a stockpile site," McHenry said.

"The first week of June, we flew in the wood, so it is adjacent to where we are constructing logjams and that was a successful operation," he said. "Now we are on the last phase of the implementation; the in-stream construction phase of the project. It's worth noting that there are five treatment reaches that we are putting in wood and three of the five treatment reaches, we are actually constructing logjams, basically digging them into the stream bank. The two other reaches, we were placing wood on the flood plain and within side channels and we are not constructing logjams via excavators."

The Forest Service identified five reaches where the addition of large wood would benefit fish habitat. Each reach can be up to half a mile, and three of the five reaches will have constructed logjams.

After years of planning, engineering and running simulations, the execution is the final step of this part of the restoration project. The Forest Service has moved trees around the Skokomish River so when the flooding occurs later this year at these reaches, the water will be diverted to the flood plains and create pools of water that will accumulate gravel that fish can use to spawn, according to McHenry. It will create habitat complexity, making it more difficult for predators to interfere with spawning.

"The objective of the projects are to increase rearing habitat and spawning habitat for steelhead and bull trout," McHenry said. "The Upper South Fork Skokomish historically, they had spring chinook. The Skokomish Tribe is certainly hoping in the future to reintroduce or have spring chinook in the upper watershed so these habitat improvements would kind of set the stage for that, too. That is within the recovery plan that was developed for the Skokomish basin."

Bair acknowledged that nature can be unpredictable.

"If the river doesn't like it, the river always wins," Bair told the Journal. "We're being more aggressive, not being more stupid."

Bair has worked for the Forest Service for 30 years and has completed these kinds of projects in Alaska.

The U.S. Forest Service is working with the Mason Conservation District and the Skokomish Tribe. Along with the logjams along the Skokomish, the Forest Service also created logjams on Church Creek.

"The challenges are as we get into warmer weather, trying to work within the in-stream work windows and all the challenges that occur when working around water," McHenry said. "I have a very experienced team that is overseeing the project within the Forest Service internal contracting folks, the enterprise team, which is a Forest Service-based team, that has done a lot of restoration throughout the Northwest, up in Alaska, Oregon and in Washington."

The project is primarily to improve fish habitat, but it will also influence other wildlife. McHenry said studies have shown it will have a benefit on wildlife that use logjams for getting around. It also will help vegetation.

No plans are scheduled for maintenance of the logjams once they're completed, according to McHenry. He said the idea was to have maintenance-free logjams and let mobile wood collect on the logjams to sustain it.

McHenry said this project is looking for long-term benefits and that it will take time before the ultimate effect of the projects will be reached.

"We're hoping that these jams through time will collect wood and have a lasting effect on the geomorphic processes within the river, scouring pools, basically reactivating old side channels that have been disconnected due to wood being absent within the river," McHenry said. "Those processes are going to take a lot more time to have those side channels being reactivated through flow. I think we're both going to see immediate benefits, but we're realistic to think that things just don't turn on with a flip of a light switch. It does take time to recover systems. We're certainly seeing through the years that the benefits are going to last and be realized."

Author Bio

Matt Baide, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
Email: [email protected]

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