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Fish & wildlife |
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Success stories — John Day River
Preserving a River's Run Central to the Council's efforts to protect and enhance Columbia Basin fish and wildlife affected by the hydrosystem is to invest in preserving core populations. One project that illustrates this strategy in action is the Oxbow Conservation Area Project in the John Day subbasin. The John Day River, located in the north central part of Oregon, is important because it is the second-longest free-flowing stream in the continental United States, and one of only two river systems in the entire Columbia River Basin managed exclusively for wild anadromous fish. The upper Middle Fork John Day River, where the Oxbow Conservation Area is located, has been identified as a high priority area in the John Day subbasin since the early 1970s. In 2001, the Council approved the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs' proposal to purchase the property with funding from the Bonneville Power Administration. Since then, project efforts have focused on fish and wildlife habitat protection and enhancement. Efforts include extensive tree and shrub planting, floodplain and river channel restoration, correction of fish passage problems, weed control, and irrigation usage. The Oxbow Conservation Area is 1,022 acres, with half of the acreage representing open meadows and the remaining consisting of upland forests. Besides its critical habitats for fish and wildlife, the property also holds water rights totaling 8.35 cubic feet per second to the Middle Fork and its key tributaries. Over six miles of streams provide important spawning and rearing habitats for summer steelhead, redband trout, Pacific lamprey and spring chinook salmon. Also, Granite Boulder Creek, which enters the Middle Fork on the property, is one of only three known areas where bull trout populations exist in the Middle Fork subbasin. Both bull trout and summer steelhead are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act as threatened species. The property represents one of the highest spawning densities of spring chinook on private lands in the Middle Fork John Day watershed. The upland habitats, primarily semi-wet meadow and mixed conifer, are home to many other species of wildlife, including sandhill cranes, Canada geese, Rocky Mountain elk, mule and white-tailed deer, grouse and Columbia spotted frogs. The riparian/wetland/river corridor areas provide additional important habitat for wildlife, while also contributing benefits to the stream systems, such as shade to moderate water temperatures. While both the upland and river habitats are in relatively good condition, there are some problems that continue to hurt productivity in certain areas. Remaining concerns are mostly associated with historically unmanaged grazing and gold mining, as well as expanding noxious weed populations. The project's future goals include restoring the channel and riparian areas harmed by mining, regulating irrigation, removing fish passage barriers, and containing the spread of harmful weeds. In the early 1940s portions of the Middle Fork John Day River was dredged for gold, creating tailings, which are the processed rocks and gravel leftover after the gold was removed, and washed away much of the precious soils from the meadows. Remaining is a degraded and straightened stream channel with little capacity for supporting trees and shrubs.
Usually, when the water is high, streams widen out onto the floodplain, accommodating the greater volume of water and thereby reducing the stream's velocity and movement of sediment. Because the mine tailings are so high, they essentially block the water from reaching the floodplain, increasing the velocity and flow of sediment which then scours the area downstream. As a result, lower sections below the tailings on the river suffer from degraded banks and erosion. Another problem caused by mining has been the straightening of the channel. The natural meanders of the river have been eliminated, destroying the parts of the river - its shallows and eddies - where fish can rest and spawn. Although the mined channel provides limited spawning and rearing habitat, project sponsors recently have restored some of the natural conditions by removing the tailings along the stream to restore the floodplain, allowing the river to naturally meander once again. However, one section of the river is so entrenched from the dredging that an entirely new river channel may be needed to remedy the degraded habitat.
"The Oxbow property has incredible restoration potential once the effects of dredging the river have been addressed," says Brian Cochran, manager of the project. "The property has several river restoration projects underway which aim to increase critical spawning and rearing habitat through tree and shrub planting, floodplain restoration, large wood restoration, and river channel restoration." Property management also allows for careful livestock grazing in order to demonstrate habitat protection and agriculture can coexist. Cattle are used as a tool to manage non-native plants to promote plant community health, while careful monitoring of conditions limit resource degradation. The project complements several restoration efforts in the watershed, including the Dunstan Homestead Preserve managed by The Nature Conservancy and the Malheur National Forest. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon manage two other fish and wildlife properties in the John Day subbasin, the Pine Creek Conservation Area near Clarno and the Forrest Conservation Area near Prairie City. The Forrest property includes a parcel about five miles upstream from the Oxbow and shares the same management strategies. |
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