Rerouting River Restores Prime Fish Habitat

BPA-funded crews last week freed nearly a mile of Northeastern Oregon's Wallowa River from a straightened channel, shifting it to a new course that once again resembles a natural river and resurrects prime salmon and steelhead spawning habitat.

The rerouting of the river through the private 6 Ranch north of Enterprise, Ore., highlights a kind of habitat restoration that provides more immediate results than traditional streamside planting and fencing efforts. While those may take years to yield improved habitat as vegetation grows in, the 6 Ranch project showed immediate results as the river coursed within hours in a more fish-friendly direction.

Engineers, with support from biologists, designed the river's new route with the sweeping meanders of a wild river, slowing the water and creating the naturally diverse currents, flows and gravels that fish need.

	A dumptruck dikes off the old straightened river channel so the water flows into the new channel being dug on the right.

"We're rebuilding the structure and complexity that we used to have," said Coby Menton, who managed the project for the Grande Ronde Model Watershed, the local group that led the effort.

Bill Maslen, who manages BPA's Fish and Wildlife program, told about 50 people gathered at the project that it represents a good investment for BPA's ratepayers, for fish and for the region. It boosts both the quality and quantity of fish habitat, he said.

The project lies right beside Highway 82, the main route into the popular Wallowa Valley. Landowners Craig and Liza Jane Nichols and the many agencies that supported the project hope it will serve as both a showpiece and a model.

"We have really hoped that other people will see this and say, 'I want to do something like that, too,'" Liza Jane Nichols said as she watched heavy equipment seal off the old channel. "I hope we can dispel some of the myths around what it means for landowners to do this, because our experience has been great all the way through."

The 6 Ranch project has been in development for years, managed by the Grande Ronde Model Watershed and funded largely by BPA and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. The highlight came July 6 through July 8, when carefully choreographed heavy equipment and crews diverted the river into its new bed in a way that would minimize any impacts on fish in the river.

As a dump truck, small bulldozer and trackhoe built small dikes that turned the river, teams of biologists scoured the water with equipment that briefly stuns fish so they can be scooped up in nets. The biologists, with help from local students, then transported the fish to a data collection station so they could be weighed and examined before they were returned to the river downstream.

Teams assisting with the project included representatives of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Nez Perce Tribe, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Grande Ronde Model Watershed and BPA. Most of the assisting crews work for programs funded by BPA.

"Everyone knows they're doing good things for fish," said Jeff Yanke, an ODFW research biologist based in Enterprise. "It makes you proud to be part of all these folks."

	A videographer records the event for an episode of "Oregon Field Guide" on public television.

The project remedies the shortcomings of the river's former channel, which resembled a canal more than a river. The river was confined to the channel many decades ago to open its floodplain for farming and reduce the risk of flood damage. The trouble was that water rushed through the rigid channel, "like a rocket," said Timmie Mandish, a BPA biologist on the technical team that reviews habitat projects in the Grande Ronde River basin.

The rapid current made the stretch of river inhospitable for spawning and carried away prime spawning gravel. Landowner Craig Nichols, a former hunting and fishing guide who has fished across the West and Alaska, said, "I've seen healthy streams and not-so-healthy streams and this one was not so healthy."

A downstream neighbor, Doug McDaniel, supported a similar river restoration project on his land and encouraged the Nichols to do the same. Steelhead began spawning in that stretch within a year. The Nichols had hoped to put their stretch of river back onto a natural course for years. Help from the Grande Ronde Model Watershed and funding from BPA and others finally made it possible.

They've seen fish quickly take advantage of earlier opportunities along the stretch of river. When two spruce trees blew over into the river, creating a pool that offered refuge from the current, steelhead smolts rapidly schooled there. They expect the new river course, augmented by rocks and logs that will offer similar refuge, will do the same.

Biologists say such channel "complexity," is ideal for fish. The project will also create new wetlands along the river. Crews will fill in and replant the vacated channel.

"Now (the river) is going to get a chance to slow down and build up the floodplain, build up the wetlands," Nichols said. "The insect population will grow, and from that, everything follows."