DESCRIPTION
The Deschutes River Watershed Restoration Catalog project seeks to build upon recently competed scientific reports and assessments to develop conceptual projects that address known salmonid limiting factors in the Deschutes River watershed. Significant landowner outreach will be conducted in priority reaches after all existing watershed information is compiled and reviewed. Upon engagement with landowners, field surveys will be conducted between River Mile 17-41 to ground truth previously identified project recommendations and to determine restoration potential within these priority reaches. The goal of the project is to cultivate willing landowners, develop a catalog of reach-scale restoration opportunities, and design 4 conceptual plans in the main-stem river or important tributaries. These reach-scale designs will gauge landowner interest and build the next steps towards restoring spawning and rearing habitat in the middle/upper Deschutes River.
The Upper Deschutes Conceptual Design focused on the high priority reach of river miles 31 to 41 and the four major spawning tributaries; Thurston, Johnson, Huckleberry and Mitchell. SPSSEG along with project engineers from Wolf Water Resources completed a four day assessment and survey of the project reach in June 2022. Half of the survey was preformed from the water via raft in the mainstem, with the other half preformed on foot along the tributaries. Findings from this survey focused restoration actions even more specifically Weyerhaeuser owned lands and the two largest tributaries of Thurston and Mitchell. From these finding, project engineers were able to work with SPSSEG to complete a conceptual design and prioritization criteria for this entire reach. Conceptual design highlighted two main restoration actions. These actions were helicopter log jam placements and tree tipping of large riparian trees. Once conceptual design efforts were complete, SPSSEG and the Squaxin Island Tribe chose the priority project reach based off the prioritization matrix developed in the conceptual design effort. The priority project which was chosen was brought to 60% permit level design set. Other milestones from this project was the data sharing between SPSSEG and Weyerhaeuser and the collection of 2022 LIDAR by DNR.
PCSRF FY 2017 and 2018 funds were spent within the award period.
