FISH FIRST BEGINS 9TH YEAR!

676 Silver salmon or 338 pair were placed in Cedar Crk. and tributaries of the North Fork Lewis in December.Using a truck with two small tanks each holding 250 gallons of water, that will keep 30 fish in each tank alive for up to four hours, Gary Loomis and Dan Balch hauled fish to streams in the Lewis River watershed to recharge the system by depositing wild eggs in upper reaches. The off spring from these fish will imprint with the new location and make their way back to the site to spawn in about six years. Depositing live fish will jumpstart the system. Adults are cleaning spawning gravel in the upper tribs. and depositing eggs. Their carcasses will feed the fry that emerge. Reintroduction of wild fish to upper tribs. emulates Mother Nature and gives us a six year head start compared to egg boxes in those same waters!

The first sawmills in the Pacific Northwest were small water-powered operations, located on or very near the stream. Huge piles of sawdust and other debris was created from milling the logs. Some sawmill operators burned the debris and sawdust, but most operators flushed the debris into the stream.

Chips of wood interfered with the natural food web for the fish. As they rotted, nitrogen in the water was used to break down the material. Flooding of the rivers and streams flushed the sawdust and chips further down the river and eventually into the ocean. Suspended sawdust caught in the gills of salmon returning to spawning beds.

Trees were first harvested near sawmills, then loggers had to cut trees further away. Getting the logs to the mill was no easy task. Loggers using oxen or horses to drag logs to the mill were overwhelmed. They couldn’t keep up. So timber harvesters returned to the stream. Timber and brush near the stream was clear-cut to make it easy to skid the logs to a pile near the waters edge. When high water came the logs were floated down the stream to the mill. Log jams were blown up as they developed. Then in 1881 logger Alex Polson built the first splash dam in Pacific County, Washington, with Charles Granholm following close behind building Oregon’s first splash dam on the Coos River in 1884. He blocked the flow of water, cut the logs and placed them in the ever increasing pond on the back side of the dam, then blew up the log dam releasing tons of water and logs on the stream bed. Splash dams created catastrophic results for fish. In order for the splash dam to shoot the logs unhindered down stream to the mill, the loggers cleared the downstream area of timber, beaver dams, and anything that would hold the logs up. The sides of the banks were reshaped by the force of the logs and water. Hiding places for fish, under overhanging banks was gone. Spawning gravel was virtually nonexistent; flushed away with the logs. Salmon spawned and reared in the main stem – directly in the path of the log drives. Huge logs weighing tons ripped and tore at the river bed killing salmon in their path. The use of splash dams went on for about 70 years. The last splash dam operation ended in 1959, the last log drive in Idaho’s Clearwater River in 1970. Splash dams became more controversial as more people settled along the river banks. Periodic flooding impeded river travel and destroyed docks.

As the logging process took place further and further from the mill, loggers used steam donkeys to pull logs up steep slopes to a central yard where they were loaded onto rail cars and transported. To use this new technology effectively, they had to clear-cut the hillside to get rid of anything that might impede the movement of the logs. The roots of the stumps that remained rotted and lost their grip on the soil. Seasonal rains cut deep grooves in the slopes and sediment from erosion ended up in the stream. Trees fell at break neck speed to meet a need in distant markets. Soon the fishermen and Indians felt the economic costs from the increased profits of the timber industry. These destructive practices shattered the natural economy of forested watersheds that had been evolving for 4,000 to 5,000 years.

Forest fires were common in the early part of the twentieth century. In 1902 the Yacolt Burn consumed over 238,000 acres of forestland. Fire raged for 36 hours, traveled 30 miles, took 38 lives and burned 12 billion board feet of timber. Thick smoke darkened the sky in Seattle, 160 miles away, street lights glowed at noon. Also burned in 1902 were 70,000 acres in the Siouxson country south of the Lewis River and 85,000 acres in the Cispus watershed. (Excerpts from The Yacolt Burn State Forest Map, WA. Dept. of Natural Resources) Smaller forest fires plagued the area for the next 50 years, burning charred remains of earlier fires.

A forest fire kills the trees and plants in its path. Sloping sites void of any roots to keep the soils intact, sluff off down hill, depositing sediment into the stream. The lack of stream bank cover, interrupts the salmons food cycle, exposes the water to heat from the sun and the fish loose cover used to hide from predators.

Fish First does in-stream projects to bring back stream complexity lost in another era.

We don’t have time to wait thousands of years for the natural stream complexity to return.

Salmon need our help now to recover their native populations. Our habitat development team uses state of the art ‘Rosgen’ designs and theory to rebuild stream complexity. We put in rock veins and root wads to take the pressure off eroding banks, to recruit gravel and develop deep pools, we place compression rock as resting and feeding areas for fish, place spawning gravel and plant native vegetation for bank cover.

Legislature enacted forest protection laws in Oregon (1972) and Washington (1976). These attempts were major improvements to the old practices, but fell short of their objective. Today Coho, Chinook and Steelhead are on the verge of extinction. We have to create a balance between the natural and economic economies in commercial forestland.

The signs of over-grazing were prevalent in the Tualatin Plains, south of Portland in 1848. By 1860, 100,000 head of cattle owned by farmers in western Oregon and Washington had eliminated the native bunchgrasses over large areas of the interior valleys. Between 1860 and 1890, farmers converted the fertile lands west of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada mountains to cultivated crops. As a result, cattle and sheep were forced to move to open-range grazing in the public grasslands of the intermountain region east of the Cascade Mts. Because this area tended to be arid, herds were attracted to riparian areas that

bordered streams and wetlands.

With their decrease came an increase in sheep herds. By 1900, sheep outnumbered cattle in most western states. The small, high desert town of Shaniko, Oregon, earned the name ‘The Wool

Capital of the World’ in 1903.

The conservationist John Muir referred to the huge numbers of grazing sheep as ‘hoofed locusts’. Shepherds had a habit of setting fire to the forests to improve pasture for the herds. This process removed shrubs and brush and stimulated growth of forage for the sheep. ‘In the Yakima basin, fires were so extensive that the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that their effects would destroy normal watershed function and reduce summer flows, threatening the supply of water for irrigation.’ (Salmon without Rivers)

A law passed by Congress in 1891 allowed Pres. Benjamin Harrison to create federal forest reserves. This was an attempt to safeguard the natural resources of public land. Ranchers disputed this law heavily. In 1894, the Dept. of the Interior tried to end all grazing on reserves; the army refused to patrol them and western stockmen vigorously protested the exclusion of cattle and sheep. The result was a change in national policy.

In 1899 our government issued permits for grazing cattle in most of the reserves with sheep excluded except in Oregon and Washington. These were early attempts to control grazing on

public land. Outside of federal forest reserves the use of range land was uncontrolled and overgrazed.

Irrigation diversions were another problem for salmon. For example, at the turn of the century salmon swam the waters of the Umatilla River near Boardman, OR. Irrigation diversions in the Umatilla River channeled salmon and steelhead as they migrated downstream toward the sea, and sent them into ditches where they were carried into a farmer’s field to die. ‘By 1904, farmers were diverting so much water from the Umatilla River that at times its lower reaches ran dry. Juvenile salmon that made it past the diversions found their way blocked by a dry riverbed. Chinook salmon disappeared from the Umatilla not long after the last big run in 1914.’ (Salmon Without Rivers)

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Culverts have been around since the development of roads. Installed to carry water as it passes under the roadway, culverts enhanced road travel and prevented many washouts. They were built for convenience, to control the water, so the stream wouldn’t wash out the roadway and traffic could pass by unhindered. When culverts were installed little consideration was given to fish passage and most culverts in fish bearing streams, blocked the up stream migration of adult salmon, preventing them from using upper watershed areas for spawning and rearing of juveniles.

Culverts made crossing a waterway more convenient.  There are many different designs of culverts; high density polypropylene and bottomless culverts.  Culverts made of concrete and box culverts. Culverts are blockages to salmon passage for a number of reasons. Most are a long concrete chute funneling little or no water volume in summer months and a torrential amount in the winter months. Many are narrow and push a volume of water. For the salmon passing thru a culvert is like trying to swim upstream thru a garden hose. Culverts can be up to 200’ long. Fish have to jump into the chute,

swimming fast for the other end before they can rest. The fish get battered by the concrete, flushed by the water volume, and have no resting areas within the culvert.

When people started to think about the culverts being blockages to fish they thought every thing was ok if they could get the adult upstream. The juveniles need to be considered to. After hatching in the Spring waters of the upper tribs., young fry move down stream into larger bodies of water as Summer conditions create low water levels up stream By late Fall when water volumes increase they migrate back up stream to waters of their birth and imprint with the area, before smolting and traveling to the ocean. This process takes 14 to 28 months. Culverts that allowed the adult fish access prove impassable to the small fish. They imprint with waters below the culvert and will spawn there upon return to fresh water as adults.

The best culvert for salmon emulates a creek bottom and is more like a bridge than a culvert.

Installing culverts that allow fish passage is high priority for Fish First.

(call Dan Balch 360-225-7388),

(call Mike Moss 360-225-8476),

(call Hugh Barrett 360-263-8588),

(call Cindy Morgan 360-263-3104)

(call Dan DuPuis - 360-247-5255)

By Dick Doi