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CLEAR Temp: 39 °F Wind: S at 4 mph Tuesday, January 28, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend May 28, 2002 Tim Burnett, left, wildlife biologist with Boise Cascade, and Chuck Fustish, state fisheries biologist, look at salmon-habitat improvements in Flat Creek that developed with the help of a few well-placed logs. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven A few logs transform dead stream Nature turns Flat Creek from a rushing water slide into a coho salmon nursery teeming with fish By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Chuck Fustish peers into a long stretch of a small Elk Creek tributary called Flat Creek and marvels at what nature has done with a little help from a few well-placed logs. The creek once charged past Fustish and over a sheet of flat, bare bedrock that appeared more like a water slide than a wild coho salmon stream. But that stretch now sports cool water ambling over soft gravel and into quiet pools on both sides of an artificial logjam built into the creek less than two years ago. And all around, little finger-sized fish dart in and out of the shadows — infant wild coho sniffing clean water and snacking on new insects. "This used to be the most treacherous part of the creek, just fast water over bedrock," says Fustish, a state fisheries biologist. "Now, it’s prime coho rearing habitat and adult spawning habitat. "The coho are all over the place here now. Just look at them." This is the new-look Flat Creek, where state biologists, a large timber company and a local fly-fishing club pooled efforts to turn a dead stream into one teeming with salmon — all for just $9,000 and a lot of free muscle. Boise Cascade Co. joined forces with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to design and install eight log structures on the creek, which flows into Elk Creek upstream of the Elk Creek Dam site and about 6.5 miles from the creek’s confluence with the Rogue River. Flat Creek is a known producer of some wild coho, which are a threatened species. But it flowed chiefly over flat bedrock and large cobbles that left it a hostile stream for these fish. It contained no pools in which juvenile salmon could hide, and no moveable rocks in which salmon could dig their egg nests, called redds. "It was so bad that the salmon needed a jackhammer to dig a redd in it," Fustish says. Biologists designed a series of logjams that tapped into the creek’s natural gravel mines by enticing the gravel to spill onto portions of the creek and make it more salmon-friendly. The trick was to cause high winter creek flows — the flows that gather upstream gravel and carry it downstream — to slow down occasionally and let the rolling gravel settle. "It’s there naturally," Fustish says. "All you need to do is slow down the flood flows and it’ll deposit the gravels." In just two winters, stretches of once-barren bedrock are now strewn with gravel that contain spawning spots for adult fish and generate insect life that the coho offspring can eat. The altered flows also have scoured several deep pools that make Flat Creek less flat and more like other spawning streams in the upper Rogue Basin. And the habitat should get better and better. "It’s a stopgap, a Band-Aid that will help take care of this creek until it can do something for itself," says Tim Burnett, a Boise Cascade wildlife biologist who worked on the project. Boise Cascade picked up the tab and provided the logs and equipment, while ODFW and Boise Cascade employees were joined by Rogue Flyfishers Association volunteers in completing the work. The ODFW and Boise Cascade are conducting some studies in an attempt to quantify the stream’s improvements, Burnett says. The structures were all made from low-quality logs fastened against standing trees or boulders with thick ropes made from hemp. Federal guidelines ban the use of cables in such stream-improvement projects because the cables are not natural materials. Burnett expects the structures to survive most winter flooding conditions and continue to generate better habitat conditions for coho. "I think these will last a long time," Burnett says. "But if we get a 100-year (flood) event, then all bets are off." The agency and the timber company have teamed up on similar projects along the upper stretches of Grave Creek, which flows into the Rogue near Galice. This public-private venture on behalf of salmon is a local example of the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds at work, ODFW spokeswoman Meghan Collins says. The plan focuses on voluntary projects like this one, and there are similar such habitat-improvement projects dotting much of Western Oregon’s salmon habitat, Collins says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy webmaster feedback A D V E R T I S E R S