Little North Fork

Press Release October 2001

When landowners work in voluntary cooperation with state agencies and local watershed councils to improve salmon habitat, it's a win-win situation, for people and fish. That concept lies at the heart of the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds, initiated in 1997. But it's more than just a lofty goal. The Lower Nehalem Watershed Council, Longview Fibre Company (LFCo) and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) recently helped put it into practice, on the ground, in the Nehalem basin: they placed over 90 logs in the stream and the floodplain along 1.4 miles of the Little North Fork of the Nehalem River, up near Hamlet.

"We're providing something the stream should have, but doesn't have," according to Michele Long, an ODFW biologist who serves as Watershed Council Liaison and worked on the Little North Fork project. "Large woody debris is the skeleton of a stream. It performs many functions: it changes water velocity, creates new habitat, disperses materials evenly-it generates a complex spider web of domino effects, acting throughout a stream ecosystem. Without large woody debris, streams lose habitat and species diversity; they become simplified, just moving water like storm drains."

The project area encompasses especially productive Coho habitat that falls on LFCo land. Jay Holland, LFCo Coast Tree Farm Manager, appreciates that the work will "create and enhance habitat." In keeping with the timber industry's commitment to the Oregon Plan, Holland supports such projects, and might even have carried out the Little North Fork project on his own-"but not to the same scale. We can do much more with OWEB (Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board) matching funds," Holland stated. In addition to the technical expertise ODFW provided, Holland noted the agency's help with the permitting process. But it was the Lower Nehalem Watershed Council's participation that pushed the project forward. "They're the mechanism to access grant money," said Holland. "On this project they were also the binding force that kept it going."

Maggie Peyton, Coordinator for the Upper and Lower Nehalem Watershed Councils, agreed with Holland's assessment. "We're the grease: we make things work when otherwise they wouldn't happen," she said. "No one else is mandated to do habitat work; it's been identified as a need, and we're the ones who try to fill that need. It's strictly voluntary, and we're the networkers." Peyton stressed the fact that the Lower Nehalem Watershed Council is not a state agency, but a local grassroots organization. "We bring stakeholders and agencies together," she said. "Our involvement varies from project to project. Here, we're the managers; other times we're the sponsors. We also have projects in the works where we'll be entirely responsible."

For the Little North Fork project, Peyton drafted the grant proposal, with the help of Holland, ODFW employee Mike Weston, and Council volunteers; together they crafted a package combining $27,829.00 from OWEB and $17,425.00 worth of donated time and materials. OWEB, which gets its money from lottery proceeds and Federal sources, funded its portion of the grant this past winter. Planning proceeded from there, including Long's designation of placement sites along the Little North Fork. Gustafson Logging, an LFCo logging contractor, harvested the heavy hemlock trees during the first week of September, from LFCo land. Gustafson hauled the roughly 90 logs, between 26 and 70 feet long and averaging 30 inches in diameter, and piled them in five stacks near the work area. On September 10 and 11, Quality Timber Cutting used a rubber tired grapple skidder to transport logs from the staging area to access points, and Euchre Mt. Construction used a D7 cat and an excavator-"pretty heavy machines," noted Holland-to place the logs under Long's direction. Leonard Schmidlin, another LFCo logging contractor, brought hay and mulched the exposed area.

So far, the project has taken six full days. And there's still more work to do: volunteers will plant a mixture of native species along the stream this coming winter, Schmidlin will plant grass, and monitoring will continue for at least three years. The benefits should be immediate.

"The area is naturally dynamic," Long noted. "If we get a typically wet winter, we should start seeing changes this year. We're trying to help the stream restore it's own natural processes. We hope this is the last time we need to intervene, in this way, at this site."