Habitat Project

Middle Upper Grande Ronde River Phase I

The project is located in the Upper Grande Ronde Subbasin along the Grande Ronde River between RM 156 and RM 158 and included 0.30 miles of lower Fly Creek, a tributary. The Project reach is located on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest within the Upper Grande Ronde River Atlas Biological Significant Reach UGR15. Fish habitat suitability within the Project reach has been significantly affected and suppressed by physical alterations of the river and its associated floodplain (splash dam logging, mining, and road construction) that have contributed to severely degraded habitat conditions. Problems include homogenous, high energy, plane bed riffle-run channel types with a lack of large pool habitat, channel complexity, peripheral habitat bed armoring and alteration of sediment sorting and coarsening of streambed gravel, altered groundwater and hyporheic function, and degradation of riparian and wetland plant communities. Restoration objectives include increasing or enhancing large pools, side channels, complexity, and physical and hydraulic diversity. Project actions promote diverse geomorphic processes, features, and patterns of sediment movement, sorting and deposition in stream channels and floodplain. Additional objectives include physical, geomorphic, and ecologic conditions that buffer diurnal and seasonal water temperature fluctuations and allow access to cold water spring sources, and to re-connect floodplain and side channels to provide off channel habitat, natural flooding Actions will reinvigorate riparian vegetation establishment to support overall bank stability, particularly in locations where habitat structures have been installed and along banks with increased hydraulic roughness that are susceptible to erosion from loss of root mass.