Biologists are finding that “designed wood structures” positively affect stream complexity and fish habitat. Photos © Ian Reid.
It’s a familiar scene in many Pacific Northwest forests: A diesel engine belches blue smoke as a braided steel choker tightens around the substantial trunk of a Douglas-fir. With a few snarls of a chainsaw and steady tension on the cable, the once-towering tree now lies horizontal, sprawled across a meandering stream.
But in contrast to logging protocols used as recently as twenty years ago, the tree is not dragged from the stream, loaded on a truck and hauled to the sawmill. Instead, it is left in place to help restore dwindling salmon populations by improving their freshwater habitats.
Large wood placement has become one of the most popular types of stream restoration methods in the Pacific Northwest. Although there remain some detractors, most science findings support keeping or placing logs in streams, finding that instream wood creates high-quality spawning and rearing habitats for salmon and steelhead. A 2003 review of stream restoration case studies by German and American scientists reported, “the growing recognition that large wood is an important component in stream systems worldwide has caused researchers and managers to examine the potential for stream restoration or rehabilitation by adding large wood to streams.”
The need for stream restoration stems from more than a century of land management policies that included intensive streamside logging and salvage of instream wood after floods, called “de-snagging.” Although savvy anglers have known for hundreds of years that instream wood provides structure that attracts fish, forest managers previously thought logjams in Pacific Northwest streams could block migrating salmon from reaching their upstream spawning grounds. Some physical scientists also believed instream large wood could increase flood damage. They thought the best way to minimize flood impacts was to remove channel roughness, thereby quickly getting rid of floodwaters. Such reasoning fueled an aggressive campaign to remove wood from Northwest streams, both directly through stream cleanout and indirectly through riparian silvicultural practices.
As one early U.S. Forest Service ranger recommended, “the obvious solution to prevent damage [from flooding] would be to remove [large trees] from the stream bank and channel. Management must foresee this potential problem and prescribe treatments over a period of time to reduce this resource damage to the streams. A prescription to protect streams from undergoing damage would be to harvest the large old-growth timber from the stream bank and convert to stands of alder, maple and willow.” In many places, managers heeded this advice and tried in earnest to save the forest from itself. A walk along many Pacific Northwest salmon-bearing streams today reveals crumbling stumps, many more than five feet across, lining the banks as tangible reminders of the not-so-distant past.
But in the 1990s, emerging science helped change management philosophies. While researchers at Oregon State University and other major land grant universities still quibble over the natural timing, frequency, arrangement, amount and sources of large wood delivery to streams, it is now nearly indisputable that instream large wood is the single most important habitat element in many stream types and for several native fishes. Logs in streams form beds of spawning gravel, create scouring pools and channels, provide cover and stabilize stream banks.
The Forest Service signaled a major change in its policies with publication of its 1990 and 1993 informational brochures: “Fish in the Forest: Large Woody Debris in Streams—a New Management Approach to Fish Habitat” and “Large Woody Material, the Backbone of a Stream.” The tide turned as crews and contractors shifted from years of taking the wood out of streams to putting it back in. The pendulum swung further in 1994 with the adoption of the federal Northwest Forest Plan that transformed riparian zones and stream channels—once denuded and used as bulldozer skid roads—to sacrosanct “no-touch” buffers nearly devoid of active management.
LOGGER, RESTORER, TEACHER
Mark Villers understands the value of stream restoration. The owner-operator of Blue Ridge Timber Cutting in Coos Bay, Oregon—a recovering coastal timber town where “I Love Spotted Owls…Fried” bumper stickers are still a common sight—Villers is a seasoned logger who estimates he has cut nearly 100 million board feet of mostly old-growth timber during his lifetime. He is also an avid outdoorsman who has a taste for fresh salmon and elk steak.
But over the years, the Oregon coast native observed once-productive salmon runs plummet in coastal streams. A self-described “lousy” fisherman, Villers wanted to help bring Pacific salmon back to their heyday, when so many fish choked the rivers that even he could catch one.
Ten years ago, when the field of stream restoration was still in its early stages, he began bidding on restoration contracts. A carpenter and millwright, Villers had the experience the job required. (He is also an ordained pastor who wears his gospel on his chest: a T-shirt emblazoned with “Rootwads Rule” on the front and “Streams Plus Wood Equals Fish” on the back.) Since then he has completed 113 fish habitat enhancement projects on four national forests in western Oregon, and on private, state and Bureau of Land Management lands in southwestern Oregon. The list is still growing.
Villers delivers his restoration message to the media, landowners and concerned citizens, and he rarely lets a teaching opportunity slip by. A few years ago, while driving down a remote Forest Service road, he spotted a hitchhiker carrying an oversized backpack and stopped to give him a lift. The young man explained he left his North Dakota home to come out West and protest the salvage timber sale planned after the 2002 Biscuit Fire on the Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest. Villers showed the would-be protester burned logs from the Biscuit Fire lying decked along the road. He told him that the logs, hauled from the salvage area, would be placed with minimal damage to the environment in the adjacent stream to improve fish habitat.
Villers was a little shorthanded on a nearby stream restoration job and suggested his rider sign on for a temporary stint. The traveler couldn’t handle the rigors of setting chokers and dragging heavy cable through head-high brush, and only lasted two days. But his perspective about logging, timber salvage and active forest management was transformed. He even posed with Villers and the rest of the crew on their heavy equipment so he could send a picture to his friend, a member of the Earth Liberation Front who was in jail at the time.
SOLUTION OR BAND-AID?
Large wood placement remains one of the most common types of stream restoration projects. Other treatments include restoring fish passage; stabilizing, relocating and decommisioning roads; creating off-channel floodplain habitats; and planting native riparian trees and shrubs.
Between 1995 and 2003, more than 2,700 miles of Oregon’s riparian areas were rehabilitated, according to a recent Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board monitoring report. The report found that more than $8 million was spent in 2002 and 2003 on instream restoration projects in Oregon, including national forests. Dave Heller, regional fisheries program leader for the Forest Service in Portland, estimated that national forests in Oregon and Washington have averaged $7 to 8 million per year on aquatic restoration investments, with up to 30 percent of the total budget (about $2.1 to 2.4 million) being spent on large wood placement projects.
A growing body of evidence shows that the investment in stream restoration projects is paying off in improved wild salmon numbers. A 1997 North American Journal of Fisheries Management paper reported that adding large wood to a western Washington stream increased juvenile coho salmon winter abundance and smolt production. Likewise, a 2000 Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences paper found when large wood was added to two Oregon streams, juvenile coho salmon overwintering survival and abundance increased significantly. Because juveniles spend more than a year in fresh water, instream large wood is particularly important to coho salmon—a historically important but currently beleaguered species along Oregon’s coast.
While large wood restoration projects appear to be a positive step toward rebuilding wild Pacific salmon runs, they do have detractors. A presentation at a recent fisheries conference titled, “Large Wood Restoration in Oregon Streams: Biological Integrity or Photo Op?” accused such projects of being money pits, which usually lack monitoring and frequently produce no tangible results.
Some—often environmentalists or members of academia—have labeled large wood restoration projects as Band-Aids that treat symptoms but do not cure the ultimate causes of salmon declines, such as overharvest, habitat loss and degradation, urbanization, dams and hatchery practices. Occasionally, biologists and land managers are chastised by opponents for treating large wood placement as a panacea, rather than a means to the end of improving a suite of deficient aquatic habitat parameters. The notion of “just add logs and move on” does not sit well with some scientists and conservationists concerned with restoring watershed processes rather than engineering quick fixes.
A 1992 North American Journal of Fisheries Management paper criticized instream wood restoration projects on Forest Service lands for having a high failure rate during floods and failing to address upland watershed problems. Conversely, a 1998 article by Forest Service biologists published in the same journal presented opposite findings—that instream wood projects had relatively high durability during floods, especially in smaller streams, and suggested they can be a positive step toward restoring damaged watersheds.
Rich Nawa, staff ecologist for the Siskiyou Project environmental group and coauthor of the critical 1992 paper, concedes some of his views on instream wood projects have changed over the years. “Designed large wood structures, especially engineered debris jams using whole trees, can create stream complexity and benefit fish habitat,” he says. “Although these projects still often lack stringent monitoring, some [biologists] are learning from others’ research on what works and what doesn’t.”
Not all environmentalists are opposed to large wood restoration projects, however. Chip Dennerlein, former director of the Siskiyou Project and former Alaska Department of Fish and Game habitat director, has recently shown support for proposed large wood stream restoration projects on Forest Service land in southwestern Oregon, even if large trees have to be cut to provide the raw materials.
Other opponents have alleged large wood placement projects pose danger to boaters and block access to mining claims. Some have raised philosophical concerns of “trying to play God” by creating more fish for anglers to catch. While results vary depending on a variety of factors, there is general consensus among fish biologists that large wood projects can be designed to improve salmon production and protect private property and other resources. The courts seem to agree. Recently the Forest Service successfully defended its actions in a lawsuit in which the plaintiff claimed that upstream fish habitat structures were responsible for flood damage on downstream private property.
The methods used to position large wood in streams are as diverse as the salmon-bearing creeks and rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Horses, helicopters, cranes, winches, heavy equipment and chainsaws have all been used to place instream large wood. Villers opts for a combination of pulleys, cables, chains and a large flatbed truck he built called the “tree-puller.” He uses the device to move whole trees—some weighing close to 100,000 pounds—up to 1,000 feet away from a road. He says the technique minimizes damage to the riparian zone, but it’s slow, tedious work that requires packing heavy steel chains and shackles for backbreaking twelve-hour days. After being dragged to the stream, large wood is then positioned between standing trees along the stream bank to minimize movement during winter floods. Over time, spawning gravels will accumulate upstream of the newly placed wood, and pools can form downstream.
If current management guidelines prevail and fish habitats on Pacific Northwest public lands continue to recover, job security for stream restoration contractors may itself be endangered. The Northwest Forest Plan and its protection of riparian reserves should do much to ensure many of these streams recover on their own through a mixture of special riparian management areas and natural wood delivery over the next century.
By then, Villers will have created a living legacy. He has already witnessed the results of his hard work. Many of his projects have transformed stream channels that were previously scoured down to bedrock and devoid of fish. Now the waterways have gravel beds several feet deep and run red in the winter with spawning coho salmon. A large wood restoration project he participated in on the Siuslaw National Forest recently won an international prize for river restoration.
“Villers has consistently gone above and beyond the requirements for his contracts,” says Sue Richardson, Coos Bay BLM district manager. “He has passion for his work and the resources he is helping to restore.”
But if well-designed large wood restoration projects continue in Pacific Northwest forests—in combination with other watershed restoration principles and careful management of healthy streams—Villers may one day find himself out of work. If that happens, he will finally have time to go fishing. He may find his luck vastly improved; if stream restoration projects are no longer needed in the Pacific Northwest, there should be enough salmon around for even the unluckiest of anglers to finally catch one.