The rivers and streams of the northern Blue Mountains are home to thousands of species. Restoring these vital waterways to their natural channels and floodplains improves habitat for fish and wildlife as well as their human neighbors.
By recreating natural features and processes, river restoration projects encourage rivers once constrained by development to reconnect with historic courses that can be seen in aerial photos from the early and mid-twentieth century. Some projects show benefits quickly with more fish utilizing restored pools, added woody debris and spawning gravels, while other benefits will take time. As stream and river channels are reconnected with floodplains, riparian vegetation will begin to flourish and groundwaters will recharge, helping restore wetlands supporting Columbia spotted frog, red winged blackbirds and a host of other wildlife.
Over the last twenty years both public and private land managers partnered with fish and wildlife specialists, tribes, engineers, and construction contractors to re-meander straightened channels, reconnect side channels, plant diverse vegetation and bury logs with their roots jutting into the water to create pools and hiding places for juvenile fish. The results - healthier rivers with improved conditions for aquatic and wetland species and less loss of soil through sediment washing into the streams.
Funding from federal and state agencies and nonprofit organizations, and private landowners is leveraged with fish and wildlife mitigation money from Bonneville Power Administration which uses a portion of hydroelectric dam rate payer fees to fund restoration benefitting threatened and endangered species like chinook salmon. These funds are focused on actions to help mitigate the impact of the dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers on Chinook salmon and other endangered species with much of the restoration work completed by local contractors.
Sarah Brandy oversees river restoration on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. She said, “There’s been a lot of effort on the Upper Grande Ronde, John Day and Wallowa rivers to offset impacts from dams. A lot of our stream restoration funding implements recovery for endangered fish like steelhead, Chinook salmon and bull trout.”
Projects on the La Grande Ranger District like Bird Track Springs and Sheep Creek, along with the proposed Meadow Creek project at the Starkey Research Station, restore rivers and streams previously altered for highway and railroad construction and cultivation of farmland.
Brandy said, “Most of the work we do in the Grande Ronde Basin is in the headwaters. There is a lot of science that supports the idea that restoring functions in the headwaters will create a positive cumulative impact on downstream water users.”
The Colobmia spotted frog is one of the many species that benefits from reconnected floodplains and aquatic restoration.
When possible, projects on the national forest and private land are co-stewarded with local Tribes. Katie Frenyea, watershed manager for the Nez Perce Tribe’s Joseph Office said within the Tribe’s 13-million-acre treaty territory, land ownership varies widely, spanning tribal, federal, state and privately-owned lands.
Frenyea said that similarly to civilizations throughout the world, the majority of human development, and thus private property within the Tribe’s treaty area, is concentrated along the rivers and adjacent valley bottoms. Improvements to fish passage, juvenile rearing, and adult spawning opportunities are often most effective when restoration efforts are focused within these populated river corridors.
Another reason for a focus on private land comes from the Wallowa and Upper Grande Ronde ATLAS Restoration Prioritization Framework designed by the Bonneville Power Administration. Most of the top priority projects identified by ATLAS are on private land and working with landowners, Frenyea said, benefits both fish habitat and private land management.
“The application of a roughened channel design, which has been widely implemented to restore fish passage at irrigation diversions and other structures on the Lostine and Wallowa rivers, not only results in improved aquatic passage but can also enhance reliability and efficiency of irrigation water delivery,” Frenyea said.
Motivation for landowners, outside of an altruistic effort to improve ecological functions and fish and wildlife habitat, varies. Sometimes losing acreage to erosion, flash flooding, or allowing the river to move where it chooses, attracts private landowner attention.
Within the city limits of Lostine, the river was previously straightened to mitigate flooding in the 1960s. Over the years, the Lostine River has eaten away so much land it created a cliff, imperiling a private property. John Nesemann, a landowner in the river bottom, said “Bank armoring in the 60s proved unsustainable and the river created a gorge.”
Following many years of planning, relationship building, and engineering, Frenyea and her colleague, watershed restoration specialist - Montana Pagano, oversaw a project that drastically changed the course of the river. Their work divided the channel it in two to spread out the energy eating away at the river’s eastern bank, moving the river into former channels, reconnecting the river with its floodplain and expanding the adjoining wetland.
John and Val Nesemann have lived on the river since 1998. Despite losing five acres to the river project, they could see the value the restoration would afford their neighbors to the east. They had also seen the success of the first river restoration in the Wallowa Valley on Doug McDaniels’ ranch in the mid-2000s. They understood that the river wanted to move.
Shortly after the project was completed, the river eased into the newly dug channels, moving away from the cut bank on the eastern shore.“The river wanted to come this way,” Val Nesemann said.
John and Val Nesemann collaborated with other neighbors, including the Pierri’s, to accomplish a large river restoration project along the Lostine River.
In all, 11 properties were involved in the restoration, with a bulk of it on the Nesemanns and their new neighbors, Anna and Joe Pierri, whose involvement made the design easier and added amenities - like better river access. “The river restoration made the landscape more dynamic and interesting and we gained an extra river,” Joe Pierri said.
“Wherever the river goes now, there is a place for it,” Anna Pierri said.
To learn more about river restoration efforts in the Northern Blues, email or for information on upcoming tours and webinars sponsored by the Northern Blues Forest Collaborative, email nbfc@wallowaresources.org.