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Saving Salmon: What Not to do with your Wetlands

Started by Bob Smalser, May 01, 2006, 06:50:35 PM

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Bob Smalser

Among the various species of Pacific Salmon that range the northern ocean rim from Japan, Russia and Alaska down to Northern California, the Coho or Silver Salmon is the feisty little guy that reaches the farthest upward along streams to avoid spawning among its larger cousins, often gaining well over 500 feet in elevation in a journey that can take months.  Accompanying the Coho on their trip from the sea are the much smaller Cutthroat Trout (really a salmon biologically), who range even farther than Coho, all the way upwards to the tiniest headwater rivulet.  Both species spend one or more years in fresh water before returning to the sea.  Given the natural and man-made obstacles on the way to that perfect spawning gravel, I remain amazed that any make it at all.



Our small piece of this is a 5-acre beaver pond  in the middle of our tree farm on the lower slopes of Green Mountain at about 500 feet elevation.   The main feeder stream for this pond, where the photo was taken, runs another half mile upward into adjacent state-owned forest, and dries up completely almost every summer.  Our beaver pond is the highest year-round fish habitat in the stream.



The original homesteaders spanned the pond's discharge stream in the 1940's with a log and rubble foot bridge that blocked fish passage in all but the highest rainfall years.  When they fished out the impounded Cutthroat and Coho, they stocked the pond with non-native Yellow Perch provided back then by the government.  These fish remain a problem even long after we've opened that rubble footbridge to native fish passage, as while perch don't prey on other fish, they compete with natives for scarce winter food resources.  We're not willing to poison the pond even temporarily to be rid of them, so children with fishing poles and earthworms are always welcome, as salmon prefer surface insects in summer.



Prime small-stream habitat here should look like our pond's feeder stream above....surrounded by mature forest for 100% shade and full of natural cedar blowdowns that provide cover and deep holes that retain water in our dry summers.



Unfortunately, our pond's discharge stream where it leaves our land looks more like this.  Our neighbor back in the 1960's surveyed off some building lots between the stream and our access road, and he bulldozed the stream clean and straight in several places, eliminating those deep, covered pools juvenile salmon require to survive their year in fresh water.



As it's still a full 4 miles to reach salt water at Hood Canal, of course it gets worse for the salmon.  Our discharge stream runs downward another half mile to a 17-acre impoundment lake created by damming the main salmon stream.  The fish ladder works as intended, but when my neighbor dammed the main stream back in the 1960's, the government stocked the lake with non-native Largemouth Bass, which recent studies show eat many of the juvenile salmon produced above the impoundment.  Such a large impoundment 4 miles up a salmon stream also raises the stream's summer water temperature to unhealthy levels.  Salmon require water no warmer than 68 degrees....at 70 degrees they go into stress....and at 76 degrees they die.



So while we prefer to keep natural things natural, here we intervene a bit every spring to insure sufficient salmon survive to continue the cycle.  With nets, buckets and coolers we make our way down our discharge stream beyond the last beaver dam to move fish from where they can't survive, to where they can, in numbers we figure our better habitat can support.



We use small kick nets made from seine stock for the small reaches and pools, and larger seines for larger pools.  The few remaining pools that won't dry up in summer are left undisturbed.



These juveniles are just large enough to transplant without injury.  The tradeoff is that in streams cleaned of large woody debris, the fish are also easier otter and raccoon prey, and if we wait too long in the season there are a lot fewer fish to transplant.

We've learned a lot since the slash and burn days of the 1960's, and until my neighbor, I and Mother Nature complete the rehabilitation of his section of our stream, we'll continue to move fish.


Bob

Woodhog

What a nice post.. hats off to you and your kin...

Too bad you couldnt buy those lots or have some organization buy them and put that section of the stream back to its original form...

Here they wouldnt get away with doing anything like that nowadays, very strict regulations that are sometimes a pain in the neck for forestry ops but you need them as a lot people would destroy everything and eventually themselves with a short term outlook based on $$$$$.

Nowadays I do see some glimmer of hope due to changes made in recent years . The present economic
conditions are a threat to doing a good job as operators cut corners to pay the bills...

Some of the things that happened around the woods were enough to make you wonder if the operators
were complete mental midgets or they just didnt care...

Keep up the good work...

Tom

Good Post, Bob.

Down in the Southern Reaches of the cotinent we don't see that kind of immagration of fish.  Most are happy to live out there lives where they are born.  The only traveler I can think of, right off hand, is eels.

I've read a lot of salmon and their travels but it's something that happens somewhere else.  Keep telling us about what you are doing.  I like to read stuff like this.

Bob Smalser

Quote from: Woodhog on May 01, 2006, 07:12:51 PM
Here they wouldnt get away with doing anything like that nowadays, very strict regulations that are sometimes a pain in the neck for forestry ops but you need them as a lot people would destroy everything and eventually themselves with a short term outlook based on $$$$$.


The best way to beat that here is to make the tree huggers pay their own way.

All my and some of my client's wetlands, stream buffers, too-steep slopes are put into trust using the local Land Trust to eliminate the tax burden.  And what I don't pay, somebody else has to.  Like the folks who pass these strict environmental laws.

You can generally establish a land trust to allow you do do anything you want to do to your land except subdivide it.  Some land trust providers are free of charge, and here if you add public access to the equation you can reduce your tax bill to 5% of residential instead of the 30% of residential you get classifying it as timberland.  As here you can have "public access" behind locked gates and without advertisement, it's all kinda moot.



Bob

JJackson

Excellent work Bob, I really enjoyed your post.  Thanks for helping those little guys.  Not many fish here in northern Arizona, a few lakes and streams and 1 big well known river, not many fish either.
BSc. FOR, Certified Arborist/Utility Specialist

Tillaway

Hi Bob,

Do you get chinook in that stream?  I am not real good at identifying chinook from coho at that size but the chinook are out migrating now.  So those little guys would be making tracks for the salt if they are chinook.
Making Tillamook Bay safe for bait; one salmon at a time.

crtreedude

To me, this is how things are done - forget the goverment. All you need is one person who wants to see things happen.

It you wait for the government, usually all the fish will be dead before they complete the study.
So, how did I end up here anyway?

sawguy21

I like what you are doing too. A lot of freshwater fishery has been irrepairedly damaged by people like your former neighbor who did not consider the consequences of their actions.
We have also seen unlawful introduction of non native species like perch and small mouth bass which really creates havoc. There are huge goldfish, actually a carp, in some of our lakes. The government in their infinate wisdom introduced shrimp to the lakes feeding the Columbia to enhance feed for the large lake trout and rainbows. Unfortunately, the shrimp compete for the available food and virtually destroyed the kokanee which is a small landlocked salmon and a source of food for the larger fish. DanG good eating for us too. ;D
I know it is a lot of work and I commend your efforts.
old age and treachery will always overcome youth and enthusiasm

SwampDonkey

As a former salmon (atlantic) angler and the grandson of a guide outfitter, now disceased, I know what human activities have done to ruin the 'Rhine of the New World', the Saint John River. Several hydro dams constructed from the 50's to the late 60's destroyed the migratory root of probably the largest strain of the Atlantic Salmon, and certainly once the largest migratory run of Atlantic Salmon in the Maritimes. For years the government mystified and tried to convince all of us involved in fishing and conserving salmon that the remaining runs of salmon could be maintained simply by trucking them over the dams for them to spawn and later to migrate their way down through 3 hydro-electric dams to find the sea again.  Only one of those dams has a fish way. ::) I suppose it was a great government job for students studying biology of salmon and counting their numbers at the salmon barriers. But, it did little to help the salmon beyond a few spawners that were lucky to return, but probably never return a second time. See our salmon do not die after spawning, they return to sea in the spring breakup. It's what we call 'black salmon' season in the early spring. Not many people would eat an over wintering salmon.

Anyway, it's good to see some folks actually rehabilitating sites instead of simply transporting/transplanting the fish who have no glimmer of hope to survive. Thanks for sharing.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

crtreedude

One thing I am seeing here in Costa Rica is that when the title changes hands, you have to have survey done which identifies how you can use your land - before you buy it.

For example, if you have a river, you cannot build a pigbarn on it. If you have dangerous slopes, you can not cut trees on them beyond a certain amount, etc.

The Costa Rican concept of land is different - you own the land - but you don't own the country. You cannot do things to your land that hurt others - or the fish, etc.

And the government has bulldozers if you were to try.  :o

It is terrible because of one person's shortsightedness, a fishery is destroyed.
So, how did I end up here anyway?

rebocardo


Bob Smalser

Quote from: Tillaway on May 01, 2006, 11:57:41 PM
Hi Bob,

Do you get chinook in that stream?  I am not real good at identifying chinook from coho at that size but the chinook are out migrating now.  So those little guys would be making tracks for the salt if they are chinook.

These streams are way too high and small for Chinook.   Further downstream in this creek there are Chum and Steelhead runs.

Quote from: crtreedude on May 02, 2006, 12:07:51 PM

The Costa Rican concept of land is different - you own the land - but you don't own the country. You cannot do things to your land that hurt others - or the fish, etc.


Good to hear that caring stewardship is now  being practiced extensively.

But in the 1960's that wasn't the case..... more out of ignorance than malice.  But that's spilled milk.  The effort today is toward fixing it, as it should be..

Bob

Tillaway

Those critters are flirting with an ESA listing down here.  I have a salmon stream in my back yard, about 30' from my bedroom window and can watch the Chinook spawn from any room in the back.  In fact their splashing around keeps my wife awake.  I also get Steelhead, and cutthroat trout as well, even an occasional spring Chinook, I had three show up the first year here.  I do not get any coho and the chum run used to be quite large until the highway department messed up the fish passage.

I used to be involved with the STEP group years ago but we don't really have the same program in this community.

The forest practice rules used to require removing large woody debris from streams to "improve fish passage".  After about 8 years of that they discovered that that was precisely not what you should do.  Now we are trying to recruit large woody debris for our streams.  The problem is the public sees the old legacy issues and poor or misguided practices of old and think they are still being done.

Oregon's healthiest runs of coho are ironically in streams with lakes.  These lakes get quite warm in the summer and have large populations of warm water game fish.  I think that research may find that beaver ponds and the like benefit coho.  Chinook don't hang around through the summer and head for the estuary just after they button up in the spring.  Steelhead can hang around for up to 4 years before out migrating to salt.  Coho stay just a bit over a year in freshwater before they smolt out. 
Making Tillamook Bay safe for bait; one salmon at a time.

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