Possibly one of the most uninformed statements I have ever seen on this BB.

The Clearwater basin has been absolutley NUKED by logging and road building.

Most of the flat land was logged after WWII.

The steep ground (read upper basin) is mostly state trust lands and "managed" by WDNR. The upper basin was roaded and harvested in the 60's and 70's. This was the era of high lead logging... the real big towers, ridgeline to ridgeline logging, big skyline stuff. Not much thought given to riparian zones back then. I won't keep harping on the "good old days."

Suffice to say that once the big timber was gone, the profits taken out and the basin left bare, budget cuts left maintenance of the road system as an afterthought. That's when the fun began. Every major weather event that has hit the coast since then has resulted in plugged culverts, mass wasting, landslides, blowouts of epic proportion and... the loss of some incredibly pristine upper Clearwater River habitat that once supported healthy populations of summer steelhead and spring/summer chinook... not to mention the fall and winter timed salmonids that are trying to hang on.

An upper river channel of a defined, old growth riparian flood plain with stable spawning and rearing habitat was conveted, in the sapce of about 20 years, into a flip-flopping mess of a rapidly migrating river channel with hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of hillside sediment to try and choke down at every major weather event.

To this day there are slide events that start at the top, on an old landing or at a blocked cultert on some old abondoned spur road and don't stop till they deposit a "load" at the bottom which is typically a tributary to the river. For years the sediment will contribute material to the river... and then there will be another slide. You get the idea. That is what is actually happening in the Clearwater. I just wish the NC could have bought some of the upper basin before it got whacked.