Current private forestland buffer along the Clearwater mainstem should be 200 ft wide under shoreline of the state regs. So whatever fish benefit that may come from the NC purchase along the mainstem would be from no timber harvest beyond that distance. I'd need to see a map to assess the potential increase in protection to tributary streams. Whether or not it's worth $7 million to lock it up, time will tell. I wouldn't expect the fish to notice much difference.

I like this line of thinking. Of course the map review is of utmost importance. A two hundred foot setback is possibly enough in flat or semi-flat land, but wouldn't do much in steep terrain or above-surface wetland areas. It would be great, IMO, to review for necessary set backs and then sell the land behind to recoup some of the money spent and use it to further the cause elsewhere.

edit: fingers having out-of-body experience

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.

Fishbear, I agree that the basin was "NUKED" by logging over the years. I am to young to be around when this all happened. I recently fished with 2 of my uncles who grew up fishing this system in the 60's, 70's and 80's. This was after or during the major logging. They talk of massive returns of fish all the way into the 80's. If logging had such a devastaing impact why did it take 30 to 40 years to see the major declines in run size? I will not disagree that logging and road building has not had an impact on the area.

Digdeep,

Fishbear is correct in his decription of actions and results in the CW drainage. I intended to comment on your post yesterday but neglected to do so.

Productivity of the CW basin, like most others, is severely compromised by logging, probably about an 80% reduction, but that is a very rough guesstimate. Fish production was on a serious downward spiral by the early 1970s. A friend of mine ran for DNR Commissioner in 1972 against Bert Cole (the logger's friend) based almost entirely on the rape DNR was committing on the CW state lands. It did not take 30 or 40 years for the effects of logging on fisheries to become apparent to observers who were taking a closer look than your uncles, no offense intended toward them, as they no doubt enjoyed good fishing for a long time even as runs were spiraling downward.

Most serious mass wasting events begin 6 or more years after a site is logged because it takes time for the stump root systems to degrade to the point where they are no longer capable of holding soil together.

Sg

SG - To answer your earlier question, yes there were once spring/summer Chinook in the Clearwater. The river upstream of the Snahapish was where the spawning habitat was. It was a decent population in the 60's and 70's. If memory serves there were about 100 or so adults, roughly, that made up the annual Clearwater spawning poluations during the 80's and 90's. There may be a few left today but my guess is there are years where zero spring/summers show up.

There were some corker slides during the 1970's and 80's associated with the last of the large active timber cuts and new road building efforts. The Solleks took several big hits back then.

The Suzie Creek slide in 1990 was a biggie. It absolutely nailed the upper river. The sediment loading that occurred completely altered the habitat conditions in the upper 10 miles of river. They remain altered today. Stability of the upper river was once a feature of this system. It may take another 100 years and 10x as many NC purchases to ever see those conditions again.

The Solleks was really hammered in 1994 with a major slope failure off an old landing very near the upper end of the anadromous reach. The slide was so massive it actually came down the hill, through the river and slid up the other side. For weeks the Solleks was impounded until flows found a surface exit and then eroded the "dam" that was created. Sediment from the Solleks soon entered the Clearwater and began "piling up" for 10 years or so. There are still massive gravel bars between the mouth of the Solleks and Copper Mine Bottom that "appeared" in the years following the 1994 event.

There were many people, contracors, timber companies, etc. that made their fortunes off the timber harvested from private and public lands in the Clearwater River for a solid 30 years. Those folks are now retired, their estates passed on, whatever. The legacy of that era is passed on to us the public in the form of a damaged resource.

In my opinion the Clearwater is a case study for how NOT to manage a watershed. Its study should be required learning for every fish biologist, hydrologist, forester, ecologist, etc., in training.

In my opinion the NC purchase on the Clearwater is exactly the kind of place to put our limited recovery funds. The problem is we need to up the ante by about 10x or more.

FB -
I worked for WFDW on that system in 1980's running a scoop trap counting fish coming out of that basin. Did a lot of work there. Fished it since then now and then. Habitat conditions look more or less the same now as then - maybe better, but not all that bad compared to Pugetropolis. Protections are better now then they were back then.

Estimates of habitat capacity are just that and unless there are better data, and unless you can account for the the ocean, in-river nets, and all of the other factors nobody can really say for sure what is what. Salmo - I don't agree that there is 80% less capacity, but I have no data to argue that point, so whatever. That would be a good topic for another thread. I do think that the NC purchase won't likely have a big impact on the fish production in that basin. Harvest , hatchery plants, etc. are not going to change with the purchase of the land. Practices next to the river are not going to be much different than with the private forest ownership. Time will tell.

Thanks for the additional details Fishbear. Didn't know about those springers.

Milt, I'm just going off the best SWAGs I know of for the OP that averages 20% of historic productivity, which is still twice as much as the 10% in PS systems. Thank Teddy Roosevelt for Olympic Nat'l. Park, or it would be hammered just as bad as PS.

Sg

+1

A post I put on a different thread, for what it's worth...



Fish on...

Todd

Still a few kicking around, miraculously, in the limited reaches that permit stream-maturation... but multiple slides visible from space are a bad sign. If/when I get rich, purchase of streamside habitat will be cause #1, if only for the resident Oncorhynchus due to seed the next population. Hats off to the NC.

Wow! It's an Ickstream Steel drive-by. You're Ick posts are way better than your "Todd is our Master" posts; you should post more often Andrew, you have a lot to offer.

Ike

Thanks, Ike. I suppose when one adopts multiple monikers he should expect to be mis'ID'ed occasionally, but to clear the misnomer once and for all, TIOM ~= IS. However, it should be noted that IS fully supports the actions of TIOM, and that both TIOM and IS are working with O. mykiss (in different capacities) with intent to improve things eventually. This may or may not involve cowboy hats and pinkies in the jam.