Pacific Rivers
Why restore Whychus Creek?
Historically, Whychus Creek was a mixture of narrow canyon stretches and stretches with broad, well vegetated meadows where the creek could spill over its banks. The biological importance of these large meadows was significant, especially considering all of the arid land surrounding them. The meadows provided diverse stream and side channel habitats for fish to spawn, rear, and hide. Streamside vegetation provided cover for wildlife and helped maintain cool stream waters. Nearby wetlands and bends in the creeks, called oxbows, were home to amphibians and songbirds. Only a small portion of the total length of Whychus Creek can provide this critical meadow habitat. Willow Springs Preserve is one of these special sections.
Today, this portion of Whychus Creek is disconnected from its surrounding meadow. Habitat within and along the creek is very basic, lacking the diversity that fish and wildlife need to thrive. Fortunately, the creek has not cut down so deep into its channel that it cannot move from its current position. In fact, the creek is already starting to elbow its way out of its main channel in several parts of the Preserve, creating new meanders.
Ultimately, the goal is to help return the creek to a healthy, biologically diverse condition and resilient condition capable of maintaining a diverse and self-sustaining set of fluvial and riparian processes that benefit an abundance of aquatic and terrestrial fish and wildlife species.
How is Whychus Creek being restored?
Instead of implementing restoration using large equipment to reshape the channel and surrounding floodplain, a much less invasive method is being employed. A small crew of young adults worked to install hand-built wood PAL and BDA structures. These structures were installed in the stream channel and in the adjacent floodplain. A highlight of this and similar projects is that they reduce design and implementation costs and allow natural stream processes to do much of the restoration “work.”
This minimizes economic and ecological risks associated with stream restoration implementation. A win-win-win.
