BLM OR-WA, Tobe Creek Large Wood Project, Alsea Watershed and Acquatic Habitat Restoration

The project will fund construction of multiple log jam structures in Tobe Creek, designed to foster pool scour and bedload accumulation and to provide overhead cover and obstruct flows during winter flows. There are accumulations of bedload at these remaining sites, indicating gravel recruitment and the potential to restore floodplain interaction through strategic wood placement. Scour will increase summer pool surface area and depth, supporting coho rearing and adult migration. Log structures will provide complex cover. Bedload accumulation will increase winter floodplain interaction and provide slack-water winter refugia for juvenile coho emerging from spawning habitat upstream. The objective of this project is to improve fish habitat and watershed function in Tobe Creek and other watershed restoration projects in the Alsea River Basin. The projects would benefit Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed Oregon coast coho salmon populations, in addition OC chinook salmon and OC steelhead would benefit. Habitat objectives are a) to increase channel complexity and b) reduce sediment transportation rates. Achieving the objectives would move conditions in the drainage toward recovery of anadromous habitat.