Salmon can move again in the Big Creek

[Editor]

Removing an artificial barrier on the Big Creek may allow the return of historic fishing runs.

Reported by
By CASSANDRA PROFITA
The Daily Astorian, Oregon.

Many decades ago, to protect a mainline logging road from flooding, a section of Knappa's Big Creek was moved off its historic streambed and into a new channel blasted out of bare basalt.

Safely out of the road's way on Hampton Affiliates property, the creek hurtled through the rock-walled chute about six miles above Big Creek Hatchery.

The chute created a velocity barrier for the fish. The water was flowing so fast, it stopped salmon and trout from swimming through and accessing 11 miles of spawning grounds and rearing habitat above.

"Through fish monitoring we did through the watershed council, we determined that chute was an impediment to upstream migration of adult salmon and steelhead," Henderson said. "It was a barrier to up and downstream migration of juvenile fish in almost all stages."

This summer, a project coordinated by Hampton and the Nicolai-Wickiup Watershed Council used more than $388,000 to realign the mainline logging road, install two bridges, block off the chute and move the stream back to its historic channel.

The project lifted the barrier to valuable fish habitat above the hatchery, and could yield a major boost in natural fish production on the creek.

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