Contract History:

This project is implemented as part of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests (NPCNF)/Nez Perce Tribe (NPT) restoration partnership.  This project represents a merger of two Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and NPT restoration projects, Slate Creek Watershed Restoration (2007-064-00)  and Lower South Fork Clearwater Restoration (2010-003-00).  The restoration partnership has been ongoing in the basin since 1996 and this project unification greatly increases the geographic area covered, and enhances the administrative and financial efficiency in order to maximize the direct benefit to fish and wildlife.

The goal of the project is to restore the physical and biological characteristics of the watersheds to provide quality habitat for anadromous and resident fish species that support the historical, cultural, and economic practices of the Nez Perce Tribe.  As part of ongoing partnerships, the Nez Perce Tribe continues to implement habitat improvement projects to address primary limiting factors that will increase the productivity and viability of the LSFC/ Slate Creek watersheds' Endangered Species Act (ESA) threatened steelhead and Chinook salmon populations along with associated benefits to several other focal and secondary species.  This project’s primary focus is to implement habitat improvement and protection projects to address limiting factors identified in regional guidance documents including: Clearwater Subbasin Plan (2003), Salmon Subbasin Plan (2005), South Fork Clearwater River Landscape Assessment (USFS 1998), NOAA Recovery Plans (2017a and 2017b), and USFWS Bull Trout Recovery Plan (2015).  Limiting factors identified within these guiding documents and that are addressed through restoration efforts include increased water temperatures, increased sedimentation, cattle grazing effects, aquatic habitat connectivity, and exotic, invasive plants.  

Historically, the cost share for this project has been contributed by the NPCNF who provides at least a 20% match including cash and in-kind contributions for environmental compliance, contract preparation, administration, and technical oversight.  In recent years, the Bureau of Land Management and Idaho Transportation Department have also become active partners and have been and will also be submitting cost share contributions during FY22 and upcoming years.

In FY22, we will work in partnership with the USFS to install BDAs and/or PALS in Castle Creek and Merton Creek to help create habitat features and allow the stream to access its natural floodplain. In 1993, a flood event in the Castle Creek drainage caused a debris jam that resulted in flooding and infrastructure failures at the USFS Castle Creek Work Center; the solution at the time was to relocate, straighten, and confine the stream channel while adding roughly 70 hardened boulder and/or log grade control structures to hold the channel in place. Work in this contract will add BDAs to improve habitat conditions in the straightened channel (see WE E). The BDAs take some time to accumulate sediment and restore habitat as they are a form of process-based, passive restoration.  Ten BDAs were installed here in 2021 per USFS small NEPA and permits, and more will be installed and maintained this coming year in 2022.  

This contract also includes a culvert replacement design on Castle Creek, just downstream of these BDAs at the Highway 14 crossing, and will address passage to this habitat. The two sites are close in proximity; see map attached to this contract in CBFish. They are separate implementation projects located in very close proximity.  

Castle Creek was also identified in the FY12 passage inventories conducted by the Nez Perce Tribe as a fish bearing stream with a passage barrier blocking access to habitat (primarily for migration and overwintering of adult and juvenile steelhead), and it is now in the queue to be replaced in the near future in partnership with the USFS and ITD.  The current structure consists of two 36 inch shotgun culverts with an average bankfull width of nearly 11.5 feet.  The structures, 43 foot long circular steel pipes, hold no substrate and are significantly undersized creating a passage barrier for both adult and juvenile steelhead as high velocity barriers at high flows and low flow barriers during low summer flows. Environmental DNA samples taken in 2019 have confirmed resident rainbow/ steelhead are present in Castle Creek, further highlighting the need for restoration in this stream. Concurrent with habitat improvements upstream, a partnership project between the ITD, USFS, and NPT (through other funding sources) is also designing a culvert replacement at the Highway 14 crossing to make the newly created habitat accessible to all aquatic life stages.  Implementation is estimated to be in 2024 or 2025 with the USFS as the lead agency. The design is being funded by USFS; costs associated with this design work element in this contract are for NPT project manager oversight, field visits, and design review.

Merton Creek has also been identified as an opportunity for habitat restoration in the recent Hungry Ridge EIS (2020*) as a stream that has been altered by past land management activities in need of increasing riparian vegetation and improving fish habitat. Both Castle Creek and Merton Creek are designated steelhead critical habitat.  Adding simple instream structures to Merton Creek, such as BDAs (see WE F), will help restore floodplain connectivity, streamflow regimes, and aggrade the incised channel to increase habitat diversity and population diversity, a primary effort of Action Agencies identified in the 2020 CRS Biological Assessment.  The USFS has completed the environmental compliance and will be the lead agency on these projects.

In FY22, work also includes culvert and fence maintenance along with continued planning and coordination for next year's projects and out-year habitat improvements. Pit tag arrays will be maintained as they monitor fish passage through a suspected partial velocity barrier site in the South Fork Clearwater River in preparation for a potential velocity barrier removal project in partnership with the USFS in out years.  NPT Watershed personnel will also continue an inventory of stream crossings throughout the Lower South Fork Clearwater River watershed in order to identify and prioritize fish passage barriers and associated risks to aquatic species.  

*Hungry Ridge Restoration Project, Final Environmental Impact Statement (Final EIS). Salmon River Ranger District, Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. September 2020. Available online: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=43661