The goal of this project is to address limiting factors by implementing restoration actions that protect and restore passage, flow, and habitat for anadromous fish and listed species in the John Day River Basin. This includes use of the John Day Basin Watershed Restoration Strategy to assist the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (CTWS), John Day Watershed Restoration Program with the ability to focus on implementing suites of restoration actions that will more effectively address priority-limiting factors.

The John Day River basin is within the CTWS ceded lands and supporting restoration efforts such as this project is an important part of maintaining cultural foods and fish populations. The mission of the CTWS Branch of Natural Resources Fisheries Department is to provide fisheries populations at harvestable levels for tribal members using information gained from research, management, production, and habitat programs while exercising co-management authority across ceded lands and usual and accustomed stations. In 1997, the Tribes established an office in the basin to coordinate restoration projects, monitoring, planning and other watershed activities on private and public lands. Once established, the John Day Basin Office (JDBO) formed partnerships with local agencies and stakeholders to implement restoration actions.

The John Day is the nation’s second longest free-flowing river in the contiguous United States and the longest containing entirely un-supplemented runs of anadromous fish. Located in eastern Oregon, the basin drains over 8,000 square miles, Oregon's fourth largest drainage basin, and incorporates portions of eleven counties. Originating in the Strawberry Mountains near Prairie City, the John Day River flows 284 miles in a northwesterly direction, entering the Columbia River approximately four miles upstream of the John Day dam. With wild runs of spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead, westslope cutthroat, and redband and bull trout, the John Day system is truly a basin with national significance.

The John Day Watershed Restoration Program (JDWR) objectives include removing fish passage impediments, increasing stream flow, increasing water quality, and enhancing riparian and stream channel recovery. Though benefits most readily apply to fish species, the cumulative effects apply to basin-wide watershed recovery.

Projects implemented by CTWS under this contract are intended to address limiting factors outlined in the CTWS John Day Basin Watershed Restoration Strategy, 2015. These projects respond directly to, and are also consistent with, tribal, state, and federal goals and objectives within the region's plans and programs. Previous projects of these types have demonstrated success in addressing limiting factors identified for salmonid production in the basin. They follow comprehensive assessments of the watershed, the John Day Subbasin plan and Mid-Columbia Steelhead Recovery Plan. The benefits are to entirely wild stocks and associated habitats. Each project utilizes standard design criteria, and was selected using an evaluation and prioritization process.

CTWS implements projects described in this contract and also works with partner agencies to complete landowner contacts, preliminary planning, engineering designs, permitting, construction contracting, and construction implementation phases. Most phases of project planning, implementation, and monitoring are coordinated with the private landowners and basin agencies, such as the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). The projects implemented through this program are strictly voluntary and the majority on private land, these multi-agency partnerships are essential to local support and private landowner involvement. Project efforts rely and build adaptively upon previous and ongoing activities.

Through the Accord period (2008-2017) with extension into 2018 active restoration projects have and will be implemented throughout the John Day Basin, through the CTWS JDWR under this contract. Actions going forward from 2015 will be prioritized using the CTWS John Day Basin Watershed Restoration Strategy.