The current project reach is located on private land along Chesnimnus Creek, a tributary to Joseph Creek, roughly 35 miles northeast of Enterprise, OR. The upstream property boundary abutts USFS land. The project reach has been straightened, incised, and confined, resulting in a lack of floodplain connectivity. Combined with a homogenous channel bed and seasonally limited stream flow, the project reach provides little quantity and quality habitat value to juvenile steelhead. Chesnimnus Creek is a designated Major Spawning Area for the Joseph Creek Steelhead Population - the most viable wild steelhead population within the Snake River Basin.

Engineered designs are being developed for the entire 5.5 mile property, which will be phased and implemented in four distinct Zones (1-4). This phase plans to implement Zone 4 - a 2.27-mile reach.

Project Objectives:

* Restore hydraulic processes, floodplain connection, and habitat structure
* Protect and enhancing existing riparian vegetation
* Restore riparian processes
* Protect and enhance existing beaver habitat and area of influence

Project partners include the design engineer and funding agencies, United States Forest Service (USFS), Trout Unlimited (TU), Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW), Wallowa Resources, US Fish & Wildlife Services (USFWS), Grande Ronde Model Watershed (GRMW), Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and the landowners.

According to the Wallowa Atlas, the most limiting life stages in the MCC1 Subwatershed (Joseph Creek & Tributaries) are incubation/emergence, and summer and winter rearing for steelhead. Riparian vegetation, floodplain condition, bed and channel form, instream structural complexity, and temperature are limiting factors to both steelhead and lamprey, with sediment also listed as a limiting factor for steelhead. The Wallowa Atlas development team noted that high sediment, water temperature, and habitat fragmentation are all factors contributing to incubation/emergence, and summer rearing limiting life stages, with particular concern regarding future temperature regime alterations. Another annotation states that winter rearing increased in priority due to concerns around losses of winter rearing habitat, specifically on private lands. Chesnimnus Creek is also 303(d) listed as “impaired” for both temperature and sediment (ODEQ 2022) - primary limiting factors to steelhead egg incubation and juvenile rearing life stages.

All restoration actions implemented through this project will aim to address priority limiting life stages and habitat factors identified in the Wallowa Atlas. The current condition of this reach, and much of lower Chesnimnus Creek, is significantly degraded from natural conditions. Due to decades of channel manipulation, levee construction, vegetation clearing, infrastructure placement, and other anthropogenic interventions, both the stream channel and floodplain have been simplified and disconnected. These land-use practices, combined with a substantial reduction in beaver populations within the watershed, have resulted in loss of off-channel habitat, floodplain connectivity, and native plant propagation. The lack of deep pool habitat, riparian trees and shrubs, and cold-water connection within the floodplain have also contributed to increased instream water temperatures. Rising stream temperatures, reduced stream flows, and changes in runoff timing associated with climate change have further limited habitat availability and suitability for steelhead. Higher water velocities due to channel straightening and simplification has especially degraded water quality during spring runoff through bank erosion, causing excessive fine sediment deposition in stream and channel scour. Channel confinement and high velocities have also lent to larger imbedded cobble substrate and a plane bed channel lacking aggradation of spawning sized gravels, limiting spawning habitat. A roadbed parallels the entire stream extent further contributing to hydrologic confinement, sediment input instream, and channel simplification. Where vegetation is present, the riparian corridor is narrowly bracketed by fence, both limiting the width of the riparian area and creating issues during high flows.