The Lookingglass project is located on a 666-acre conservation property acquired by CTUIR and BPA in 2015 for fish and wildlife conservation purposes. The property is located in the UGR1 assessment area of the Grande Ronde Atlas, 13 miles north of Elgin, Oregon. The project encompasses 3 miles of mainstem Lookingglass Creek and over 80 acres of historic floodplain that has been altered by road and bridge construction, channelization, pond construction, livestock grazing and timber harvest. The project area provides important habitat for CTUIR First Foods, including spring-summer Chinook salmon, summer steelhead, bull trout and resident species. The Lookingglass watershed is an important cold-water refuge in the Grande Ronde Basin. Habitat limiting factors include instream and floodplain structure and complexity, side channel and wetland habitat, and riparian condition. Significant opportunity exists to restore floodplain process and function to expand spawning and rearing habitat capacity and quality.  

Proposed habitat actions include channel and floodplain grading, large wood and boulder additions, relocation of an existing undersized bridge to improve floodplain and geomorphic process as habitat quality.  This contract will address only the bridge portion of the project.  Relocating the bridge out of the floodplain aims to compliment habitat planning to achieve maximum ecological uplift in the project area.  Goals for the habitat project are as follows:

Increase floodplain connectivity and frequency of inundation to a condition closer to historical and natural form. Re-engagement of the floodplain will result in flows that are less confined, decreased stream power, increased and more variable gravel deposition, elevated groundwater tables, increased base flows, and decreased water temperatures. Hyporheic flow and native riparian species will thrive.

• Increase channel complexity with channel morphology (channel form, sinuosity, complexity, geomorphic and hydrograph stability) closer to historical and functional form especially wood, pools, and a diversity of bed material sizes.

• Increase stream velocity diversity at both low and high flows.

• Increase quantity and quality of habitat diversity, especially large wood and pools.

• Increase rearing habitat in the floodplain.

• Reestablish gynomorphically appropriate sediment sorting and routing.

• Improve and reestablish in-stream thermal diversity throughout the year.

• Improve quality and diversity of in-stream and off-channel habitat for resident and anadromous fish in Lookingglass Creek by increasing locations suitable for adult spawning and increasing area available for juvenile rearing.

• Restore natural channel forming processes through the addition of large wood to increase channel complexity, and restoration of sediment routing processes through the removal of levees and other floodplain impediments.

• Reestablish native floodplain plant communities and riparian function with site-appropriate native vegetation and off-channel habitat.   Realistic, cost-effective planting plans will maximize plant survival and minimize labor and maintenance; the planting plan will reflect CTUIR First Food values.

Project partners are CTUIR, GRMW and BPA.