Habitat Restoration
Our current focus:
Restore SHHEAR Sites
In the early 1990’s Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) was looking for a way to improve salmon returns in Washington’s rivers. After doing a survey of the Quillayute, Hoh and Clearwater watersheds they found 800+ potential enhancement sites. Approximately 60 of the potential sites were selected to be enhanced or ‘improved’ using a variety of techniques—and designated as a Salmonid Screening Habitat Enhancement and Restoration (SSHEAR) site.
The improvements at most of these sites were meant to increase the area and depth of already high quality off channel salmonid habitat by building fish passages and ponds. For more than a decade WDFW maintained and monitored these enhanced sites.
Here is an example of a concrete fish ladder installed by DFW at a SHHEAR site
In the late 1990’s, DFW stopped maintaining SSHEAR sites. Now, over 40 years after the program began, many sites are degrading. Fish ladders have broken, and concrete structures meant to build ponds are now barriers to fish passage.
PCSC believes that correction of these human-made fish passage barriers is one of the most cost effective methods of salmonid enhancement and restoration in our watershed. Large amounts of habitat can be brought into production by correcting the fish passage barriers at these SSHEAR sites.
PCSC’s work focuses on removing the degrading fish ladders and concrete structures, and replacing them with logs and branches to create a dam made of natural materials. Our goal is to create a structure that will maintain the pond, and allow for nature to take over the maintenance of these sites, just like she did for millennia.
Eagle Springs
SHHEAR Site
Eagle Springs is an example of a well functioning SHHEAR Site. Eagle Springs is a tributary to the Sol Duc River located on the Hahn Family Ranch. It is is a ground water fed spring that emerges on Forest Service land, forms a pond area on private land, and enters the Sol Duc at a large pool.
The spring fed channel supports spawning adult Coho and Sockeye, juvenile salmon and trout, and provides a cold water source for the main stem Sol Duc where adult salmon and steelhead hold in the summer.
Eagle Springs was identified in 1991 through the SSHEAR program and the first restoration activities in 1998 were centered around creating access by replacing a failed, undersized culvert, with an appropriately sized one that includes baffles to ensure salmonid access. The restoration has continued with cooperation and work from the land owners and other organizations including PCSC, USFS, Quillayute Valley School District ,Olympic Correction Center, 10,000 Years Institute and Boy Scouts of America. This work included planting, spawning gravel placement, cover placement and nutrient enhancement.
Over the 24 years of Hosting this SSHEAR site we have put in another 100 cubic yards of Spawning Gravel, and the results have been impressive.
In 2020, 38 female Coho spawned at Eagle Creek.
In 2021, that number to grew to 34 spawning females.
In 2022, 50 female Coho spawned at Eagle Creek.
Olympic Corrections Center inmates hauling gravel at Eagle Springs in 2018.
Dave Hahn, land owner at Eagle Springs and PCSC Board Member, has been documenting progress at Eagle Springs on his YouTube channel The King of Sol Duc. He includes regular updates about the site and amazing underwater footage of spawning Coho.