Habitat Restoration

SSHEAR Sites

In the early 1990’s Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife 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+ sites where salmon spawned.

Approximately 60 of the potential sites were selected to be “enhanced” —and designated as a Salmonid Screening Habitat Enhancement and Restoration (SSHEAR) site.

The improvements at most of these sites included building concrete and wooden structures meant to increase pools water that were high quality salmon habitat. 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 SSHEAR site on a tributary to the Bogachiel River, at a site called “Tall Timbers”:

As you can see, now, over 40 years after the program began, many of these structures are degrading. Fish ladders have broken, and 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 salmon habitat restoration in our watershed. PCSC monitors these sites, checking water levels at various time throughout the year, checking for juvenile fish in the ponds, and conducting water analysis.

Working with other local salmon habitat organizations, PCSC applies for state grants to remove the degrading fish ladders and concrete structures, and replace them with logs and branches to create a dam made of all natural materials.

Our goal is to create natural structures, using materials found onsite, that will maintain the pond, and allow for nature to take over the maintenance of these sites, just like she did for millennia.

In the summer of 2024, PCSC removed the concrete structure shown above at the Tall Timbers site. To ensure the pond above the structure was maintained, we built a ‘Beaver Damn Analog’, using wooden posts pounded into the sediment, and interweaving branches found in the area. The intention is to recreate the work that beavers do naturally, build small ponds that are then used by salmon as habitat. We then placed logs in a stair step pattern down the tributary, to be bulky material to hold the pond in place. Now, we hope this site will be able to naturally maintain itself, allowing for normal shifts in the tributary to happen while still maintaining the pond.

Photos:

1. PCSC Crew building Beaver Dam Analog

2. Built Beaver Dam Analog, before removal of concrete structure.

3 & 4. Completed project.