McKee Creek Habitat Restoration and Forest Thinning Project

McKee Creek Habitat Restoration and Forest Thinning Project

This Project will improve habitat for Coho salmon and steelhead in Mckee Creek, an important salmon bearing tributary in the Mattole River headwaters by addressing the limiting factors of low summer stream flows, poor summer rearing habitat, and lack of winter refuge habitat. The Project will enhance instream and floodplain habitat by raising the stream bed to engage flows with the floodplain, increasing pool depth, and adding instream habitat complexity through wood placement. Log weirs with sub-surface clay barriers will elevate the water table and increase channel complexity. Enhancing the riparian ecosystem is also expected, with increased diversity and abundance of riparian plants in response to the higher water table. The project is designed to restore natural processes over the long-term, promoting sediment deposition and formation of a complex meandering stream with adjacent floodplain wetlands. Further, by increasing the bed elevation of McKee Creek at strategic locations throughout the Project extents, conducting grading to increase floodplain engagement, installing subsurface clay barriers on the upstream side of proposed log weirs, and reducing incision rates, the project is expected to result in additional detained runoff during the wet season leading to higher spring and summer base flows. Finally, Project objectives also include increased diversity of the riparian area and reduced evapotranspiration along with improved groundwater, streamflow and fire resiliency which will be achieved through strategic forest thinning treatments.

Whitethorn

Humboldt

Countywide