Funded habitat recovery projects

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Dungeness River Railroad Bridge Reach Restoration (Funded 2004)
Current Status: Active

Eleven large logjams will be placed in the RR Bridge reach of the Dungeness River. The 11 jams, along with previously placed jams, and a few natural jams will create a matrix of “hard points” (jams) at specific sites along the RR Bridge reach channel network. Riparian reforestation of black cottonwood will accompany logjam construction. As recently as the early 1980’s, Clallam County regularly piled and burned LWD in the Dungeness River. This contributed to a loss of structural complexity and LWD sufficiently sized to function in the river. Since then the habitat has been recovering, but lacks stable logjams. A spring 2000 field trip with local and regional restoration experts recommended concentrating on reach-level habitat restoration. Tim Abbe was hired to develop a conceptual plan, completed in 2002 (PWA 2002). This 1.2% gradient reach is very active with frequent channel avulsions, a wide floodplain with multiple side channels, a substrate on average too large for spawning, and a range of riparian forest types and ages. The hard points will create salmonid high flow refugia and rearing pools within and upstream of each jam, gravel bars will be stabilized downstream of each jam for riparian forest establishment and further downstream, spawning (Abbe 2000). A network of jams will establish a minimum level of channel complexity, sinuosity, and pool frequency regardless of the active channel position through time (PWA 2002).