The Singing Falls Joe Hall Creek Stream Restoration Project

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Joe Hall Aquatic Restoration Project and the Singing Falls Coho Habitat Restoration Project Map

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2004-2005 Singing Falls Coho Run JPGS:#1-4

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Chronicle - This page will be supplemented with an actual blog as soon as I can figure out how to set up an Apache server, Mysql, PHP and the PHP blog modules on my computer. In the mean time I am continuing to record the sequence of events here. I've changed the log so that the newest information entry is at the top of the page.

January 2006
The Oregon rains have returned perhaps. One old timer exclaimed,"This is the way it used to be all the time!" My only concern is that the heavy precipitation had churned up the Coho Redds. January was a busy month. We have had three salmon runs this year as compared to one last year.

Steady progress is being made on the restoration project here at Singing Falls. Tremendous strides have been made in rock wier designing and large wood placement design configurations are almost finished.

The NEPA aspect of the project is progressing well and we should know by March if there are any barriers to the restoration project.

Here's the report on the December instream survey by USFS fish biologist Calib Baldwin.

Although the stream conditions in Elk Creek were high and muddy for most of December, we were able to find a small window on December 13th and 14th to conduct spawning surveys on 5 miles of Elk Creek and tributaries. A total of 65 live fish, 10 carcasses and 46 redds (egg nests) were observed this year. Almost half of these (26 fish, 8 carcasses and 24 redds) were observed in Anderson, Brownie and Joe Hall Creeks. Overall, streams in the survey averaged 15.4 fish per mile and 9 redds per mile. In Elk Creek, fish were found to occupy all available spawning habitat,which is primarily two areas containing spawning beds. In Elk Creek there were 13.4 spawners and carcasses per mile and 6.8 redds per mile as compared with the tributaries which averaged 22.6 spawners and carcasses per mile and 16 redds per mile. This information illustrates the importance of the Elk Creek tributaries to overall coho production in the watershed. Based upon this information, the total run size in the Elk Creek watershed was approximately 340 fish and 198 redds.
An interesting note from the more intensively surveyed Joe Hall Creek is that three "waves" of coho were seen between November and December. Each wave was associated with a different high water event.
We would like to thank the landowners for providing permission to conduct these spawning surveys. Without your cooperation we would be able to gather this information.

I was invited to sit on the board of directors of the watershed council (Douglas County, Oregon) as an alternate for the "Director at Large". After due consideration I have accepted the position with the hopes of advancing the cause of the health of the Umpqua rivers watershed. I'm grateful for the oportunity to serve in this capacity. We'll see were it goes. :)

This is my all time favorite short clip on our salmon habitat project. Taken from the Alexandra Creek tributary at Singing Falls.Singing Falls spawner heading up stream.

December
December has arrived with a roar. We received several inches of rain in a matter of a couple of days. The stream bank reached bankfull just shy of the 1996 flood levels. The stream gage measured 1.90 tengths ft. which is approximately 1.4 tengths ft. rise overnight. When I read the gage I found three very large fish heading up Joe Hall Crk. within inches of the bank. I could have easily caught them. I've recorded the falls on mpgs. Sorry about the quality of the movies but I wanted to illustrate why the native americans called it singing falls. If you listen you'll here the pow wow drums beating in the furry of the torrents. The rest of the images are showing the turbid high waters. Here are the Singing Falls and Joe Halls Crk. images.

November
This has been an very interesting month. First of all, on the 10th of November Liberation Day arrived . I had been waiting for this. Several good rain storms came in with at least 4 inches of rain in them total. During the storms I was unable to observe the fish due to turbidity of the water. They seemed to hug the bottom of the pools to avoid the turbulence of the surface water. The 10th is when I observed a few juniors had migrated several hundred feet down Alexandra Creek and were holed up in the deeper pools.

On the 16th of the month several very large Coho Salmon hens were spotted in Joe Hall Creek. I have noted that these hens are scoping out almost the identical spots in which last years hens built their nests (redds). The mpgs of nest building can be seen here.

The temperature graph for Summer 2005 of the confluence at Joe Hall and Elk Creek can be found here. I hope to have the data from Singing Falls posted soon.

We are currently monitoring the water depth of Joe Hall Creek using the gage we installed last Summer.

Substantial progress is being made on all fronts of the habitat restoration project. December should be a major effort for getting NEPA approval. A veritable army of scientists will be testing for various variables covered under the Environmental Protection Act. Presently a significant amount of work is going into designing the log and rock weirs that will be placed in stream.

October
Singing Falls has begun to trickle and the small fish are responding to the extra oxygen in the water. Yearly, the initial water flow is a brackish color due to acidic conditions in the riparian zone up stream. By now large quantities of leaves are accumulating in the stream bed. When the rains begin to stimulate water flow these leaves form a kind of "tea" in the water. It doesn't take long for the stream to pick up momentum and clear cool October flows churn up the pools. There is an obvious increase in agility and activity by the fish in the pools. Octobers mpgs of the Steelhead and Salmon juniors can be found here.

September
I've spent this month checking the progress of the fish on a frequent basis. They are developing quite nicely. The vast majority of the junior salmon are between 3 and 4 inches long with several larger and some smaller than that in size. It doesn't look like the Giant Pacific Salamander has cut too deep in the fish population through predation. The first half of the month has been fairly warm and the fish seem a little sluggish. They tend to hang out near the surface waiting for a tasty insect to wander by. September mpgs of the Steelhead and Salmon juniors can be found here.

August 12, 2005
We spent the better part of a week rescuing the junior salmon. We have lost hundreds of young fish to the stream drying up. The story with images is related here

August 8,2005
Water levels have dropped radically in the past few days due to high temperatures. The decision to do a fish count before any rescue efforts would be needed should be done. Some images and the results are posted here

August 1, 2005
Took pictures of the August small fish condition. They can be found here

July 25-28, 2005
Spent the week installing the Joe Hall Creek water level gage and doing a stream profile for Joe Hall Creek as it intersects our stewardship. The data will be posted as soon as it is available. The coho fingerlings are in abundance. The water level is rapidly dropping and the water temperature is rising. We will be keen on observing the temperatures and water levels in this critical period. Stream profile image for lower Joe Hall can be found here.

July 15, 2005
Attended the Douglas County RAC meeting where we had two proposals for funding. The NEPA grant (National Environmental Protection Act) was approved along with the acquisition of funding to stabilize the Joe Hall Landslide. An html form of the presentation can be found here. (payco)

May/June
We have spent considerable time on several fronts with the project. Applications for grants to fund restoration have been submitted with good results so far. I hope to record just exactly what we've done in that arena in a separate web site section in the near future. Several grants have already been approved with a few more pending.

I've begun to attend various meetings that focus on watershed restoration and salmon habitat restoration. There are strategies being developed by a broad spectrum of interests to encourage, educate and assist private property owners in the complicated task of stream restoration. Through the watershed council and several stewardship meetings I have learned that there are reasonable methods to accomplish the job at hand.

Images of the coho as they mature and have been recorded on the web site. The index for images can be found at the salmon_progress.html page. The little tykes are growing rapidly.

Sections added or updated on this site as of June 30. The index pages contain links to updated materials not listed.
 Educational Information Index
 Engineering for Restoration Index
 Image Chronicle as the Salmon grow Index
 Stream Temperature Watch
 Stream Profile
 Links

April 10, 2005
We've been very busy on several fronts and good progress is being made. Several visits from various federal government Forest Service agencies have taken place to evaluate the project since the last entry in this log. It's exciting. I find the scientists from the various disciplines associated with the Forest Service very knowledgeable. It's encouraging to see what often appears to me to be "common horse sense" validated by scientific research. Recently one department supervisor commented that "sometimes it takes a while for science to catch up to what the locals have been saying all along".

After several inspections of the Joe Hall Aquatic drainage, a definitive plan is unfolding that is readily being accepted by significant contributors and agencies whose approval will be required in order to proceed. So far so good. 43 sites along the main salmon habitat improvement areas have been designated. An initial projection of treatments for each site has been delineated also. I've taken the effort to give each site its own individual log for information pertaining to it. These logs will contain official and unofficial before and after images along with text relating to the site's development and progress. It's a large undertaking. The initial basis for the log is set up with a series of unofficial images taken by Julie Hendricks, neighbor and a private property owner project participant (say that 5 x's fast ;) ). I feel these images are important since they show clearly what the turbidity of Joe Hall Creek looks like after a storm event.

March 13, 2005
I have created an html page with a map that defines the geological perimeters of the projects. You can find it here.

Joe Hall Aquatic Restoration Project and the Singing Falls Coho Habitat Restoration Project

March 10, 2005
Well, slow progress is being made on the project. Since the last entry the government scientists have looked the riparian zone over and the general consensus is that there is tremendous potential for the restoration. I haven't received any official response from them but a verbal comment of the prospects of bringing health back to the land are good.

Meanwhile the general consensus is that the year is heading for a severe drought. I've already decided that the survival of these fish will have significance long after my passing and I'd like to see them make it.

Our lifestyle is not an easy one and we are no longer young. It requires more work than most people realize in our sedentary culture. Still, I feel compelled to make a small mark of Life and a gesture of care toward the ground and water beyond what we have through good stewardship and husbandry practices. The earth has yielded its bounty to us for many years. Seed time and harvest, honey and clothing have all come from it. Fruits, wines and healing herbs have been ours in abundance.

Even more significantly we have learned deep secrets of the true meaning of life through observing and interacting with the elements of nature. Ours souls are literally bound up in the health of our home and soil. I've decided that I must make the time to give back extra to the earth in the hope of helping it carry its burden under the weight of ignorance and wrong. To be sure we have tried to be very careful to always enrich the soils of the gardens and orchard. We watch carefully not to let our shepherding efforts lean beyond what is needful on the pastures and hills. We have seen the hooves of the goats and sheep do more good than harm. Our opinion is to put more in than we receive. Everything benefits in this way. We have watched the seasons come and go. We have been cold and wet and tired. Some of our days have been hot and sweaty with fainting. If we deal gently with God's earth perhaps others may learn some lessons also. Nature seems to have always spoken the truth. We have not always been ready or able to understand. Is it strange to say I have shared its groaning?

Jan. 10, 2005
There was to be a convergence of "gists" here today but it was called off due to snow. Tiller-Trail Pass has 40 inches of new snow on it as of last Sunday. We rescheduled for Feb. 1. "Gists"? Biologists, Hydrologists, Geologists etc. 

Jan 2, 2005
The Coho Run is quite extensive. Reports of spawning are covering an area that takes in south Douglas County, Oregon and beyond. The turbidity of Joe Hall Creek is very high this time of year as can be seen in the mpgs above.

Casey Baldwin (Forest Service Biologist) has graciously allowed me to have a copy of his DVD recording of Joe Hall and Dumont Creek salmon spawning. If I can I will try to make small mpgs of the movies and place them on site. It would be great just to illustrate the difference between turbid and non-turbid water. Then you will be able to see why I so much would like to improve the situation.

I am continuing to study the information I need to know to make proper decisions with regard to my involvement.

Dec.30, 2004
Spent the better part of the afternoon with Casey Baldwin, the Federal Fisheries Biologist. We took another tour of the riparian zone and discussed options for its recovery.

A comprehensive program of indigenous plant restoration, tree placement in the stream along with a synthetic beaver dam system seem like viable options for the project. We discussed means to manage the angora goat herd to minimize negative impact and at the same time to use them to keep the invasive non-native flora under control. It would really be great to be able to use the herd in the restoration project as goat herds have been used in other such projects. Ready made weed control! Intensive husbandry practices with the herd need to be in place for careful low impact. This is not alien to what we have been doing all along to protect the herd from predation by mountain lions. Only now we will keep an even closer watch on the plant forage usage. Plans have been initiated to allow a temperature monitoring device to be installed in the stream. 

Dec.25, 2004
It's the end of the year and most of the Joe Hall Creek salmon are dying, having spent their energy propagating their species. We are trying to catch as many carcasses as we can to collect fish scale samples for C. Baldwin, the biologist. The daily trek along the riparian zone is encouraging and filled with hope.

I've downloaded a virtual library of information on stream restoration and salmon habitat building. This land is resilient and there is real hope of helping it along the way.

Posted images of the run on coho images - jpgs for public viewing. 

Dec.20, 2004
I took some short mpegs of one of the hens working a nest. I should be getting some dvd quality videos shortly. These simple videos illustrate nest building and guarding. To the upper right you can see the large amount of gravel moved by this female. She is a close to two feet long. You can see her tail out of the water in many of these images.

salmon_1.mpg  salmon_2.mpg  salmon_3.mpg  salmon_4.mpg  salmon_5.mpg  salmon_6.mpg

mohair@singingfalls.com