Healthy Watersheds One Stream at a Time

Oregon Trout recently completed the second part of its Fox Creek Restoration Project with the planting of 6,500 ponderosa pine, western larch, and western white pine saplings in the Fox Creek drainage basin. Phase I of the project began in late summer of 2001 when the U.S. Forest Service decommissioned over six miles of unused logging roads and tore up the decommissioned sections with heavy equipment as part of its Fox Watershed Improvement Project. In late September OT volunteers planted over 1,000 pounds of grass seed on the barren areas and covered it with a layer of straw to prevent erosion and aid in seed germination. The grass and roots of the newly planted trees will help recover the natural flow of water through the basin, stabilize the soil and prevent soil erosion off the roads from choking summer steelhead redds as well as improve the overall water quality of the creek.

Fox Creek, located on the western edge of the Blue Mountains, is a tributary of Cottonwood Creek, which in turn, runs into the North Fork of the John Day River. Fox Creek supports resident populations of native redband trout, provides crucial spawning and rearing habitat for summer steelhead migrating up the John Day and historically may have supported threatened bull trout.

The Fox Creek Project is just one part of an ongoing effort on the part of OT to restore and protect the North Fork of the John Day River. OT hopes that its efforts on Fox Creek and nearby Vinegar Creek will improve the already strong summer steelhead runs and further its long term goal of establishing a formal fish refuge on the John Day River to conserve the strongest remaining runs of native chinook salmon and steelhead.