Little Springs Habitat Enhancement Project

A restoration project recently completed involved a streambank bioengineering project on a spring creek tributary to the Lemhi River in Idaho with volunteers from Trout Unlimited and the Forest Service. Willow barbs with log constriction bunkers were installed along with pole plantings, half-logs, spawning partitions, and willow bundle revetments. The project was a great success with the Forest Service providing funding and design. TU members from the Snake River Cutthroats Chapter, in Idaho Falls did an excellent job of installing the features. The project should provide increased habitat diversity with enhanced scour pools, improved bank stability, and overhead cover for rearing steelhead, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, bull trout, and brook trout. It was an excellent example of the Salmon-Challis National Forest extension to work on private lands on an important reach of stream off the Forest and Trout Unlimited being a dependable go-to group to get the job done.

Another project for TU will soon begin on the East Fork of the Big Lost River with the Wood River TU chapter. This will be a much needed stream bank bioengineering project to stabilize eroding banks and provide overhead cover to reduce thermal loading to a headwaters spring creek that has suffered from inappropriate grazing management. It should greatly improve a fishery that has been impacted by elevated temperature and sediment loading. Fish and Game has often had to fore go stocking Yellowstone cutthroat into this reach due to elevated stream temperatures in July and August, a time when fishing opportunity would normally be at it's peak.