Free Your Mind - Free a River
The Juliana River, whose name is now diminished to Little Creek was released from prison for a week this spring. A log jam plugged an irrigation diversion and pushed the churning, angry, water out across the relic flood plain. As it spread, the agitation calmed, the anger released, and the grass screened the sediment and embraced the nutrients before the river softly slipped back in the channel before reaching the City of Union's residential section, right above Edwin Baird's house.
Edwin gave me a call, "Lori and I went for a walk and saw Little Creek out of its banks. I told her, 'This is what a river is supposed to look like.' I've lived here for 10-years and based on the amount of rain we had I was surprised we didn't have flooding."
“I hope this will be the new normal Ed,” I explained, “we are working with the Union County Soil and Water Conservation District on a restoration project to reconnect Catherine Creek and Little Creek to the relic floodplain.”
Little Creek is disconnected from its floodplain. The pattern of cut down rivers trapped in their channel is ubiquitous across the American West and beyond, as documented in NE Oregon by Jerry Gildemeister, “Watershed History: Middle and Upper Grande Ronde River Subbasins, Northeast Oregon.”
"1812- Aug 12- Robert Stuart and company depart Ft. Astoria… Stuart exhibition following meadow and McCoy creeks, which are so meandering that they cannot tell which stream they are on. Camped for evening and spear 14 salmon....
Stuart's notes indicate that beaver were common in the Grande Ronde Valley, and Otters reaches their greatest numbers in Catherine Creek...."
That sounds like rivers connected to flood plains. Where are the beavers and river otters today? If we want to free a river, we will do well to go back and see how it got trapped.
Observing and Learning
My dad worked for Don Hanna, in the heart of the Nebraska Sandhills in the 1950s. I stopped to visit with Don in the late 1980s. He explained that it took his family four generations and 100 years to straighten miles of river and get rid of the brush.
He continued, “We raise less hay now than we did before we started!”
Don was a learner. He was planning to get the river out of the ditch and into the oxbow 30 years ago. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but I understood.
Back to Gildemeister:
Little Creek (east of Union) was full of beaver when we came here (1920). You couldn't trap then; it was illegal. Ed Fickle talked to Dad (manager of the fish hatchery in Union) that beaver were ruining his farmland by cutting channels and flooding, so Dad trapped them out. Little Creek has been straightened, and brush (willow, hawthorn, and some alder) has all been removed. It is a different creek than it was."
Don Hanna’s experience connected with me due to a conversation I had a few years earlier. Bill Bates and I were riding Wyoming’s Red Desert and I was whining that I just couldn't make it ranching. I explained that I was doing things the way my father and grandfather had but was facing bankruptcy.
Living in your Time
Bill turned his horse up a trail and talked over his shoulder, "Your grandfather and the old-timers made it because they did what they needed to do in the time they lived." Bill pulled his horse up, blocking my path, and looked me in the eye. "If they were living today, they would be doing things differently because we are living in different times. Quit your bellyaching," he spurred his horse over the ridge and into the sunrise.
A few years later, we were one of fifteen ranches in a Wyoming Department of Agriculture pilot project called Coordinated Resource Management (CRM). The idea was to bring different interests, different knowledge, and various skills together in managing one property. This was a massive boost for me. This brought a quasi-board of directors with knowledge about wildlife, plants, academic literature, outfitting, federal and state policy and regulations. Access to this brain trust gave me the ability to be proactive rather than reactive. It gave me an interest in planning, creating, and building rather than saying, "That’s not the way my grandfather did things."
Drawing on a Brain Trust
This knowledge coalition empowered my decisions at the soil surface. A straightforward goal to encourage willow growth on Twin Creek's riparian area allowed learning and developed the following observations and guidelines over the next several years.
Beavers build a dam, raise the water table and the willows suffocate and die.
Graze herbaceous competition early, pre-June, allowing sunlight to new willow sprouts.
Zero tolerance of grazing second-year wood, which coincides with 6-inch stubble height.
Graze riparian areas during the hot season every 3-5 years to control weeds.
Target less than 5-10 day grazing periods, which coincides with heal/horn fly control.
Short grazing periods stabilize point bars, narrow the channel, and raise bed elevation.
Target less than a 2:1 width/depth ratio, reconnecting the river to the floodplain.
Cattle don’t poop in a stream that's connected to the floodplain but stand on the bank, drink, and go 3-5 steps away from the water before they shit in the grassy riparian area.
Functional rivers resist drought with higher water tables ensuring no drought.
None of this learning would have been possible without the CRM brain trust.
Due to long recovery periods, and little disturbance, a channel can form. The channel is under the dog’s nose, then moving away from the dog, moss gathers sediment.
Further up-slope, the previous year’s moss gathered sediment has grass growing. Then riparian grasses establish the third year. Finally, sedges secure the bank.
The key? Short grazing periods that will accelerate the biological decomposition of grass on the floodplain, but not continuously disturbing the moss and trapped sediment for channel building.
Freeing Rivers and Salmon
Back to Little Creek in NE Oregon. James Webster of the Union Soil & Water Conservation District leads our brain trust. Here we have an added dimension of steelhead, Chinook, and bull trout in Little Creek, and sister river, Catherine Creek.
Salmon need a river that oxygenates through a "riffle," picks up speed in a "run," plunges into a "pool," and drives the oxygen into the far side of the pool to trickle upward to the "glide," where salmon lay their eggs. The eggs would not survive without oxygen-rich water. Each pool comes with a riffle>run>pool>glide, preferably ten or more per mile. In 1941 Catherine Creek had 15 large pools/mile, dropping to 6 pools/mile by 1990.
After the water subsided, we can see a river taking shape. This logjam trapped enough sediment on the far side to narrow the channel from 30 feet to 10 feet. It raised the bed elevation by at least one-foot. Willows and grass will secure this bank so the next high flow will get out on the flood plain much easier.
Planning to Execute
Maintaining this desired structure requires large wood to stabilize meanders and sinuosity. To manage the grazing, we are considering the following.
Jim Webster promotes designing areas inclusive to management, unlike some river restoration efforts which exclude management.
Allan Childs, with the Umatilla tribes, suggests different zones with specific goals.
Zone 1- An area adjacent to the river-bank will be managed for large wood, like alder, cottonwood, willows, and dogwood, among others. Sedges and other sod-forming plants will comprise the understory. With rest as the default tool, each planning cycle considers grazing to remove herbaceous species from smothering woody species, weed control, and recycling nutrients to build soil organic matter.
Zone 2- Will include the broader floodplain, where a meadow grass species will be managed to filter and slow floodwaters. This will be used for livestock feed.
Zone 3- Will be uplands that capture the rain-drop and recharge groundwater and provide safety to livestock, wildlife, and people during flooding.
In essence, we will be drawing on our brain trust to better mimic nature. Our grandfathers would be doing things differently if they were operating here today because times are different and we have new knowledge. Our time means consideration of endangered species, climate change, healthy food connected to healthy soil, and letting rivers run wild but not angry.
The Gildemeister report quotes longtime Holistic Management Practitioner, Jack Southworth, a cattle rancher at Seneca, OR:
“Cattle are not an end or a goal in themselves; they’re a tool. They’re a tool we can use to make a living. It’s a tool we can also use to get some benefits on the side. Our landscape goal for the ranch was to have a dense stand of perennial grasses with some shrubs. We wanted our forest areas to be healthy and uneven-aged in the stand. We wanted the creeks on the ranch to be winding and stocked with beaver and lined with willow. In about ten years we’ll have enough willow that beaver will come in and build a dam to raise the water table.”
More on Jack and Theresa Southworth - Building Soil.
Conscious ranchers like Don Hanna and Jack Southworth, do things differently than their grandfathers. Hell, they don’t even do things the same as they did 10-years ago.
As James Webster says, “The arch of knowledge brings us new understandings.”
With new understandings, stock-people are empowered at the soil surface and will speed the healing of rivers.