Sheep Creek Restoration Project

The Sheep Creek Restoration Project is located on Sheep Creek, a tributary of the upper Grande Ronde River. The project area includes 4.5 miles of the creek (RM 7.5 - 12.5). Sheep Creek (Rosgen channel C and E), and its meadow habitats are not in proper functioning ecological condition (hydrologic, geomorphic, vegetative composition), due to historical anthropogenic influences including beaver trapping, overgrazing, logging, road building, and an altered fire regime. The United States Forest Service in partnership with Trout Unlimited will design and implement the project. The overall goal of this project is to achieve proper ecological form and function of Sheep Creek and its meadows, and thereby restore spawning and rearing habitat for Snake River Basin Spring/Summer Chinook, Snake River Basin steelhead, and resident redband trout. The creek also includes bull trout critical habitat although they are not currently known to be in the creek. The project team's restoration strategies include the placement of wood structures, and the reconstruction/realignment of an existing cattle exclosure fence. The wood structures will be placed to restore the hydraulic grade of the system and to reestablish the hydrologic connection to the historic floodplain. Wood structures will also be built with the objective of improving quantity and quality of fish habitat (fish cover, pool quality/quantity, and spawning gravel recruitment). Instream wood structure work will be implemented on 4 miles of stream. The cattle exclosure fencing (5.25 mi) will be built to protect a greater area of floodplain and riparian habitat. Monitoring to measure the effectiveness of strategies used to achieve project objectives will include temperature monitoring (temperature probes, FLIR flights), habitat surveys, photo points, plant survival assessments, and aerial imagery (drone flights).