By Jerry Painter – The Post Register
Each year in late summer/early fall, chinook salmon travel more than 800 miles back from the ocean to scoop out gravel nests in the small streams of the central Idaho wilderness and deposit their eggs.
Idaho Fish and Game biologists are literally hovering over the streams and taking notes.
Fish and Game recently completed its 460-mile aerial helicopter survey of chinook salmon redds in the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River and its tributaries. For five straight days, biologists flew at tree-top height above streams to count redds. What they found was encouraging.
Biologists counted 467 nests, better than last year’s 161.
“It’s a definite improvement over last year,” said fisheries biologist Conor McClure who participated in the count. “Still below the (average) of the past 25 years. That’s kind of the way it goes. You have peaks and valleys. It was up this year, and we hope it will continue.”
Redd numbers have peaked at more than 2,000 back in 2003. The past four years have seen counts plummet to a few hundred or less. Last year’s count of 161 was one of the lowest since the surveys began. Fish and Game said information collected during the surveys helps make predictions about future returns, monitor trends over time, and guide management decisions.
McClure said recent alarms of plunging salmon numbers have Idaho Fish and Game working to improve habitat to help chinook produce more fish.
“One thing I can say that we are doing here and have been doing for a long time is habitat improvement,” he said. “There has been some research that has indicated that one thing that could benefit the population that we can control on our end is natal habitat for juvenile chinook.”
McClure said projects to improve nursery streams for fish are underway in the Lemhi, North Fork of the Salmon and Pahsimeroi rivers and tributaries.
“There are a lot of factors that affect (salmon),” he said. “Commercial fishing, dams in terms of out-migrating and return has an influence, ocean conditions, recreational fishing, predation, things that can and do affect them. On our end our big thing is restoring habitat.”
Salmon deposit 4,000 to 15,000 eggs in each redd, but after hatching and traveling to the ocean and back through a gauntlet of hazards, “only a handful return from each redd,” McClure said.
“It’s a numbers game for fish,” he said. “That’s how they do it. Instead of having one young to nurture to the ocean and back, they throw out a bunch of eggs so that some will make it back. In terms of biology, if they are at least replacing themselves, then it works. If they do better than that, the population grows.”
The Board of Directors is excited to announce that Melanie Vining has accepted the position as ITA’s new Executive Director! Melanie is a backcountry enthusiast with a strong passion for hiking, Idaho’s public lands, and helping to keep our trails open. She lives in Council with her husband Dave and two sons Wyatt and Wade. Her diverse background includes serving as a high school teacher, working for the Forest Service early on as a smokejumper and later as a zone hydrologist. She was instrumental in creating the Council High School Youth Crew, teaching youth life skills while helping assist the forest on projects. Melanie has also served on several Boards of non-profits. She began working with ITA in 2019 as a crew leader for our first Youth Trail Crew trip and has been an active ITA volunteer since then. Melanie brings a solid set of leadership skills to the job and the Board and Staff are looking forward to working with her starting in early January. Welcome to the ITA family, Melanie!
Three Blaze Trail
December 3, 6pm PST/ 7pm MST
Join the Payette National Forest Heritage Program for a virtual presentation on the Three Blaze Trail. Built in 1902 by homesteaders and horsemen, the trail delivered miners to the town of Roosevelt and the Thunder Mountain mines. ITA volunteers from the Three Blaze Trail survey project will also share stories and photos from their recent survey trip. Learn more about this historic trail by signing up here.
Jeff Halligan Virtual Retirement Party
December 17, 6pm PST/ 7pm MST
Join us for an evening of celebrating Executive Director Jeff Halligan and sending him off into a happy retirement. Sign up to join this Zoom event here.
November 21, 2020 was a blue bird day for penguins, at 10:00 it was 33 degrees at my home, but the urge to get in one last ride while the roads are not snow covered was too great. I was curious about the Woodland Fire near Cambridge, so I dress for cold riding and headed for the Brownlee campground to see what damage was done on Cuddy Mountain. There is fire damage on both sides of Highway 71, but most was on the north side. There are still hot spots that the rain and snow have not completely put out yet, but it is very unlikely they can spread. No building along the road were damaged, but the black goes right to the edge of some of them. Cuddy is a patch work, black areas but also a lot of unburned areas.
Brownlee Camp ground did burn, but most of the big trees should be ok, in that area it mostly burned the brush. No idea what the condition of the trail on that part of the mountain are like, something to check out next summer.
The Woodhead Fire burned almost 100,000 acres to date and is now 100% contained. The burned area is located east of Council, Idaho including lands in the Payette National Forest. Starting September 28, a team of Forest Service specialists conducted field assessments to determine the need for burned area emergency response (BAER) treatments. Specialists included hydrology, soils, engineering, botany, range, recreation, fisheries, archeology, and wildlife. BAER is a specific effort to reduce further damage due to the land being temporarily exposed in a fragile condition. Loss of vegetation exposes soil to erosion; water runoff may increase and cause flooding; sediment may move downstream and damage houses or fill reservoirs, putting habitat and community water supplies at risk. The BAER program is designed to address these situations through the key goals of protecting life, property, water quality, and deteriorated ecosystems.
Led by West Zone Hydrologist Melanie Vining, the Woodhead Fire BAER Team uses satellite imagery of the burned area to classify the landscape into low, moderate, and high soil burn severity. The fire on the forest burned in a mosaic pattern with most of the burned area classified as unburned, low severity, or moderate severity. The burned area was initially classified using the satellite imagery and adjustments in classification were made based on ground surveys to yield a final soil burn severity map.
The entire burned area is mapped, though the field work and treatments identified by the Forest Service BAER Team are limited to only the acres of burned area on the Payette National Forest. A BAER Plan summarizing the assessment results and describing the proposed treatments has been prepared and is pending approval. Approved treatments will be implemented over the next 12 months using federal dollars on federal lands. Areas of concern for watershed impacts are in places that experienced higher burn severity, namely in Crooked River, No Business Basin, and Brownlee Creek.
After the fire burn severity map is completed and the BAER treatment plan is approved additional information will be provided to the public. While the BAER program does not prescribe treatments on non-federal lands, the assessment and hydrologic risk analysis can be useful to adjacent and downstream landowners to inform their own range of possible treatments. The Woodhead BAER team continues to share information with County officials and other agencies who in turn coordinate with affected landowners.
Great American Outdoors Act Virtual Sensing Opportunity
The USDA Forest Service is moving forward with implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act, which will enable federal land managers to take aggressive steps to address deferred maintenance and other infrastructure projects on national forests and grasslands through 2025.
The Forest Service will use these funds to maximize the benefits experienced by millions of Americans who visit and use their national forests. Projects funded by this act will focus on improving conditions on forest and rangelands, reducing wildfire risk, and increasing the resiliency of our nation’s forests for present and future generations.
The Forest Service is inviting the public to provide feedback on the projects that are under consideration to be prioritized for funding in Fiscal Year 2022. This opportunity is intended to serve only as a virtual listening session via solicitation of public feedback. Feedback provided will become part of the project record. A response to the feedback submitted during this opportunity will not be provided. Projects selected for funding will be compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act. Public notification and engagement on the selected projects will occur as required by regulation.
The following is a list of proposed projects for the Intermountain Region. Your feedback is requested by Nov. 30, 2020.
Please note that this project list includes projects submitted for funding consideration under the agency’s National Asset Management Program, which includes funding available under the Capital Improvement and Maintenance and Federal Land Transportation Program.
The public has until Nov. 30, 2020 to review and provide feedback on the proposed list. For more details on how to submit your feedback, visit: https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/CommentInput?project=NP-2648.
News Release: USDA Forest Service Invites Public Feedback on Proposed List of Deferred Maintenance Projects for Fiscal Year 2022
The company owned by a pair of Texas Billionaires who bought up significant land holdings in Idaho in recent years – listed a big chunk of it for sale.
The property listing comes to light as another for-profit company hopes to convince State of Idaho leaders to transfer control of a similarly-sized piece of property nearby.
Dan and Farris Wilks’ Wilks Ranch Brokers listed a 48-square-mile piece of property to the west of McCall for sale last year. The property, which the Wilks’ call McCall Red River Ranch, is the largest piece of property for sale by the firm. Last year, the Idaho Statesman estimated the Wilks’ own more than 300 square miles of land across the state.
“At over 30,000 contiguous deeded acres, McCall Red Ridge Ranch is a scenic mountain timber ranch nestled in the stunning Payette National Forest,” Wilks Ranch Brokers says of the offering on its website. “Overlooking and adjacent to the major tourist town of McCall, Idaho, the ranch has uniquely positioned mountain ranges… A unique and rare first time offering, this recreational and productive ranch is full of water, timber, big game, and endless division and subdivision possibilities.”
WATCH VIDEO
The Pacific Southwest Region’s Pack Stock Center of Excellence is an innovative program that honors Forest Service tradition while addressing current and future needs. This 12-minute video shows how horses and mules have been used in the agency since its inception. With the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which generally prohibits motorized equipment and mechanized transport in these areas, packing has become the key method of transportation for both people and supplies into the backcountry for increasingly important work.
The inReach product line is growing! Join us at 3:30 p.m. ET, Nov. 19, for a live inReach webinar featuring Chip Noble, senior product manager at Garmin. We’ll review the features and functionalities of each inReach device as well as what types of activities each device is best suited for. As always, we’ll save time for your questions.
Miss a previous newsletter? Here are some of the recent stories we shared:
- Webinar recording: inReach Best Practices Webinar
- Podcast: A Plane Crash in the Idaho Backcountry
- The 5,000th inReach SOS: A Whitewater Rafting Emergency
- Remote Alaskan Lodge Uses inReach for Epic Adventures
Read more about exploring the outdoors on the Garmin blog.
