Crews are dropping more than 1,000 logs along the banks of the North Fork of the Shoshone River in hopes of protecting the nation’s oldest ranger station. The massive floods of 2022 caused severe erosion and the Wapiti Ranger Station is in danger of falling in.
Oldest Ranger Station
A centerpiece of the project is the Wapiti Ranger Station. Built in 1903, it was the nation’s first U.S. Forest Service ranger station built with federal money.The bulk of the material is 1,000 logs and 400 root wads, or huge chunks of fallen trees’ root structures. The timber was taken from the Greybull River Drainage and transported to the work site by WTL Logging of Meeteetse.
Planning for the project started in January 2023 and work began in earnest in November, along a roughly two-mile stretch of the river, alongside Highway 14/16/20, which runs between Cody and the East Gate of Yellowstone National Park.
…
Toward TU’s wider mission, the project should also improve habitat for prized native Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
Other fish species should benefit too, Swope said.
Two root wads are being placed with the “root fans” facing out into the river, she said.
“When the water hits the root fans, it will slow and create a deep-pool habitat,” she said.
Such pools are places where fish can rest and feed.
The area should also fill in with willows, cottonwoods and other “riparian vegetation,” Swope said.
“The goal is to create natural-looking log-jam structure along the banks,” she said.
Eventually, those should fill in with sediment from the river.
The trees and vegetation could provide food and shelter for white-tailed deer and moose.
“You don’t see many moose along the North Fork, maybe this will bring more of them there,” Swope said.
Bighorn sheep could benefit from better water sources in small, natural “pastures,” she said.
Those roadside pastures are a favored wintering ground for the sheep, she said.
Thousands of USFS mandated riparian “placed” logs headed to the bag boom at a dam or past the dams, downstream, to sea in the Pacific Northwest as the atmospheric river and very warm air has now no snow pack at 8000′. I would hope the soil is getting infused with water after a decade of arid weather across the PNW. Water table additions. And the flooding is about early season snows melting the further north you get of the Columbia Gorge. No word of what has happened in B.C., Canada. But Washington State Nooksack, Skagit deflation plains were hammered. Roof top rescues. Crop lands submerged. And videos show rafts of “coarse woody debris” headed to sea via Puget Sound and Salish Sea. No idea the B.C. contributions. No B.C. news to speak of south of the border. Advertising decides what is news to whom and where.
In my lifetime, I have been unable to ski until after Christmas several times. 1964: Roads not open to traffic as bridges, including I-84 over John Day River, were washed away Christmas Day. Water came up 385 feet in Mule creek canyon on the Rogue. Water was head high in the Galice store, and in March 1965, you could not throw a baseball and reach the River from the deck at the store. All the bridges from Oregon Tunnel to Crescent City (Smith River) were replacement “Erector Set” Army one lane temporary bridges installed by the Corp of Engineers.
The flooding this week was common before the Federal government built flood control dams in the Willamette River’s watershed. 12 of them. Too tall for fish passage. Another significant flood control dam is Dworshak on the North Fork Clearwater River in Idaho. 3.5 million acre feet capacity. Must be drained each year, to be available by mid September to capture flood waters. That water makes hydro power at Dworshak and 8 downstream “run of the river” hydro power and navigation channel maintaining dams from Lower Granite on the Snake river to and past Bonneville dam at the head of tidewater. That water also cools the lower Snake River in summer. The several hundred dams and impoundments to irrigate the Snake River Plain (ID is 2nd to CA for water diverted to irrigation: more water than the annual flow of the Colorado river today) cause the upper Snake to be abnormally warm and it is disingenuous to blame the water temps on the Four lower Snake River federal dams.
All the above exists to protect Portland, Oregon from urban flooding. And the NGOs of Green, many based in Potland, sue to raze dams, stop any and all USFS, BLM, State proactive work to return streams to a more natural state because the plaintiff’s bar finances Democrat/liberal candidates and incumbents in the mutual back scratch of “free speech” is money issue. Tax forgiven money has few boundaries, and the consequences are now the State of Oregon as #48 in K-12 literacy of the 50 states. And #2 for percentage of state population dependent upon SNAP and WIC to eat. Oregon has not had other than a far left liberal Democrat governor since 1988. The last 20 years a Super Majority Democrat legislature. Democrat Governor appointed judicial system where retiring judges retire before the end of their term, which enables the Governor to appoint a replacement who then runs as the “incumbent.” No trial attorney challenges a sitting judge. Unfair to their clients. Hence, “Urban genius” is our State oxymoron. The 1987 replacement State motto is “She flies with her own wings.” Which begs the philosophical questions: Is “she” capable of parthenogenesis ? Who flies with wings other than their own? This mish -mash of verbiage replaced the original official motto which was “The Union.” For those of you who never took an American history course, “The Union” was Oregon becoming a “free state” by the vote of Congress where abolitionists (Northern Republican State elected Senators and Representatives) defeated the Southern slave states members of Congress who voted against Oregon’s admittance without the State lawfully allowing slavery. Republican abolitionists won the day. Thus “The Union” made Oregon a slavery free State February 14, 1859. Several hundred thousand Union soldiers and sailors later died in the Civil War to protect the Union.
We are the consequences of elections, and live according to the voting majority rule described in the U.S. Constitution. 49% of the voters can be disappointed some of the time in our pinball political process.
I hope the placement of logs saves the oldest standing building once a Ranger Station. Burned logs need to be used if possible. And likely other streams need similar treatment. Burned dead trees being put to use, and workers need jobs. The placed logs, well secured, do their job. Wood boring insects like carpenter ants will fly when mating, feeding a lot of fish as they fall to the water surface. Logs anchored to the stream bottom protecting the bank from erosion will provide security cover for aquatic species. Shade for emerging new growth riparian plants. Hopefully the proactive efforts have positive results lasting a very long time.
Thanks for spotlighting this project, Sharon!