Little River Restoration Project
Our 2019 project was to restore coho spawning habitat with a series of riffles and pools on the upper Little River where coho were not utilizing the habitat. Little River Enhancement Society (LRES) worked with our partners, Current Environmental and Pacific Salmon Foundation, to complete the restoration immediately prior to the Fall spawning run. The project consisted of reworking approximately 100 meters of the river to improve salmon spawning, rearing, and overwintering habitat in this increasingly urbanized watershed. The work consisted of dredging and installing rocks, gravel and large woody debris structures to create four (4) deep sections and three (3) riffles to improve spawning/rearing areas for Coho, Chum and Pink Salmon as well as Cutthroat Trout.
Coho adults were subsequently seen utilizing the newly created spawning areas in Fall 2019. In the summer of 2020, LRES conducted an assessment of Coho fry and found on a visual survey comparison with our notes taken prior to the previous year’s restoration work on this section of Little River that the restoration project has indeed created an enhanced salmon habitat conducive to salmon spawning and the rearing of healthy fry fish.