Road Removal Protects Fish and Creates Jobs

The Cowlitz Valley of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest is nestled between the Cascade peaks of Mount Rainer, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helens in Washington State. The Cowlitz River meanders through the valley, linking together the communities of Randle, Mossyrock, and Packwood. The river also ties together the diverse stakeholders of the Pinchot Partners collaborative group.

The Pinchot Partnership formed in late 2002 and early 2003 after a field tour organized by the Gifford Pinchot Task Force (Task Force) and a diverse steering committee that included labor representatives, economic development interests, Native American Indian tribes, conservationists, loggers, local elected officials, and others. On the field tour, these stakeholders with wildly divergent interests learned that they shared at least a few things in common: a deep passion for the forest and a desire for long-term stability.

Over the following years, the relationship between these interest groups was formalized in the Pinchot Partners, and the Partners have developed and supported the implementation of a number of restoration projects that meet their mission of restoring the Cowlitz Valley while creating high quality, local economic opportunities.

Early projects supported by the Partners included small thinning projects and culvert replacement projects – restoration that was easy for the Partners to agree on and that helped build trust between players whose previous communication was mainly through barbs and bombs in the local newspaper.

It was also at this early stage in the Partners’ development that the group took an interest in the Iron Creek subwatershed, which had been identified by the Forest Service as a high priority watershed for aquatic restoration. The Forest Service and the Partners reached this assessment after reviewing criteria including the presence and state of threatened, endangered and sensitive species; road density and location; riparian condition; and key watershed status (Northwest Forest Plan). Iron Creek is located in the Lower Cispus watershed and has the highest sediment delivery in the watershed – one of the limiting factors in this area for recovery of species including winter steelhead and coho. All these factors combined to make it a compelling subwatershed on which to focus our restoration work.

Our first restoration project in the Iron Creek subwatershed was replacing and right-sizing culverts along two miles of road to restore fish passage and reduce sediment delivery to the Lower Cispus River. This initial project was coordinated and driven by Conservation Northwest. After completing the culvert project, it was clear that this and previous restoration work implemented by the Forest Service was threatened by two road segments at risk of failing and dumping very large sediment loads into the creeks and river in the watershed. However, unlike the previous road where we replaced culverts, there was no need for these particular roads to remain. The road density in Iron Creek subwatershed is 3.1 miles/per square mile, and from a larger perspective there are over 4,000 miles of roads on the 1.37 million acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest. There is also a 40-50 million dollar road maintenance backlog that grows each year. The condition of the road system is one of the greatest obstacles we face in restoring wild salmon to the streams and native wildlife like wolves to the woods on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

While the Forest Service and Task Force were easily convinced of the need to remove the two road segments in question, others were not. Most notably, a hunter that was a member of the Pinchot Partners was concerned about motorized access. Because the Partners had been working with each other for about two years by this time, we were able to have very honest and direct conversation about people’s interests and concerns. After a meeting where the roads’ high risk of failure was described, our hunter decided the long-term protection of fish species and the forest’s resources were more important than being able to drive to the low-use hunting site located at the end of one of the road segments. The meeting resulted in the Pinchot Partners’ decision to support the removal of the 2.2 miles of road in question, and the Task Force has been guiding this second phase of work in the Iron Creek subwatershed.

After we decided to remove the roads, the challenge became funding the project. First, we wrote a proposal to one of the Gifford Pinchot’s Resource Advisory Committees (or RACs), which were created by Senator Wyden’s county payments legislation in 2000. (This is the same legislation that de-linked logging levels on federal lands from the funding of schools.) We asked the RAC for $91,500 to address the higher priority of our two road segments. The RAC recommended our project for funding and resulted in the removal of .2 miles of road that was at very high risk of failing and dropping into lower Iron Creek. Large amounts of  sediment would also have reached the Lower Cispus, where winter steelhead and coho would be heavily impacted. Finally, removal of this road segment protected in-stream habitat structures that were placed in Iron Creek in 2000. In fact, with the massive flooding on the Gifford Pinchot this year, it is safe to assume the road would have fallen into the creek.

This initial road removal work was completed by one of the most talented restoration contractors in the Northwest, LKE Corporation. Kim Erion owns and operates LKE, the only such business owned by a woman in the Northwest. They work across the West because there is not enough restoration work in southwest Washington to keep them busy. We hope to change that. The Pinchot Partners visited the completed project this year and were very pleased with LKE’s work, which went above and beyond what was called for by the contract.

Mrs. Erion described the challenge of finding wellqualified employees, who often come from a logging background and don’t see the value of restoration. On the other hand, those interested in restoration often aren’t as familiar with the hazards of working in the woods, creating a stressful situation for supervisors and other crew members. “All restoration jobs are good jobs,” says Mrs. Erion, “I just wish they would do more.”

The Task Force is now completing its work to secure funding for the final two miles of road removal called for by this project. We recently received funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Metro Metals that will be matched with additional RAC money to complete the project. The on-the-ground work will take place next field season and will result in the removal of two miles of road with blocked culverts that post a high risk to aquatic habitat in the fish-bearing reach by the road. Removing these culverts will open up more than three kilometers of additional habitat. This road removal project will also reduce sediment delivery to the Lower Cispus watershed and improve habitat for steelhead and coho.

The success of the Iron Creek projects has been exciting for the Pinchot Partners and gives us real hope that we will truly be able to meet our vision of restoring the Cowlitz Valley while creating high quality jobs for local forest workers. The greatest obstacle we see to implementing this vision is a lack of investment from the politicians in Washington DC. Restoration of public lands could be the greatest public works and employment project in our country’s history. Below we talk about how you can help make this happen.

—Lisa Doolittle and Emily Platt coordinate the restoration program for the Gifford Pinchot Task Force and are members of the Pinchot Partners collaborative group.