Bear Creek Restoration
Project Goals and Objectives
Bear Creek was heavily impacted by the 2014 Carlton Complex Fires. The creek suffered direct impacts from the fire (such as loss of habitat-providing and bank-stabilizing vegetation) as well as post-fire impacts (such as flooding and debris-flows). As a result, Bear Creek has become severely narrow and incised. In many places in our restoration area, you can stand in the bottom of the creek bed with an arm touching each side of the stream bank and the top of the bank well above head-height. When the creek is this narrow and incised, it cannot access its floodplain during high flows, struggles to maintain flows through the dry season, and does not provide adequate habitat for local fish and wildlife or groundwater for neighboring plants. Our goals for this project were to improve habitat complexity through added instream structure and planting projects, moderate flows by installing beaver dam analogues to slow and spread water, and to build the stream back towards its floodplain by capturing sediment with BDAs and wood jams. When we began construction there was existing beaver activity both above and below our work area, so another major goal was to encourage beaver activity in the project site.
Structure Construction Elements
In order to accomplish these project goals, we focused on adding much-needed woody structure to Bear Creek. This consisted of 40 post-assisted structures and 15 postless log jams, all installed in summer of 2023. Post assisted structures consisted of BDAs and PALs and were constructed with locally-harvested untreated posts and local fir boughs. Log jams were constructed with dead wood from on sight. As the structures worked to slow water and trap sediment, we performed adaptive management in summer of 2024, working with visiting college students to weave in more fir boughs. In fall of 2023, our team planted over 500 native plant starts, intentionally including many favorite beaver species, such as willow, aspen, and cottonwood, with the goal of attracting beavers to the site in the future.
Project Photos
Cover Photo
2023-06-29
Due to post-fire debris flows, the creek is incredibly incised, with banks well above head-height in places
2023-06-29
The MOBP crew poses while constructing a BDA
2023-06-15
Participants in a process-based restoration workshop help install posts for a BDA
2022-05-22
Natural beaver activity helps to combat incision just above the restoration project site
2023-06-20
A large BDA turns what was once a trickle into a pond
2024-06-21
MOBP summer interns construct a groundwater monitoring well to help measure the effects of restoration treatement
2021-08-17
Next to the creek is a large, abandoned agricultural field. Aerial data shows us that it contains relic channels and was once a part of Bear Creek's floodplain. By reconnecting the creek to its floodplain and increasing channel complexity, we hope to one day reactivate this floodplain!