Securing a Stronghold: Different Approaches for Design and Collaborative Process in Prairie Creek and Redwood Creek Restoration Projects

40th Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference

26 April 2023

Field Tour Coordinators:
Mary Burke, Cal Trout
Bob Pagliuco, NOAA Restoration Center
Leslie Wolff, NOAA Fisheries

Join us for a field tour of lower Prairie Creek, a salmon and climate stronghold, and view past, present, and future habitat restoration projects. We will also visit Redwood Creek’s estuary and discuss the exciting possibility of levee modification and estuarine habitat restoration with project partners. We will see examples of, and discuss with technical experts: small stream restoration, large wood additions, floodplain connectivity, backwater habitat, levee modification, and associated revegetation and invasive plant controls, and project effectiveness monitoring. We will provide the best available information on population status and recovery potential for salmon, steelhead, including recent project monitoring results as well as some insight into eulachon and smelt in this watershed. The project sites offer the opportunity to learn how different levels of project collaboration are integrated into design approaches and will include lessons learned from a collaboration, design, implementation, monitoring, and project management perspective. The tour will be led by Mary Burke, Senior Project Manager with California Trout and Leslie Wolff, Hydrologist with NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region, and Bob Pagliuco with NOAA Restoration Center. Tour stops will include presentations from each project team:

Introduction and Setting the Watershed Context, Mary Burke, CalTrout; Leslie Wolff, NOAA Fisheries; Bob Pagliuco, NOAA RC
Redwood Creek Estuary Restoration - Development of the Locally Preferred Alternative (Concept Design), Mary Burke, CalTrout; Leslie Wolff, NOAA Fisheries
Large Wood Installation in Prairie Creek at Davison Meadow, Vicki Ozaki, NPS (Retired); Andrew Morin, NPS; Aaron Martin, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department
Large Wood Design at Elk Meadow Cabins on Prairie Creek, Leslie Wolff, NOAA Fisheries; DJ Bandrowski, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department; Andrew Morin, NPS; Aaron Martin, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department; Bob Pagliuco, NOAA RC
Prairie Creek Floodplain Restoration with 2 of 5 years of implementation completed, Mary Burke, CalTrout; Bob Pagliuco, NOAA RC; Leonel Arguello NPS; Jeff Anderson, Northern Hydrology and Engineering; John Bair, McBain Associates; DJ Bandrowski, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department