Wednesday May 25, 2022
KLCC —
This summer, the endangered Oregon Coast Coho salmon will get some help from allies…in a helicopter.
In late summer, a Chinook helicopter will lower 220 trees into Deadwood Creek, McLeod Creek, and Condon Creek. The idea is to create “complexity” in waterways affected by 150 years’ worth of development, farming, and logging, in order to help Coho salmon spawn and thrive.
Caleb Mentzer is a project manager with the Siuslaw Watershed Council, that’s carrying out the operation.
“Root wads is something we’d really, really, love to see. You can kinda visualize how much complexities’ around that root wad, and how a little juvenile coho could use that as a really really, great…what we call “fish hotels,” explained Mentzer.