NEW FUTURE FOR UMATILLA RIVER SALMON AND STEELHEAD
Minutes southwest of Pendleton, Oregon, WRC purchased the 100-acre Birch Creek Ranch in an effort to bring Umatilla River steelhead, chinook and coho salmon another step closer to their Blue Mountain spawning grounds. The ranch’s namesake creek is an important tributary of the Umatilla River and is within the ancestral homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). WRC plans to convey the ranch to CTUIR, who intend to undertake extensive stream restoration work on nearly a mile of wandering floodplain, including the removal of a longstanding earthen barrier that has impeded upstream fish migration for decades. Birch Creek is the Umatilla River’s largest producer of ESA-listed Mid-Columbia summer steelhead and is home to both bull trout and rainbow trout.
INCREASED STREAM FLOWS AND INTACT HABITAT
Surrounded by lush, green, alfalfa plots abutting pivots of swaying winter wheat and classic western rimrock, the property—which CTUIR plan to rename KwálKwal Ranch—holds tremendous potential for fish and wildlife. For starters, it possesses a combined 100 acre-feet of surface and groundwater rights that have long been prioritized for irrigation. Conveyance of the ranch to CTUIR tees the tribes up to dedicate those rights back instream, increasing base flows and the quality of the creek’s aquatic habitat. A diverse array of wildlife depend on the property, including Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer, pronghorn, cougar, golden eagle, turkey, osprey and Canada goose. The ranch also includes a section of the ephemeral Stewart Creek, which joins Birch Creek just upstream of the property.
CONSERVATION AND TRIBAL LAND RETURN
WRC’s purchase of the ranch will bolster CTUIR’s basin-wide fisheries recovery efforts while complementing another project we are working on with the tribes downstream. At the confluence of Birch Creek and the Umatilla River, WRC is midstream in its effort to conserve the Umatilla Floodplain Property to protect this critical confluence and enable the CTUIR’s extensive floodplain restoration efforts there. Both of these efforts build on WRC’s partnership with the CTUIR, a relationship that dates back to 2015, when we conveyed a property on Catherine Creek to the tribes, resulting in one the most significant salmon habitat recovery projects in the Columbia Basin.
