Log and rock structures placed in a channel dug last year are aimed at increasing king salmon spawning capacity in Big Boulder Creek.
Since 1995, between 30 and 130 kings return to spawn there annually, but spawner counts in the early 1980s went as high as 300 fish. Road construction that channelized the stream below the highway and bridge work there as recently as 1990 may have precipitated the decline.
Takshanuk Watershed Council executive director Emily Cowles said $40,000 of work during the summer included placing 11 “habitat structures” in a half-mile section of the creek between the Haines Highway and Klehini River, including nine in a new branch of the stream created last year.
“Boulder clusters,” “digger logs,” “roots wads,” “boulder darts” and “boulder wing deflectors” are used to mimic flows in productive king streams. Such streams have pools that give salmon a place to rest and areas of concentrated flow where stream bottoms are scoured, naturally sorting gravels and creating prime spawning areas.
The project will end next year with an effort to remove accumulated material at the center of the streambed under the bridge at 32.5 Mile to restore the creek’s natural dynamics.
The project has been in the works since 2006 and this year included local firms Natural Channel Design and Jack Smith Trucking. It was funded by the Pacific Salmon Commission and funds secured by state Rep. Bill Thomas.
Other watershed council work this year included completion of fish habitat mapping in the Chilkoot watershed. Work that studied fish distribution to the extent of habitat found juvenile coho and Dolly Varden seven miles upstream of the lake’s inflow, Cowles said.
The group’s efforts to restore fish passage across Comstock Road will largely wait until next year, Cowles said. The group recently decided to place a single culvert between properties owned by Daphne Ormerud and Bob Henderson instead of two 48-inch culverts as previously planned, she said.
A resident placed a homemade fish ladder at the site a few years ago. “We’d like to do another crossing on Comstock. This one is easy because we have good fish presence and a willing land owner,” Cowles said. The $80,000 project will be paid for by required borough mitigation funds for impacts arising from Port Chilkoot Dock parking expansion ($35,000) and $60,000 from Rep. Thomas.
Cowles also reported that a project by the group installing a large baffled culvert at Sixth Avenue and Union Street apparently works, as juvenile coho are finding their way up the stream north of Union.
The stream above Union previously held only landlocked Dolly Varden and cutthroat trout, she said.