By Amanda Parrish

Mouth of Mill Creek as it reaches the Pend Oreille River

After decades of working with the Forest Service on forest management policy and wilderness designation through forest collaboratives, in 2017 The Lands Council partnered with the Forest Service on our first large-scale stream habitat restoration project on the West Branch of LeClerc Creek. We're continuing that partnership now with the design of another major stream habitat restoration project on Mill Creek in Pend Oreille County.

With funding from Washington's Salmon Recovery Fund, we'll be working with Alta Science and Engineering to improve bull trout conditions on the lowest stretch of Mill Creek, before it reaches the Pend Oreille River. When you're onsite, you can see remnants of an alluvial fan that are all but dried out due to the necessary confinement of Mill Creek to a narrow bridge as it moves under LeClerc Creek Road. Stakeholders include not only the Forest Service, but also Pend Oreille County whose road engineers will use our stream restoration design to inform a road relocation in this section. The creek will be able to meander back into its braided channels and the road will undergo less damage during high water due its new placement.

At the base of Mill Creek, on a third stakeholder's private property, is a series of beaver dams. It looks like nature's engineers are already ahead of us! Our construction won't begin until 2023, but design is well under way. In the meantime, the beavers can continue doing what they do best, and we'll just work around them when the time comes. After all, beavers taught salmon to jump!