Ecola Creek Native Fish Habitat Assessment

Goals of this project are to:

1. Provide a science-based native salmonid habitat assessment and stewardship recommendations for the Ecola Creek watershed near Cannon Beach, OR, focused on the 1000-acre Ecola Creek Forest Reserve. The City of Cannon Beach, which manages the Reserve, requested the native fish assessment from TU as the City develops its management plan for the Forest Reserve.
2. Follow up on the recommendations of the assessment by implementing some of them in habitat restoration or stewardship projects in the Ecola Creek Forest Reserve and elsewhere in the watershed with the City of Cannon Beach and other local partners.

1. TU Watershed Program staff enlisted the help of TU Science Team staff to work with local partners - agencies, timber operators, other NGOs, private contractors, the City of Cannon Beach - to assemble all available data on the habitat condition of the Ecola Creek watershed.
2. TU Science Team staff then synthesized that data using TU's Conservation Success Index to produce the Ecola Creek Native Salmonid Habitat Assessment.

1. The Assessment document was the first single-watershed application of TU's Conservation Success Index, and was received very well by all parties, and went into use immediately by the City of Cannon Beach as it shapes its management planning for the Ecola Creek Forest Reserve.
2. The main coastal cutthroat habitat recommendation for Ecola Creek that emerged from the TU assessment - large wood placement projects in the lower watershed - quickly became the first large wood placement project application: partners at the Ecola Creek Watershed Council successfully secured funding for a helicopter wood placement project from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. That project occurs in fall of 2013.
3. The partnerships that went into the production of the TU assessment will last well into the future, and will lead to years of successful collaboration on behalf of native fish habitat in Ecola Creek.

Alan Moore - TU Northwest Director of Habitat Programs

Alan Moore - TU Northwest Director of Habitat Programs