Oregon Parks & Recreation Department Award Received
The CWC was the recipient of not one but two awards for outstanding restoration work from OPRD last month! It was a pleasant surprise for our Executive Director when he checked the mail to find a hefty envelope in our Lock Box at the Post Office. Upon opening, there were two plaques congratulating the Calapooia Watershed Council on our exceptional floodplain restoration work! Can’t wait to hang them on the wall!
Habitat Restoration Updates
With the closure of State Parks, accessing our restoration projects on Greenway sites had been difficult, Truax Island in particular. However, we’re pleased to report that through the effort of the COVID-19 policy development, long standing relationships with the farmers at Truax Island and a discussion with OPRD concerning the importance of Salmonid Habitat restoration alongside farming in the OPRD Greenways, the CWC will be able to complete necessary work on these properties as well!
With the 2020 winter planting season behind us and nearly 28,000 stems planted, the CWC Habitat Restoration Program is working with local landowners (private and public) to perform routine plant maintenance. The projects slated for work this season are: Tub Run Riparian and Wetland Prairie Restoration, Marble Ranch, Upper Courtney Creek (CTC), CREP sites and the recently planted Truax Island (see below.) The plants from just these six projects total more than 180,000 trees and shrubs that are providing bank stabilization, water filtration, stream shade, and habitat for countless wildlife species through the Calapooia River and Muddy Creek watersheds.
To build on these, and other restoration projects in the watershed, the program is also actively working on a new project known as the Horned Lark Prairie and Wetland Restoration Project. This 119-acre project is a collaboration between the CWC and US Fish and Wildlife Service with matching funds from Pacific Birds Habitat Joint Venture, NRCS, and Oregon Wildlife Foundation. If funded, the project will consist of 92 acres of prairie/grassland and 27 acres of vernal/emergent wetlands. The project is targeting the threatened Streaked Horned Lark but will benefit a wide range of pollinators and prairie adapted species.
Monitoring
It has been an exciting final year for steelhead surveys on the upper Calapooia. The periods of low water during this past winter has enabled the technicians, Homan and David, to more thoroughly survey the river and its side channels. This, combined with the relatively high 2020 steelhead return into the upper Willamette (~ 5,300 adult steelhead) has resulted in a very productive survey season. The current redd count is 200 even with more being found daily. The low, clear water has given the technicians opportunity to observe fish spawning behavior, including multiple cases of large resident rainbow trout spawning with the migratory steelhead along with an abundance of smaller cutthroat trout and Pacific lamprey redds. These observations help us understand the status of these fishes and how they interact or complete for highest quality habitat. Regardless of often unsettling population trends, many of the fish populations in the upper Calapooia appear healthy and active!
The technicians are also in the process of conducting exploratory monitoring in tributaries of the Calapooia where steelhead historically spawned, but haven’t been seen using in recent years. Steelhead monitoring will extend until the end of spawning season, or late June.
With the warm summer months ahead, we are preparing for the 2020 temperature monitoring season by coordinating with DEQ and ODA. Our stream temperature monitoring covers 32 miles of the upper Calapooia (Holley bridge to upper falls) and 3 miles of lower Brush Creek with funding from Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and Oregon Department of Agriculture. The two projects require a total of 19 Hobo Pro V2 temperature loggers deployed from May to October. This information provides the CWC, and other natural resource based organizations, with a quantitative assessment of the stream temperature in the upper watershed and thermally significant tributaries.
Youth Education Program
We have been working on the new, virtual Urban Ecology (UE) program. With the help of our OSU Urban Eco intern and our UE partners at the City of Albany (Parks & Public Works), we will be recording and releasing videos for each of the four science stations at UE lessons. We’ve been trying to get comfortable in front of the camera developing a water quality and two soil sciences videos. The intern will be recording a virtual tour at Talking Water Gardens in Albany, OR with an invasive/native plant identification lesson. We are working on getting these videos translated into Spanish, this is especially important because two of our area elementary schools participating in the program have a lot of Spanish-speaking families.
We created a BINGO card for Albany and Central Linn/ Harrisburg students. The card has links to activities, lessons, and videos on each BINGO square topic plus questions for students to answer.
Through our partnership with the City of Albany, this card was used for a contest they ran giving out $20 gift certificates to local restaurants to the first 5 students (K-8) that returned their completed card!
We also have a regular social media feature “Where in the Watershed?” Kristen is posting pictures of her daughter Nora in different locations in the watershed for folk to try and guess where she is…
Outdoor School Program
Outdoor School Lessons at Home
This is a series of lessons we’re making available to be taught from home using print outs and materials people might find in their homes.
The lessons are available on CWC’s website, and on the Greater Albany Public School’s (GAPS) site for 6th graders (students that would have attended outdoor school this spring.)
Available Lessons include: Bird Migration, Fire Ecology, Macroinvertebrates, What is a Watershed? and Nature Art.
Coming soon: Seed Design, and Soil Sciences!
Livestream Videos
Our Assistant Outdoor School Coordinator Anna, has been hosting livestream videos on our Instagram account. These are videos filmed live so that people who are watching can interact with the video host through a chat box.
Each livestream video includes an activity that viewers can do from home and an interview with a specialist on the topic being covered. These livestreams are recorded so they can then be shared from our YouTube channel after the livestream ends.
Our Current livestream videos include: How to make playdough at home, Macroinvertebrates, and All About Birds.
Our future livestream videos include: Wildlife skulls, pelts, and tracks plus a visit with the Chintimini Wildlife Center.
We’re looking forward to working with more partners in our area for future videos!
