SANDY -- A massive project is underway on the Salmon River near Sandy, with huge excavators rolling through the rapids and digging out new channels.
It’s all part of a major effort to restore fish habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead trout
"We’re hoping to jump-start that whole ecosystem process," said Sean Welch, senior hydraulic engineer on the project.
The $400,000 operation is the second phase of a multi-year project to return the Salmon River to the way it was before the big 1964 floods and subsequent flood control plans.
"Essentially bulldozers were placed in the river, they cleaned out the channel, and the river has never really had the opportunity to recover," explained Welch.
But with the help of the heavy machinery, tons of boulders and more than a 100 massive logs, crews are creating log jams, deep pools, and side channels to give young fish the protection they need
"Where there's lower velocities, there's a lot of shade, a lot of insect input . . . and they got some areas kind of hide and grow to be big fish," said Welch.
Within days of the first log jams going in, juvenile salmon returned.
"It just doesn't get any better than that for a fish biologist to see the fish instantly responding to the things you’re doing," said Bruce Zoellick, fisheries biologist with the BLM.
Right now crews are working on a two mile stretch of the Salmon River, but they say the benefits will stretch all the way to the ocean.
"We think we’re going to get a lot of fish back," said Zoellick.
The logs crews are using came from trees cut down for the Highway 26 widening project. And much of the funding for the project came from lottery dollars.
