Schoolhouse Creek Restoration
In January 2001, the Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB) awarded Washington Trout funding for the Schoolhouse Creek Restoration Project, to re-establish natural processes on a tributary to Southwest Washington’s Washougal River. Washington Trout has been working closely with the Clark-Skamania Flyfishers and the Camas-Washougal Wildlife League to develop the project, which will restore historical access to, enhance, and protect 23.6 acres of Schoolhouse Creek, a spring fed wetland-complex tributary to the Washougal River.
The Schoolhouse Creek watershed is the only remaining large, high quality
wetland-tributary ecosystem left in the
anadromous reach of the main stem Washougal River. The restored wetland complex
will provide critical off-channel spawning, rearing and over-wintering habitat,
and summer high water-temperature refuge, for coho, resident and sea-run
cutthroat trout, and ESA-listed steelhead.
WT Executive Director Kurt Beardslee and Tony Meyer, member of the Camas-Washougal Wildlife League, taking water temperature samples on Schoolhouse Creek at it enters the Washougal River.
WT will enhance the existing spring-fed wetland by installing Large Woody Debris and planting riparian vegetation, and recover rearing and spawning habitat by restoring and reconnecting some ditched tributaries, and re-watering ponds connected to the existing wetland-complex. Project funding includes acquisition money to buy the project site, ensuring the permanent protection and maintenance of these critical habitats.
WT Executive Director Kurt Beardslee and members of the Columbia Land Trust survey a wooded wetland on the Schoolhouse Creek project site.
