The John Day is the nation’s second longest free-flowing river in the contiguous United States and the longest containing entirely un-supplemented runs of anadromous fish.  Located in eastern Oregon, the basin drains over 8,000 square miles, Oregon’s fourth largest drainage basin, and incorporates portions of eleven counties.  Originating in the Strawberry Mountains near Prairie City, the John Day River flows 284 miles in a northwesterly direction, entering the Columbia River approximately four miles upstream of the John Day dam.  With wild runs of spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead, westslope cutthroat, and redband and bull trout, the John Day system is truly a basin with national significance.

The majority of the John Day basin was ceded to the Federal government in 1855 by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon (Tribes).  In 1997, the Tribes established an office in the basin to coordinate restoration projects, monitoring, planning and other watershed activities on private and public lands.  Once established, the John Day Basin Office (JDBO) formed a partnership with the Grant Soil and Water Conservation District (GSWCD) and the Wheeler Soil and Water Conservation Districts(WSWCD), which subcontract the majority of the construction implementation activities for these projects from the JDBO.  

The GSWCD/WSWCD completes the landowner contact, preliminary planning, engineering design, permitting, construction contracting, and construction implementation phases of most projects.  The JDBO completes the planning, grant solicitation/defense, environmental compliance, administrative contracting, monitoring, and reporting portion of the program.  Most phases of project planning, implementation, and monitoring are coordinated with the private landowners and basin agencies, such as the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon Water Resources Department.

MOA Amendment  Changes 6-08

Purchase of a 16,000 lb excavator with bucket, post pounder and auger attachments will aid in riparian habitat projects that are small in scale yet important to the resource, many contractors with the larger equipment wont bid on these small scale projects and sometimes the equipment is to large to be effective. Planting of large bundle riparian shrubs and trees will also be accomplished with this piece of equipment and owning it will allow work to be scheduled and preformed as conditions permit. The use of large bundle cuttings is widely practiced through both NRCS and BLM restoration programs. The requirements of the Tribes to be added to the insurance of rental businesses makes the option of renting equipment non feasible as we have tried in the past. with the addition of the post pounding attachment fencing projects can also be accomplished in house saving valuable funding for on the ground applications as opposed to higher contractor wages.

The addition of the bobcat work mule will enable more efficient small fencing, habitat and planting projects to be completed and be useful in the larger monitoring projects as well.  

There are three current staff members with excavator operator experience.  This equipment will be made available to other CTWSRO projects in the John Day Subbasin.