The goal of this project is to address limiting factors by implementing restoration actions that protect and restore passage, flow, and habitat for anadromous fish and listed species in the John Day River Basin.  This includes use of an Implementation Strategy to assist the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon (CTWS),  John Day Basin Office, John Day Watershed Restoration Program with the ability to focus on implementing suites of restoration actions that will more effectively identify and address priority limiting factors.

In addition to addressing limiting factors outlined in the 2008 FCRPS BiOp, the primary goal of the CTWS, Fisheries Habitat Restoration Program is to protect, manage, and restore aquatic habitats in Reservation watersheds.  CTWS defines protect, manage and restore as:

1. Protect existing high-quality habitats that have functioning ecological processes;
2. Manage future land use through an integrated planning process to promote ecological integrity and sustainability; and
3. Restore watersheds and habitats using a prioritized approach based on limiting factors analysis.

In 1855, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon ceded a majority of the John Day basin to the Federal government.  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 partnerships with local agencies and stakeholders to implement restoration activities from the John Day Basin Office and Watershed Restoration Program.

The John Day River basin is within the CTWS ceded lands and supporting restoration efforts such as this project is an important part of maintaining cultural foods and fish populations.  The mission of the CTWS Branch of Natural Resources Fisheries Department is to provide fisheries populations at harvestable levels for tribal members using information gained from research, management, production, and habitat programs while exercising our co-management authority across ceded lands and usual and accustomed stations.

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 John Day Watershed Restoration Program (JDWR) is an on-going, multi-agency program that has historically focused on inefficient, detrimental land-use practices and implemented irrigation system upgrades, diversion passage improvements, upland restoration, and riparian fencing and planting.  The Program’s objectives include removing fish passage impediments, increasing water flows, increasing water quality, and enhancing riparian and stream channel recovery.  Though benefits most readily apply to fish species, the cumulative effects apply to basin-wide watershed recovery.

Projects implemented by the JDWR under this contract are intended to increase in-season river flows through a combination of irrigation efficiency measures; reduce bank instability, sedimentation, bed load movement, and summer passage impediments; improve riparian condition; and implement an annual monitoring program evaluating each of the projects.  These projects respond directly to, and are consistent with, tribal, state, and federal goals and objectives within the region's plans and programs.  Previous projects of these types have demonstrated success in addressing limiting factors identified for salmonid production in the basin.  They follow comprehensive assessments of the watershed, the John Day Subbasin plan and Mid-Columbia Steelhead Recovery Plan.  The benefits are to entirely wild stocks and associated habitats.  Each project utilizes standard design criteria, and was selected using an evaluation and prioritization process.  The effects of individual projects have been evaluated as to short and long term beneficial and/or adverse effects on aquatic and terrestrial species.

For project implementation the JDWR has worked with local SWCDs, Watershed Councils, and other agencies to complete landowner contacts, preliminary planning, engineering designs, permitting, construction contracting, and construction implementation phases.  The JDWR has worked to complete the planning, grant solicitation/defense, environmental compliance, administrative contracting, monitoring, juniper removal contracting, water development implementation, riparian planting, and reporting for 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 (ODFW) and Oregon Water Resources Department.  The projects implemented through the JDWR are strictly voluntary and the majority on private land, these multi-agency partnerships are essential to local support and private landowner involvement.

Project efforts rely and build adaptively upon previous and ongoing activities.  The overall restoration program appears to have resulted in some significant successes, in particular with spawning and rearing of spring Chinook on private lands.

Through the Accord period (2008-2017) active restoration projects have and will be implemented throughout the John Day Basin, through the CTWS JDWR under this contract.  Actions going forward from 2014 will be prioritized through a scientific and stakeholder technical advisory team and based on an implementation strategy.