North Fork Teanaway River Restoration

The Yakama Nation's Yakima-Klickitat Fisheries Project (YKFP) and Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group (MCF) worked together to place large wood in the North Fork Teanaway River between Middle Creek and Stafford Creek on the Teanaway Community Forest in 2019 and 2020.

The project will help salmon and steelhead by increasing the connection of floodplains and side channels, creating pools, and trapping spawning gravels over a 4-mile reach of the North Fork Teanaway River.

How Wood Works

Past land management has reduced the amount of wood in rivers.  Rivers need wood to maintain and restore natural processes.  In-stream wood builds spawning habitat, scours deep pools, increases food availability for fish, and reconnects floodplains.

What You Can Expect

Yakama Nation Fisheries Project and Mid-Columbia Fisheries worked with a geomorphologist and a licensed engineer to design the wood additions.  We hired local contractors to install the wood in the summers of 2019, 2020, and 2021.  In the summer of 2021, we also removed a berm that cut off the river's floodplain and historic channels.

The wood structures are creating new pools for salmon and trout.  The streambank and floodplain areas near the wood structures will be wetter, and new native trees and shrubs will establish there.  New side channels have developed, and beaver have moved back into the area - continuing to add wood and improve habitat.   These changes are helping to counter low flows and warm water temperatures in the river, and will help salmon and trout to persist.

The project's long-term impacts are being monitored through photo points, drone flights, and repeat habitat surveys.

Project Funding

The project was supported by grant funding from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, NOAA Fisheries and Bonneville Power Administration.  We are also grateful to Trout Unlimited for volunteer and financial support of our revegetation work.