- Bureau of Environmental Services
- The project zone for next summer
The Springwater Corridor Trail through Oaks Bottom will be closed June – September 2011 for a major wildlife restoration project.
This will displace an estimated 2,000 bicycle commuters a day, and an official detour has been planned, with the assistance of PBOT Bike Coordinator Roger Geller. The detour might take a little longer, and it does have some concerns that are still being ironed out. See Bike Portland for more information about the detour.
See a PDF of the detour map here: Bike Detour
For commuters and day-users alike this is a headache, but this time it’s one with a good cause: restoring a valuable wildlife habitat. Right now salmon get caught and killed in the narrow connection between the Willamette River and the Oaks Bottom wetlands. This project will widen the connection between the river and the refuge, so salmon can safely swim up to the 75-acre open water area where they can rest.
- Portland Water Bureau
- Oregon salmon get some R&R!
Wildlife experts say this is absolutely essential for the survival of baby salmon. “They need off-river rest, and don’t have it in this part of the Willamette,” Bureau of Environmental Services spokeswoman Anne Nelson explains.
“Portland is a pretty hard place if you’re a baby fish,” says Gerry St. Pierre with Willamette Riverkeeper. “They need some slack water, some cover. I think Oaks Bottom will make quite a bit of a difference.”
Will the wider connection with the Willamette allow pollution to flow in and negatively affect the refuge? St. Pierre says that in fact he had been worried about the opposite:
“Oaks Bottom used to be a dump until the 60s,” he says. He explains that before even being able to obtain a permit they were testing for toxins and chemicals and making sure there was nothing in the reconstruction plan that would harm the river. He also says the Willamette River is actually not as polluted now as it used to be.
“The Willamette River is increasingly getting cleaner,” he said. Right now his main concern with river pollution was ecoli from the sewer pipes, but the Big Pipe Project, which should be completed next year will take care of that.
The Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge includes 170 acres of wetlands, meadows and woodlands and is home to 175 species of birds, including 44 that are on the threatened species list, as well as threatened salmon, bats, frogs, and many other animals.
I have nothing against this project. But I would like to see some hard data that salmon divert that far from the river channel to “rest”. This was the same argument trotted out to make the Ross Island lagoon into a park. Data please!
When ODFW snorkels a river to see where juvenile salmonids over-winter, over and over and over again they find that juveniles hang out in backwaters, sloughs, confluences, beaver ponds, etc.
The data you are looking for can be found either on the ODFW website (GIS data and reports) or on the Oregon Geospatial data clearinghouse. It is the young salmon that get washed into the side channels and backwaters that would be helped by this project but that is where the biggest mortality is (overly-simplified) rather than large fish diverting off.
A project like this is critical in the summer too if they can keep the temperature low enough.
Thanks C, looked around the website you suggested but nothing came up, if you have specific links for Willamette River juvenile salmon hangouts, I’d appreciate. They have spotted salmon in Reed College canyon!