The Nolan Center hosted the first of several Chautauqua speaking lectures last Thursday. Members of the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, a regional organization dedicated to the stewardship of Southeast Alaska watersheds, were invited to talk about the Pat Creek watershed. A watershed, for those unfamiliar with the term, is an area of land that feeds all of the water that comes into the area into a single body of water. These bodies of water, then flow into larger bodies of water, which eventually all connect into a stream or a lake.
The watershed for Pat Creek covers a wide area of land, where all the water flows into the creek, Pats Lake, and eventually out to sea. According to the coalition, the Pat Creek watershed covers 13,900 acres. Angie Flickinger, with the coalition, said that about two thirds of the area is managed by the Forest Service, while the remaining third is under management by the state of Alaska. The area was also important to the local logging industry in previous decades, she added.
“We wanted to pull folks together,” she said. “There’s been a few different stewardship initiatives going on around this watershed and in this valley, and we thought it would be a great idea to talk about what’s going on.”
Kim Wickman, with the Wrangell Cooperative Association, kicked off the meeting by going into a little detail about what the watershed area meant to locals and some of the work the WCA has been doing in the area. The area around Pat Creek and Pats Lake is an important area for subsistence gathering, she said. Tribal members harvest things like devil’s club, cloudberry, Labrador tea, shellfish, and even cedar strips from the area. To help keep things nice and healthy, the WCA has cleaned up illegal dump sites around the area both in 2014 and 2018. They also regularly test plankton out at Pat Creek beach to see what kind of population there is, and if any are dangerous for shellfish to consume, and there for dangerous for people to consume secondhand. They also recently conducted a shellfish biomass survey, to better track shellfish locations and population. Members of the public also added in the meeting that they use Pats Lake regularly for fishing, ice skating, or just as a place to exercise and walk their dogs.
After the WCA had their say, Flickinger talked about some improvements the coalition is planning to do along the creek. In 2014, she said, the coalition conducted an assessment of the watershed to better understand the existing stream habitat, and to identify areas of improvement. As a part of this assessment, the east and west forks of Pat Creek were walked and mapped, as well as the tunnel road that follows part of the west fork. They also measured the creek’s ability to support healthy populations of salmon by looking at the size of the creek, the speed of water flow, the number of and size of pools, and took samples of the stream bed. The results of this survey found that the size and frequency of woody debris was lower than would typically be found along an unmanaged creek. They also found, on the eastern fork of the creek, an old logging road that was potentially restricting floodplain connectivity within the watershed.
This was important, Flickinger said, because woody debris like fallen trees and branches along the edge of the creek are important for stabilizing banks, moderating the amount of sediment moved by the water, and also provide shelter for fish. The logging road restricting floodplain access could also negatively impact fish habitats, she said.
In 2016, the coalition partnered with Inter-Fluve, an Oregon organization that helps to restore rivers, to design some improvements. Rob Cadmus, with the coalition, explained what some of these restoration projects will look like. The main part of the plan is to install large pieces of wood along Pat Creek, at the main stream and along the west fork. These will be trees, he said, locally cut and placed along the banks strategically to not restrict the flow of the creek, but to encourage the formation of a pool and to give salmon some shelter from the current. Inter-Fluve visited the creek again in 2018 to conduct final surveys and work on their design for the construction of the wooden structures.
“Why do we want wood? It stabilizes the banks and it creates complex habitat,” he said. “So if you’re fishing, and you cast into a stream, you want a deep pool or something that has cover in it. That’s where the fish are really going to like to hang out.”
The east fork of the creek moves very fast, Cadmus said. With how quickly it moves, the east fork of the creek carries a lot of debris with it. This debris can jam, and then the water finds a new path. The old logging road near the creek was restricting access to the wider floodplain, he said. They considered tearing apart the entire road, but they decided against that. What they did decide to do, however, was breach the road in four areas where the road was already fairly low, to create access for the water. These are spots where the stream is already wanting to break through, he said, or may break through on its own eventually.
“Restoring that natural migration channel allows it to dissipate more energy, and it’s connecting quite a relatively large three and a half acres of floodplain,” Cadmus said.
The coalition is finalizing their permits right now, over the spring. Cadmus said they will be breaching the old logging road and installing the wooden structures sometime in June or July, though he said they are aiming for June. They hope to do the work and complete it without disturbing any salmon coming upriver or leaving, he said. After the work is done, they will continue to monitor the area until 2020.
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