Aquatic Conservation Strategy

The Aquatic Conservation Strategy was developed to restore and maintain the ecological health of watersheds and aquatic ecosystems contained within them on public lands.

The Aquatic Conservation Strategy is designed to meet the following objectives:

Maintain and restore the distribution, diversity, and complexity of watershed and landscape scale features to ensure protection of the aquatic systems to which species, populations and communities are uniquely adapted.
Maintain and restore spatial and temporal connectivity within and between watersheds. Lateral, longitudinal, and drainage network connections include floodplains, wetlands, upslope areas, headwater tributaries, and intact refugia. These network connections must provide chemically and physically unobstructed routes to areas critical for fulfilling life history requirements of aquatic and riparian dependent species.
Maintain and restore the physical integrity of the aquatic system, including shorelines, banks, and bottom configurations.
Maintain and restore water quality necessary to support healthy riparian, aquatic, and wetland ecosystems. Water quality must remain in the range that maintains the biological, physical, and chemical integrity of the system and benefits survival, growth, reproduction, and migration of individuals composing aquatic and riparian communities.
Maintain and restore the sediment regime under which aquatic ecosystems evolved. Elements of the sediment regime include the timing, volume, rate, and character of sediment input, storage, and transport.
Maintain and restore instream flows sufficient to create and sustain riparian, aquatic, and wetland habitats and to retain patterns of sediment, nutrient, and wood routing (that is, movement of woody debris through the aquatic system). The timing, magnitude, duration, and spatial distribution of peak, high, and low flows must be protected.
Maintain and restore the timing, variability, and duration of floodplain inundation and water table elevation in meadows and wetlands.
Maintain and restore the species composition and structural diversity of plant communities in riparian areas and wetlands to provide adequate summer and winter thermal regulation, nutrient filtering, appropriate rates of surface erosion, bank erosion, and channel migration and to supply amounts and distributions of coarse woody debris sufficient to sustain physical complexity and stability.
Maintain and restore habitat to support well distributed populations of native plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate riparian dependent species.

The components of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy are Riparian Reserves, Key Watersheds, Watershed Analysis, and Watershed Restoration.

Riparian Reserves

Riparian Reserves are lands along streams and unstable and potentially unstable areas where special standards and guidelines direct land use.

See Riparian Reserves in Appendix A.

Key Watersheds

Key Watersheds are a system of large refugia that are crucial for maintaining and recovering habitat for at-risk stocks of resident fish species. These refugia include areas of high quality habitat and areas of degraded habitat. Key Watersheds with high quality conditions will serve as anchors for the potential recovery of depressed stocks. Those of lower quality habitat have high potential for restoration and will become future sources of high quality habitat with the implementation of a comprehensive restoration program (see the Watershed Restoration section that follows).

There are two types of Key Watersheds - Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 watersheds contribute directly to conservation of at-risk fish species. They also have a high potential of being restored as part of a watershed restoration program. Tier 2 watersheds do not contain at-risk fish stocks, but they are important sources of high quality water.

Key Watersheds in the resource area are Spencer Creek (Tier 1 - approximately 40,850 acres of public and private land), Clover Creek (Tier 2 - approximately 13,950 acres of public and private land), and a portion of (Johnson Creek) Jenny Creek (Tier 1 - approximately 133,000 acres of public and private land). See Map 3 for locations of Tier 1 Key Watersheds.

Key Watersheds overlay portions of most land use allocations in the resource area and place additional management requirements or emphasis on activities in those areas.

The non-interchangeable component of the allowable sale quantity, attribute to key watersheds, is 0.542 million cubic feet. Identification of this component was required by the SEIS Record of Decision, pages E-19 and E-20.

Management Actions/Direction

Prior to further resource management activity, including timber harvest, in Key Watersheds, prepare watershed analyses. Until watershed analyses can be completed, proceed with minor activities, such as those categorically excluded under the National Environmental Policy Act regulations (except timber harvest), if they are consistent with Aquatic Conservation Strategy objectives. Apply Riparian Reserve management actions/direction.
Reduce existing road mileage within Key Watersheds. If funding is insufficient to implement reductions, neither construct nor authorize through discretionary permits a net increase in road mileage in Key Watersheds.
Give highest priority to watershed restoration in Key Watersheds.
Manage riparian-wetland areas to protect, maintain, or improve riparian-wetland habitat for wildlife and native plant diversity. Restore or maintain riparian-wetland areas so that 75 percent or more are in proper functioning condition by 1997. The overall objective is to achieve an advanced ecological status, except where resource management objectives, including proper functioning condition, will require an earlier successional stage, thus providing the widest variety of vegetation and habitat diversity for wildlife, fish, and watershed protection. Proper functioning condition exists when adequate vegetation, landform, or large woody debris are present to: dissipate stream energy associated with high water flows; filter sediment, capture bedload and aid floodplain development; improve flood water retention and groundwater recharge; develop stabilizing root masses; create aquatic habitat; and insulate streams from summer and winter temperature extremes. Proper functioning condition is discussed in Chapter 3 in the Riparian Zones section.

Watershed Analysis

Watershed analysis is a set of procedures for conducting an analysis to evaluate geomorphic and ecologic processes operating in a specific watershed. This analysis should enable watershed planning to prescribe management actions that will achieve Aquatic Conservation Strategy objectives. Watershed analysis provides the basis for monitoring and restoration programs and is the foundation from which Riparian Reserves can be delineated.

See the Watershed Analysis section (toward the end of this section) and the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Record of Decision (Appendix A) for requirements.

Management Actions/Direction

Watershed analysis is a systematic procedure to characterize watersheds. The information obtained through watershed analysis will be used to guide management prescription and monitoring programs, set and refine Riparian Reserve boundaries, and develop the watershed restoration program.

It is required in Key Watersheds prior to resource management.

It is required in all roadless areas prior to resource management.

It is recommended in all other watersheds.

It is required to change Riparian Reserve widths in all watersheds.

Earthflows qualify as unstable and potentially unstable areas and will be analyzed for inclusion within Riparian Reserves.

Watershed Restoration

Watershed restoration will be an integral part of a program designed to aid recovery of fish habitat, riparian-wetland habitat, and water quality. The most important components of a watershed restoration program are control and prevention of road-related runoff and sediment production, restoration of the condition of riparian vegetation, and restoration of instream habitat complexity. Other restoration opportunities include meadow and wetland restoration and mine reclamation.

Restoration will be based on watershed analysis and planning. Watershed analysis is essential to identify areas of greatest benefit-to-cost relationships for restoration opportunities and greatest likelihood of success. Watershed analysis can also be used as a medium to develop cooperative projects involving various landowners. In many watersheds the most critical restoration needs occur on private lands both upstream and downstream from federally managed lands. Decisions to apply a given treatment depend on the value and sensitivity of downstream uses, transportation needs, social expectations, risk assessment of probable outcomes for success at correcting problems, costs, and other factors. Watershed analysis, including the use of sediment budgets, provides a framework for considering benefit-to-cost relations in a watershed context. Thus, the magnitude of restoration needs within the planning area will be based on watershed analysis.

Management Actions/Direction

Prepare watershed analyses and plans prior to restoration activities. Activities will be designed to restore watershed processes and recover degraded habitat. See Use of the Plan section.
Focus watershed restoration on removing some roads and, where needed, upgrading those that remain in the system.
Apply silvicultural treatments to restore and retain large conifers in Riparian Reserves.
Restore stream channel complexity. Instream structures will only be used in the short term and not as a mitigation measure.

Additional information about the Aquatic Conservation Strategy is found in Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Record of Decision (Appendix A).