Another round of Shade Our Streams in the Clackamas Watershed
Clackamas River Basin Council is launching a new riparian restoration effort in the Deep Creek watershed, supported by Portland General Electric’s Clackamas Habitat Fund.
The 50 square mile Deep Creek watershed in the lower Clackamas River basin, which includes parts of the communities of Barton, Boring, Sandy, and Eagle Creek, has both important natural resources and unique environmental challenges. Deep Creek and its tributaries (including Tickle Creek, North Fork Deep Creek, Noyer Creek, and Goose Creek) provide over 30 miles of potential habitat for Coho salmon and winter steelhead, create ecologically diverse habitat corridors linking the Cascades foothills to the Clackamas River, and discharge above the drinking water intakes for nearly 300,000 customers in the Portland metro area. These streams also face serious pressures from wastewater discharge, noxious weeds, legacy pesticides, and ongoing agricultural and urban development.
In recognition of these issues, and building upon past and ongoing investments in water quality monitoring, noxious weed management, fish passage, and riparian revegetation, CRBC is making a major investment in the Deep Creek watershed through the latest incarnation of our Shade Our Streams program.
With funding including over $150,000 from Portland General Electric’s Clackamas Habitat Fund, we plan to restore at least 10 acres of riparian habitat along at least 2.5 miles of Deep Creek and its tributaries, with the first round of planting to occur in early 2025. This builds upon the 10.7 stream miles CRBC has restored in this watershed since Shade Our Streams began in 2010.
While the cooperation of willing landowners will ultimately decide which projects go forward, CRBC is taking a data-driven approach to identifying potential restoration sites. We will use an updated model of riparian shade, current results from a first-of-its-kind stream temperature study, fish habitat assessments, and new regional habitat connectivity data to help maximize the ecological uplift gained from every acre we replant. We also are taking steps to account for a changing climate, in which the risks of heat, drought, wildfire, flooding, and invasive species are all magnified—and the need for ambitious yet careful ecosystem restoration is ever more urgent.
How to participate in Shade Our Streams
If you live on a stream in the Deep Creek watershed, or anywhere else in the Clackamas River basin, and would like assistance with noxious weed management and/or riparian restoration, please contact Eric Butler, CRBC Riparian Specialist, at eric@clackamasriver.org or 503-303-4372 x104. You can learn more about the Shade Our Streams program on our website here: