How the Tulalip Tribes are using a helicopter to restore a salmon river

Climate Lab is a Seattle Times initiative that explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The project is funded in part by The Bullitt Foundation, CO2 Foundation, Jim and Birte Falconer, Mike and Becky Hughes, Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Martin-Fabert Foundation, University of Washington and Walker Family Foundation, and its fiscal sponsor is the Seattle Foundation.

PILCHUCK RIVER, Snohomish County — With a thunderous roar, the Chinook helicopter emerged above the treetops. Four uprooted trees, root wads and all, dangled from its belly.

Attached by cables, the trees soared over the river before being released to their resting place in the water. They will remain here for decades, but their impact may be felt for much longer.

This was a helicopter-assisted rescue mission for the Pilchuck.

Pacific Northwest rivers evolved with big wood. Trees would tumble into the river, slowing it down, pushing it into its floodplain and creating a complex tangle of side channels, shaded pools and the small cobbles and gravels needed for salmon to spawn.

But for over a hundred years rivers like the Pilchuck were clear-cut of their surrounding forests, dammed and channelized, and wood was systematically removed from rivers to improve navigation and simplify flow patterns, making them more susceptible to harmful summer heat and surging winter storms.

Guiding these rivers back to something that more closely resembles what they used to be is one way to give the Northwest’s salmon a better shot amid drought, warming temperatures and winter storms stoked by climate change.

Logjamming a river

The Tulalip Tribes are building logjams in the Pilchuck River to accelerate its transition to the way rivers used to be, before they were simplified for agriculture, development and power production at huge cost to fish habitat. Big fish love big wood.

This project, in which nearly 400 logs were placed by helicopter into 8 miles of the upper Pilchuck, cost roughly half a million dollars and was led by the Tulalip Tribes, in partnership with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Placing logjams by helicopter is less invasive than conventional construction methods. Those projects often cost millions of dollars, need heavy machinery, and even sometimes require building new roads, diverting the river and replanting the river’s banks.

The helicopter allows similar work to be done in the span of a few days.

“Part of the reason why climate is such a factor here is because we’ve damaged the natural processes, and we prevented the river from being resilient like it was before,” said Ryan Miller, a member of the Tulalip Tribes board of directors who descends from village sites along the Pilchuck.

River recovery

Sarah Sheldon told of a time when her family could pull their canoe all the way up the Pilchuck, fishing for salmon and trout. They would portage to the Stillaguamish and paddle to the saltwater where the clamming was plentiful.

Every species of salmon was present in the river before settlers arrived.

The river would move and undercut the banks, pulling in old-growth trees and creating natural jams.

Carbon dating on some logjams on the Queets River valley revealed these Northwest logjams could provide protective habitat for up to 1,000 years, long enough to grow old growth in river islands, said David Montgomery, a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington and author of “King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon.”

Then, the Pilchuck, like others in the region, was heavily logged all the way up to the headwaters.

Scientists documenting the changes to large river floodplains around northern Puget Sound found in the early 2000s that only about 10% of the salmon habitat identifiable in early survey maps from the region remained, Montgomery said.

To Miller, Sheldon’s great-great-grandson, her story is an example of what’s possible.

“If we spend the time and effort here, we can get back to a time and a place where fish are available, not just for tribal members, but for nontribal people as well,” Miller said.

The tribes have been working to recover the Snohomish River across its basin, using laser-assisted mapping technology to pinpoint the best available habitat and any existing barriers like dams and culverts.

Much of the work depends on landowner participation.

Five years ago the Tulalip Tribes reconnected nearly 40 miles of the upper Pilchuck with the demolition of an aging diversion dam that used to provide drinking water for the city of Snohomish.

Scientists already are seeing Chinook, coho and pink salmon and steelhead making their way into these habitats — inaccessible since 1912.

The river needed some more help. It was missing the critical element of big, gnarly, woody debris. Go out in the summer months, and stretches were running wide, low and hot. Some of the side channels were high and dry.

After storms, the water would shoot downstream like a fire hose. The Pilchuck is fed by rain and snowmelt from Mount Pilchuck. Without log jams that can help the river reach its floodplain, the river — and fish — suffer big fluctuations.

It was time to bring in the helicopter. A big machine bringing big wood.

The Tulalip Tribes had worked with Columbia Helicopters to place logjams on the South Fork Tolt.

The jams slowed the flows during strong storms, leaving gravels and small cobbles that steelhead are relying on for spawning, surveys show.

Jams also help the water remember its old moves: meandering, digging deep pools and reconnecting with side channels. In winter, they help the water spread out.

Salmon and steelhead at all life stages have found refuge in the quiet, slow places to feed, rest and hide, said Derek Marks, who manages the tribes’ timber fish and wildlife program.

The Tulalip Tribes hope the project on the Pilchuck will similarly revive the river’s natural processes.

Flying logs

In the shadow of Mount Pilchuck’s snow-speckled crags, the Columbia Helicopters crew set up camp last month, complete with their own fuel tanker and grill.

Logs were sourced from blowdowns on state and city of Everett lands within the basin to build 28 jams.

The state contributed about 2.6 million pounds of logs — mostly western hemlock and Douglas fir — through its Large Wood Supply Initiative. They spent about $275,000 for the wood and staff time.

The helicopter was funded with about $336,000 from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant, and design and staff time was paid by the Tulalip Tribes.

In some areas, scientists Marks, David Bailey and Luke Fisher of the Tulalip Tribes, wanted to protect an existing island, in others they hoped to undercut the bank to help the river fell more trees. Other jams were placed to push water out into the side channels or the floodplain.

The jams were built to withstand 100-year floods.

During the log-drop mission, Fisher and Matt Steinwurtzel, a watershed restoration specialist with the state, took turns tossing rocks tied in pink and blue flagging tape in the river.

Blue signaled to the helicopter crew where they wanted the treetops placed, and pink marked the spot for the root wads.

The helicopter company’s operations specialists, Juan Carlos Favela and Jose Reyes Rodriguez, radioed the pilot their requests from the stream. The pilot sent the 100-foot-long logs soaring overhead, and lowered them on the flags, then released them by remote.

The ground crew braced for a twig haircut as the hardwoods and evergreens waved in the rotor wash. Silty sand pelted their hard hats.

In just 16 hours of helicopter time, the work was done.

The Tulalip Tribes will monitor how the river responds, using wildlife cameras and drone photography.

The work of these jams will be measured not over months or years, but salmon life cycles and generations.

But some of the benefits were more immediate.