Illinois River and Sucker Creek, Oregon

Illinois River at Confluence with the Rogue. Photo by Chris Frissell, PRC

The Illinois has been dubbed one of the “upside down rivers” because it traverses gently sloping valleys in its upper reaches before it tumbles through rugged canyon on its descent to the Pacific Ocean.  From its headwaters in the high Siskiyou Range of Oregon and northern California, the forks of the Illinois River descend to the temperate interior Illinois Valley and past towns including Takilma, Cave Junction, Kerby, and Selma.  After meandering through the broad alluvial valley, the river plunges over Illinois River Falls and steepens through the narrow confines of the famous and remote Illinois River Canyon and the flanks of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.  Boaters running the canyon encounter rapids of Class 4 and Class 5 stature, depending on flows.  Important tributaries include Rough and Ready Creek, Elk Creek, Sucker Creek, Josephine Creek, Silver Creek, Lawson Creek, and Indigo Creek.  Sixty river miles from its headwaters, the Illinois River joins the Rogue River at Agness, Oregon, to flow another 20 canyon miles to the Pacific Ocean at Gold Beach.  The Pacific Rivers Council helped win protection of 50.4 miles of the Illinois River corridor on National Forest lands designated by Congress as Wild and Scenic in 1988.  Of this, 28.7 miles are protected as wild, 17.9 miles as scenic, and 3.8 as recreational.

The river threads through a stunningly diverse mosaic of landscape, geology and biology spanning 980 square miles of the Klamath Mountains region. From the seasonal snowfields of the high Siskiyou Mountains, the river and its tributaries wind their way through diverse forests, through meadows, fens and Port-Orford cedar glens within serpentine soil prairies.  The river’s circuitous course turns around the botanically-rich flanks of Eight Dollar Mountain before plunging over a series of bedrock cascades and falls (seasonably navigable by native salmon), and spilling into the rugged escarpments and dense forests of the Illinois Canyon.  Interwoven through this extremely diverse geological landscape is the more transient imprint of large forest fires that in recent decades have left complex and biologically rich mosaics of forest and small prairie patches in both the uppermost and lowermost reaches of the basin.  

The Illinois River and its tributaries support sensitive aquatic species including coho salmon, fall chinook salmon, winter steelhead, coastal cutthroat trout, and lamprey.  There has never been a major hatchery operation in the Illinois Basin, and the long canyon and challenging prospect of Illinois River Falls apparently hinder hatchery-origin salmon from straying into the productive upper basin.  Therefore, the Illinois River’s salmon, steelhead, and trout runs are of native, wild origin and may be among the most genetically intact of any major populations in the Pacific Northwest.  Retention of long-developed evolutionary adaptations to the diverse and variable conditions of the Illinois system are one likely explanation for the surprising robustness of the Illinois’ salmon and steelhead runs, even in the face of local habitat modification, apparent climate warming in the inland valley, and increasingly volatile ocean conditions.

Threats

Pool at the River Bench Recreation Site on the Illinois River Road. Photo by Mary Scurlock, PRC

While the headwaters of the Illinois still have several extensive roadless and Wilderness areas that are very important for water quality and fish production, past and future land and water use pose continuing threats to the river and its key tributaries.  Surface water in the Illinois and its Illinois Valley tributaries is over-appropriated, and water users severely draw down many streams and some river reaches during the biologically critical summer low flow periods.  Irrigation diversions often block seasonal fish migration into and out of important tributary habitats.  Land clearance, channel alteration, and drainage of wetlands have reduced and destabilized habitat in critical alluvial reaches of the mainstem and key tributaries.  Placer and gravel mining have severely altered, simplified, and destabilized some of the most historically productive alluvial and floodplain habitat in the Illinois Valley and certain tributaries, and tributaries such as starkly beautiful Rough and Ready Creek remain at serious risk from proposed large-scale mining ventures.    Animal feedlot operations and runoff from ever-expanding rural residential development in the Valley and foothills pose additional and expanding threats to water quality and fish habitat.   

Conservation Needs and Opportunities

Large roadless areas on public land in the basin require permanent protection to maintain the water quality and fish habitat they support downstream.  Recent events demonstrate that absent permanent protection, roadless areas are vulnerable to being managed for timber extraction at the expense of water quality, fish and wildlife.  Many key tributary streams that are critical for fish production and aquatic diversity in the Illinois Basin are not protected against damming or diversion.   Water withdrawals necessitated by increased rural residential development are likely to increase and further harm fish and habitat. Better legal protection of instream flows as well as private and public investment in better water use efficiency are needed.  

Forest and agricultural land use can be sustained in the Illinois Basin, but only if they are within the suitable land base and if they do not rely on high-density, sub-standard road networks.   This means new initiatives to support the removal of older, substandard forest and range roads and remediation of remaining roads to reduce their impact on water quality and fish habitat.  It also means new measures to prevent vegetation and ground disturbance on slopes and soils vulnerable to landslides and surface erosion, as well as within riparian forests on both public and private lands.  Floodplain riverine wetlands are scarce today, but often those present are heavily used for rearing by listed coho salmon.  These special habitats and the floodplains where they develop need additional protection from disturbance by roads, construction, and channel alteration and bank stabilization.  Bank stabilization is generally an unproductive and harmful attempt to stop lateral channel migration:  Illinois Valley streams will not stabilize until headwater sediment sources are reduced and alluvial valley channels are given natural freeboard to roam over time.

The Siskiyou Wild Rivers Protection and Restoration Campaign, supported by the Pacific Rivers Council and numerous other organizations, seeks to forge a framework for the long-range protection of natural resources in the Illinois and other coastal basins.  

Sucker Creek, a key tributary in the Illinois Valley a few miles upstream of Cave Junction, exemplifies both the natural virtues and conservation challenges of the Illinois River Basin and southwest Oregon generally.

Wrongly designed, constructed and and/or maintained road drainage features create landslides and gullies, such as this one in the Illinois River Basin. Photo by Chris Frissell, PRC

Sucker Creek Watershed Restoration Partnership in the Illinois Basin

Sucker Creek is a critically important tributary of the Illinois River, affording spawning and rearing habitat for native runs of steelhead, fall Chinook salmon, and threatened coho salmon.  Sucker Creek descends from mountainous headwaters through mixed federal ownership that includes the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the Bureau of Land Management, and the famed Oregon Caves National Monument.  Major Sucker Creek tributaries traverse a mixed block of private industrial timberland before joining the mainstem in the productive alluvial valley, which is a mixture of timberland and small farms and homesteads.   A small area of the highest elevation headwaters of Sucker Creek is protected within Red Buttes Wilderness.

Although impacted by mining, farming, and logging, all supported by a moderately extensive road network, Sucker Creek still supports important populations of native fish, including coho and fall Chinook salmon, steelhead, coastal cutthroat trout, and lamprey, for three fundamental reasons:  1) the watershed still retains some large undisturbed headwater areas; 2) the geology of the basin, including slope groundwater sources from fractured and porous rocks and extensive areas of shallow alluvial aquifer in the valley flats, buffers some effects of watershed disturbance; 3) development in Sucker Creek valley has been limited enough that some productive natural wetlands and side channel complexes remain intact. 

Sucker Creek’s value to the Illinois and Rogue Basins, and region as a whole was recognized when it was designated a Key Watershed in the Northwest Forest Plan.  However, like most other watersheds in southwest Oregon, Sucker Creek has a history of serious alteration of habitat from roads, logging, farming,  and mining.  Recent decades have seen serious storm-related damage to streams from chronic erosion and catastrophic landslides and debris flows from both public and private forest roads.  Resulting sediment accumulation in the flatter valley streams causes accelerated bank erosion, channel widening, loss of agricultural land, and further loss of riparian forest cover and channel-fringing wetlands.   As a result, Sucker Creek has less than optimal temperature and sediment conditions, and is listed as a water quality limited stream by Oregon DEQ.   Many existing roads continue to bleed sediment, and more large landslides, many road-related, occur in each major storm.   Watershed assessments and clean-up plans for Sucker Creek have emphasized the need to correct erosion problems from the road network through both hydrologic decommissioning of unneeded and poorly-located or designed roads, and improvement of design and drainage of retained roads to decouple them from surface streams and “stormproof” them.  

Photo by Chris Frissell

In 2008, Pacific Rivers Council initiated a new partnership to jump-start whole-watershed restoration efforts in Sucker Creek.  In particular, we wanted to fully and systematically address the long-recognized need to reduce the sediment and hydrologic impacts of the existing road system basin-wide.  With partners Siskiyou Project and Pacific Watershed Associates, PRC has received funding from a consortium including the nonprofit organization Ecotrust, the USDA Forest Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service, to initiate an integrated, watershed-wide assessment to prioritize and develop work plans for remediation and sediment reduction of Sucker Creek’s road network.  

The Sucker Creek Sediment Reduction Action Plan is the first assessment to consider all land ownerships comprehensively and to explicitly account for the basin-wide distribution of critical habitat areas for fish and wildlife species in establishing priorities and recommendations.  The study approaches Sucker Creek from the standpoint of the whole-watershed physical dynamics of sediment movement and habitat formation and restoration in Sucker Creek and its tributaries.  Once road segment treatments priorities are established, field assessments of high-priority segments will set the stage for specific prescriptions and work plans for sediment control projects to proceed as soon as funds become available. 

The Sucker Creek Partnership also seeks to open a sustained conversation with the local community about the need and opportunity for improving and reducing the environmental impact of Sucker Creek’s road system, through restoration and improved management practices.   We will also explore community interest in developing restoration-based jobs and businesses. Outreach will include a community meeting and field workshop with PRC and PWA experts.    

Looking beyond the assessment study, we are already working with the Forest Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Illinois Valley Watershed Council, to round up funding for Sucker Creek Watershed restoration projects on the ground.   Meanwhile our Sucker Creek Whole-Watershed Assessment will help ensure that the investment of future resources in Sucker Creek restoration is well-targeted, cost-effective, and sets the course for real recovery and restoration of water quality, salmon habitat, and fish and wildlife in a keystone of the Illinois River Basin.

Read about a presentation PRC staff gave on the project in March.

Partners in Sucker Creek and Illinois River
Watershed Restoration:

Siskiyou Project

950 Sw 6th St.
Grants Pass, OR   97526
541-476-6648 
www.siskiyou.org

Pacific Watershed Associates

P.O. Box 4433
Arcata, CA 95518-4433
707- 839-5130
www.pacificwatershed.com

Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest

3040 Biddle Road
Medford, OR 97504
541-618-2200
www.fs.fed.us/r6/rogue-siskiyou/

US Bureau of Land Management

Medford Office
3040 Biddle Road
Medford, OR 97504
(541) 618-2200
www.blm.gov/or/districts/medford/index.php

National Marine Fisheries Service

Roseburg Field Office
2900 N.W. Stewart Parkway
Roseburg, Oregon 97471
(541) 957-3474
www.nwr.noaa.gov/

Illinois Valley Watershed Council

P.O. Box 352
Cave Junction, Oregon  97523
541-592-3731
www.oregonwatersheds.org/oregoncouncils/illinoisvalley

Ecotrust

721 NW 9th Ave. Suite 200
Portland, OR 97209
503-467-0810
www.ecotrust.org