Mining Helps Resurrect a Creek on the Chugach National Forest

Authors: Bair, Brian, USFS Enterprise Team; Marzullo, Corinne, USFS Enterprise Team; Williams, Austin, Trout Unlimited

Video Presentation

Abstract

The National Forest Foundation (NFF), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Chugach National Forest and Trout Unlimited (TU), in partnership with Kinross Gold Corporation and Hope Mining Company (HMC), have collaborated to implement instream habitat restoration on approximately 2.2 miles of a historically mined reach of Resurrection Creek, located on the northern end of the Kenai Peninsula, on the Seward Ranger District near Hope, Alaska.

The hydraulic and heavy equipment placer mining of a century ago resulted in loss of soil and significantly altered the natural complexity of stream channels and wetlands on Resurrection Creek. The impact of the disturbance and loss of the stream's ability to access the floodplain have adversely altered the aquatic habitat and riparian vegetation composition. Without mechanical intervention, adversely affected habitat will limit biologic production within the project area conceivably for centuries. The USFS's experience and success with a similar restoration project, just upstream, has shown that restoration of the stream channel corridor has a high potential to restore natural stream channel processes and aquatic habitat, increasing aquatic spawning and rearing habitat, producing higher densities and larger more fit juvenile Chinook and coho salmon, consequently improving fish populations.

Today this unique partnership is working to restore habitat, in one of the Chugach National Forests priority watersheds, for healthy populations of fish and wildlife that future generations will enjoy.

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