Logs fly to Skokomish river rescue

A stretch of degraded habitat on the South Fork Skokomish River once slated to be a dam reservoir will soon house 28 large woody debris structures to provide refuge for fish and improved water quality. More than 2,000 whole trees pulled out of an Olympic National Forest stand are being transported about one mile this week to a big bend in the river, about 11 miles upstream from where it empties into Hood Canal in Mason County. The transporter is a twin-rotor, heavy-duty helicopter hired by the U.S. Forest Service to strategically place the trees, which will be arranged in engineered log jams. The large woody debris piles, which will be buried in the stream bed and river banks, will serve multiple purposes, Forest Service fish biologist Marc McHenry said. “They provide places for fish to hide, help cool the water and retain spawning gravel for the fish to use,” he said. This section of the river upstream of the Skokomish River gorge was heavily logged in the 1950s and ’60s to prepare a lake reservoir for a dam that was never built. Starved of trees, the river grew wide and shallow, causing water temperatures to rise and fish to lose habitat...more