Cindy Thieman has been executive director of the Hood River Watershed Group since 2022, when the group became a nonprofit organization, which opened new funding opportunities. She had previously served as the group’s coordinator since 2013.
A helicopter carefully lowers a log placed in Neal Creek earlier this summer. One of nearly 700 installed, these logs provide habitat for fish and help improve Neal Creek’s hydrology.
Cindy Thieman has been executive director of the Hood River Watershed Group since 2022, when the group became a nonprofit organization, which opened new funding opportunities. She had previously served as the group’s coordinator since 2013.
HOOD RIVER — When you hear about the dire state of salmon on the Columbia River, dams usually get a bad rap — and rightly so. These towering hydropower complexes in The Dalles, Bonneville and elsewhere degrade water quality and make it more difficult for anadromous (freshwater to saltwater) fish to reach their spawning grounds, but that’s far from the full picture.
If salmon, steelhead or lamprey manage to navigate dams and successfully lay their eggs in one of the Columbia’s web of tributaries, juvenile fish require specific conditions to survive. For Executive Director Cindy Thieman and the Hood River Watershed Group, cultivating diverse, meandering and fertile rivers is one of many driving purposes.
“If you don’t have the slower water, the off-channel habitat or the cover for juveniles to survive in, your spawning habitat doesn’t really matter,” said Thieman, who’s led the group since 2013.
This summer, Hood River Watershed Group is working to restore around four total miles of habitat in and around Neal Creek and Baldwin Creek, just southeast of Odell and Dee, respectively. The Hood River Watershed, driven by glacial melting with the East, Middle and West Forks as major conduits, hosts one of the “most diverse assemblages of anadromous and resident fish” in Oregon, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Fish returning to or living in the Hood River Watershed, however, find streams fundamentally altered by industry and development. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Thieman explained, logging companies created splash dams in the area, temporary reservoirs designed to hold downed trees until the company, usually with dynamite, unleashed a torrent of wood and water downriver.
“That pulse of water with wood — and it wasn’t just one time, it was multiple times — would basically scour the channel of gravels and cobbles,” she said. “Over time, that practice made the river straight, it made it lose spawning gravels and it cut the river down more.”
According to the U.S. Forest Service, splash damming was one of the earliest reported management disturbances in Pacific Northwest rivers. Alongside road construction, riparian logging and agricultural diversions, rivers in this watershed run faster, straighter, deeper and often lack the microhabitats necessary to nurture young fish.
“If [juvenile fish] can’t get out of the main channel, they just get whisked downstream and out of the watershed,” said Thieman.
A helicopter carefully lowers a log placed in Neal Creek earlier this summer. One of nearly 700 installed, these logs provide habitat for fish and help improve Neal Creek’s hydrology.
Photo courtesy of Cindy Thieman
Recognized by the county in 1996, Hood River Watershed Group has built a culture of volunteerism and partnership with just three full-time staff. They work closely with irrigation districts, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, and other organizations. Some of their events are mass re-vegetation parties or trash cleanups, but the projects on Neal Creek and Baldwin Creek look different, and somewhat counterintuitive to the idea of conservation: No volunteers, rather contractors, excavators and helicopters.
“You’re burning a lot of fuel, you’re disturbing a lot of ground,” said Thieman, “but it’s an acceptable level of disturbance that restoration ecologists and agencies agreed is required to reset a given reach of a stream or watershed.”
Using primarily a helicopter, the group placed over 500 logs across two miles of Neal Creek, providing fish a place to shelter and slowing down the flow, effectively re-meandering the creek and allowing smaller sediments to drop out of the current and nestle into streambeds. In one portion portions, excavators rerouted the creek to its former path and floodplain.
“We take measures to isolate the areas we’re working in so we don’t create a lot of muddy water,” said Thieman. This includes building sandbag barriers, pumping out water, removing wildlife and, of course, several permits secured months in advance.
By adding wood and merging an old channel previously cut off, Hood River Watershed Group reconnected Neal Creek to 20 acres of floodplain. While this spreading out of water benefits fish, Thieman noted it benefits farmers too by increasing summer flows, since water takes longer to reach the Columbia.
As for Baldwin Creek, the restoration activities look pretty similar: Lots of large pieces of wood and floodplain grading, but more than just habitat rejuvenation. The group is pulling out a small dam and installing a new channel, which gradually rises in elevation to protect an existing irrigation diversion. They’ll also remove a culvert and replace it with one twice the width, making it easier for fish to migrate upstream.
All in all, the group will improve passage through two miles of upstream habitat, return 1.3 miles of upstream habitat to a more natural state and reconnect approximately 11 acres of floodplain on Baldwin Creek. While work on Neal Creek is finished, Thieman expects to complete the Baldwin Creek project sometime in September, the end of a lengthy process.
“Crafting of the [project] design, these days, takes about a year from start to finish, then there’s a lot of permitting,” said Thieman. With those in hand, the group puts out bids for construction companies, usually around February, to meet their summer work window. Inter-Fluve designed the Neal Creek project and Biohabitats constructed it, while Tetra Tech and Crestline Construction did so for Baldwin Creek.
Along with Alix Danielsen, restoration and outreach project manager, and Bernadette Dangelo, watershed technician, a nine-member board works with Thieman in this cycle of planning, applications and fieldwork.
“Everyone is bringing passion and just coming from a genuine place of interest in the watershed,” said Thieman. “There are different perspectives, but everyone realizes and supports that we’re better off working together.”
In total, the Neal and Baldwin Creek projects cost around $1 million to design and implement.
If you wish to see what’s been done at Neal Creek, Hood River Watershed Group is hosting a tour on Sept. 17 at 6 p.m. Email alix@hoodriverwatershed.org for meeting location and to RSVP.
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