The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Program has collated existing data, reports and input from state co-managers, Federal and local agencies, and other stakeholders into this watershed-scale assessment of historic, current, and desired conditions. This assessment will support a scientifically defensible and strategic approach to protect, enhance, and restore sustainable and functional river-floodplain systems that support and sustain healthy aquatic habitat conditions and populations of focal aquatic species including Middle Columbia River summer steelhead (ESA-listed Threatened), Columbia River bull trout (ESA-listed Threatened), spring Chinook salmon, Pacific lamprey, freshwater mussels, and other native fish, and ultimately lead to self-sustaining populations of all native First Foods species that will be available for Tribal and non-tribal use.
Guiding the Fisheries Habitat Program is the "First Foods" DNR Mission and Tribal community driven management approach (Quaempts et al. 2018), which identifies physical and ecological processes ("key touchstones") of a highly functional watershed and dynamic river system important for providing water quality and fish habitat that supports aquatic First Foods integral for Tribal ceremonies and traditions. This document identifies the historic and current function of natural geomorphic and hydrologic processes that are linked to focal fish species habitat, as organized by the CTUIR River Vision (Jones et al. 2008) and Upland Vision Touchstones (Endress et al. 2019), and assesses the effect of current land use on the function of those natural processes and their influence on the production of focal species. The assessment will support the quantitative prioritization of geographic areas according to the potential for restoration and conservation of watershed/floodplain processes that support focal fish species habitat and restoration plans that may be applied to each geographic area to aid in restoring watershed processes and achieve enhancement and sustainability of habitats for native fish.
This assessment will supply the scientific rationale for a 30-year strategic Tribal and State co-manager, and stakeholder approach to floodplain restoration based upon natural processes and watershed-specific data. This assessment is primarily focused on the alluvial channel and floodplain of the Umatilla River from the confluence with the Columbia River near Umatilla, Oregon, to the headwaters of the North and South Forks of the Umatilla River in northeast Oregon. The primary study area includes approximately 107 miles of stream and the associated floodplain and tributary confluences of those stream segments. The secondary study area includes a reconnaissance-level assessment of the upland conditions and tributary processes across the Umatilla Subbasin that influence the primary study area.