Bend Bulletin - Guest Column: Whychus Creek restoration and wildfire resilience

BY KRIS KNIGHT, NATASHA BELLIS AND KATE FITZPATRICK

GUEST COLUMN

This past year intensive wildfires impacted Central Oregon. One area hit particularly hard was the Whychus Creek watershed. Whychus Creek starts on the east side of the Three Sisters mountains and flows through the community of Sisters before it joins the Deschutes River south of Lake Billy Chinook. The Alder Springs Fire burned more than 3,000 acres in June in the lower part of Whychus Creek and threatened communities in Crooked River Ranch. The Flat Fire burned more than 23,000 acres near Sisters in August and burned along 11 miles of Whychus Creek.

Thankfully, because of the amazing response and heroic efforts of firefighters, no lives were lost and many homes and neighborhoods were saved from the fire. That said, five homes were destroyed and numerous properties suffered great damage and our hearts go out to those who were impacted.

The fire impacted two properties along a six-mile stretch of Whychus Creek owned by the Deschutes Land Trust, known as Whychus Canyon Preserve and Rimrock Ranch. For more than a decade, a group of organizations including the Deschutes Land Trust, Deschutes River Conservancy and Upper Deschutes Watershed Council have been working together as the Deschutes Partnership to restore and protect Whychus Creek. This work has involved restoring streamflow to the creek, removing barriers to fish passage and migration, screening off irrigation diversions, protecting land from development and improving habitat to benefit the reintroduction of salmon and steelhead to the watershed. Between 2016 and 2023, the Partnership restored approximately three miles of Whychus Creek on Land Trust properties, reconnecting the creek to the floodplain and enabling natural processes to function across the bottom of the valley.

As our organizations start to assess the damage from the Flat Fire, we are seeing that the areas where we restored Whychus Creek to its adjacent floodplain were more resilient to the fire compared to areas that had not been restored. The three miles of restored floodplain is in many ways a ribbon of green through what is now a sea of black and was likely an oasis for fish and wildlife during and after the fire. Drone images from above the canyon speaks volumes – the unrestored areas were almost entirely burned by the Flat Fire while restored areas retained vegetation and in many ways were unscathed. Areas that had been dry pastures were restored with additional streamflow to become meandering stream channels and wetland areas that served as fire breaks. This shows us how restored ecosystems can withstand impacts from wildlife and is an important reminder of the value restoration plays in making our rivers and streams more resilient to fire and climate change. We do expect that fine sediments from areas upstream or adjacent to these restored areas will wash down and impact the creek but our hope is the floodplain restoration will accommodate and buffer this disturbance.

While we do not mean to minimize the impacts to other properties from the Flat Fire, we hope there can be a hopeful message from Whychus Canyon Preserve and Rimrock Ranch that we can restore and protect our rivers and streams where needed to be more resilient and recover from impacts from wildfires.

Kris Knight is executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. Natasha Bellis is conservation director of the Deschutes Land Trust. Kate Fitzpatrick is executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy.

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