Bear Valley Creek lies within a remote watershed between Lowman and Stanley, Idaho. The watershed is one of the two major headwater drainages to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River and provides spawning, rearing and overwintering habitat to numerous federally listed and State sensitive fishes. Wild and native populations of Chinook, steelhead, bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout can all be found within the Bear Valley Creek. Bear Valley is a popular recreation area for hunters, campers and fishermen and was featured on Trout Unlimited Television in 2001.
The Ted Trueblood Chapter has a history of cooperatively participating with the Boise National Forest on restoration projects. The project supports the TU National Conservation Agenda in three of the four categories Water Quality, Pacific and Atlantic Salmon Recovery, and Wild Salmonid Conservation.
The project provides TU members the opportunity to actively participate in a restoration project that will yield immediate results in a popular fishing area. TU members constructed a post and pole fence along the banks of the Fir Creek Campground. The fence will provide a buffer between the popular camping and parking areas and trails.
In 1993 the Forest Service launched a livestock management and riparian restoration program to reduce the number of livestock in the valley and allow its streams to recover. These efforts by the Boise National Forest Service, TU's Ted Trueblood Chapter, the Shoshone and Bannock Tribes and the Boise Valley Fly Fishermen have resulted in restored the gravel beds by fencing banks to prevent erosion and planting willows and bushes for stabilization and stream shade. Since that time the grazing permit holders retired their permits with the help of funds from the Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest Power Planning Council and grazing no longer occurs within the valley.
In 2000, the Ted Trueblood Chapter received a TU Embrace-A-Stream (EAS) grant to assist the Boise National Forest and Idaho Department of Fish and Game in tagging westslope cutthroat trout and studying their migration patterns. The data will be used to restore the fish to more of its native range.
The Fir Creek Campground Fence Construction Project will compliment the above restoration activities as well as the Forest Services road relocations and culvert replacements to further restore the impacts of past management activities.
The project also supports the TU National Conservation Agenda in three of the four categories: Water Quality, Pacific and Atlantic Salmon Recovery, and Wild Salmonid Conservation. The project will support the Clean Water Act by removing a source of fine sediment input. The popularity of the campground has resulted in degraded stream banks, compacted riparian areas and dispersed campsites and trails that have contributed to a degraded condition within the Fir Creek Campground reach. Wild populations of Snake River Chinook salmon and steelhead use the reach as migratory and rearing habitat and the project will improve reach and watershed conditions by removing a source of fine sediment and improving riparian vegetation conditions. Finally this cooperative project will support recovery of spring and summer Chinook, steelhead and bull trout, as the project lies within areas of designated critical habitat for Chinook salmon, essential fish habitat for steelhead and proposed critical habitat for bull trout.
Photo below is former Ted Trueblood Chapter President Bruce Johnstone fishing Bear Valley Creek near the Fir Creek Campground in the early 1990s.
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Ted Trueblood Chapter of Trout Umlimited