Bull Creek, Hamilton Reach Restoration Project

Bull Creek winds through the old-growth redwoods of Humboldt Redwoods State Park, but the creek's aquatic health tells a very different story than the towering trees above it. Post-World War II logging stripped the watershed's 41.5 square miles of much of its natural structure, and catastrophic floods in 1955 and 1964 sent a wave of sediment through the channel that flattened out its pools, riffles, and side channels, leaving fish with a simplified, overheated stream that offers little refuge during the warmest months.

CalTrout partnered with California State Parks, Northern Hydrology and Engineering, the Mattole Restoration Council, and contractor Hanford ARC to rebuild that lost complexity through process-based restoration: lowering and re-contouring the floodplain to reconnect side channels and off-channel ponds, installing large wood structures and engineered wood jams to recreate deep pools and varied flow, and replanting the riparian corridor with native vegetation to restore shade and cool the water. Construction ran from June through October 2023, when crews installed four major in-stream wood structures and planted more than 18,000 native riparian plants along the restored floodplain, with multi-year monitoring now underway to track how the habitat responds. The project was funded through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Proposition 1 Restoration Grant Program, the Fisheries Restoration Grant Program, and support from California State Parks.

For a watershed that has quietly recovered coho and steelhead populations over the past two decades, restoring Bull Creek's cold-water refuge and off-channel rearing habitat gives those fish a better shot at surviving the hotter, drier summers that a changing climate is bringing to the North Coast.