About the Project

The ancestral territory of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, a federally recognized sovereign nation, is located in southwestern Oregon and encompasses the Umpqua River basins. The “Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act,” signed by President Trump in 2018, returned reservation lands that were promised in the Treaty of 1853, transferring 17,519 acres to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to be held in trust for the Tribe.

The Tribe stewards the land with the future in mind and has partnered to remove several river barriers in the Rogue River Basin. In an early assessment of their newly reacquired reservation lands, the Tribe identified and evaluated 494 culverts on rivers and streams, a number of which are intermittent and perennial, and is developing a system to identify and evaluate their condition and prioritize removal. Most culverts have a 30-year lifespan, so many on their lands are outdated. Aging culverts can stall sediment delivery and increase stream temperature through improper drainage and increased peak flows that negatively impact fish communities.

Open Rivers Fund is supporting the Tribe’s development of a tool that will locate, describe, categorize, and prioritize culverts on the Tribe’s newly reacquired lands. They will focus on removal and replacement of culverts that have the potential to impede fish passage or have non-point source water quality issues. This culvert removal program will restore watershed health and function, which will have long-term direct and indirect benefits to fisheries resources onsite and downstream.