Coyote Creek South Wet Prairie Restoration

Coyote Creek South is located on Kalapuya-Ilihi, the traditional homelands of the Kalapuya peoples. During the 1850s, after devastating population decline due to epidemics earlier in the century, the Kalapuyans were forcibly removed from their indigenous land by the United States government and placed in reservations in western Oregon. Today, descendants of the Kalapuya people are members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and actively contribute to communities across Oregon.

The Willamette Valley floodplain was historically maintained as a dominantly open prairie-savanna landscape by the Kalapuya peoples. Since Euro-American colonization in the 1850s, the majority of the valley bottoms have been converted to agriculture and residential/urban development. Combined with the exclusion of fire and control of flooding, the resulting habitat loss and fragmentation has imperilled a number of native species that depend on these ecosystems to live.

99% of wet prairies in the Willamette Valley are gone. Only 8 square miles remain.

Many of the plant and animal species associated with wet prairie habitats have become threatened or endangered. As a result of the scale of habitat loss and function, especially in prairies and oak savannas, the Willamette Valley eco-region is recognized by scientists as globally imperiled and prioritized for restoration.

Learn more about Willamette Valley habitats and conservation priorities from the Oregon Conservation Strategy website below:

Coyote Creek South, a 309-acre property owned and managed by ODFW, is part of a complex of more than 8,500 acres of protected lands that make up the West Eugene Wetlands and Spencer Creek Conservation Opportunity Area. Collectively, this area includes the largest remaining acreage of wet prairie in the entire Willamette Valley. ODFW acquired Coyote Creek South in 2013 under the Bonneville Power Administration’s Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program.

The map at right shows the project location, nearby conservation lands, and the West Eugene Conservation Opportunity Area. Pan, zoom, and click to explore the project location and conservation lands (in green).

Thirteen federally-recognized species of concern call the West Eugene Wetlands home, including western pond turtle (Actinemys marmorata), western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta), Lewis’ woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), northern red-legged frog (Rana aurora), Bradshaw’s desert parsley (Lomatium bradshawii), willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii), and chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina).

The Coyote Creek South Wet Prairie and Vernal Pool Restoration Project is located on the 116-acre portion of the property north of Coyote Creek. Recently managed for grass seed production (fescue/annual rye), the site’s hydrology had been significantly altered during its agricultural history to increase drainage and reduce standing water that would damage crops.

Coyote Creek South, a 309-acre property owned and managed by ODFW, is part of a complex of more than 8,500 acres of protected lands that make up the West Eugene Wetlands and Spencer Creek Conservation Opportunity Area. Collectively, this area includes the largest remaining acreage of wet prairie in the entire Willamette Valley. ODFW acquired Coyote Creek South in 2013 under the Bonneville Power Administration’s Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program.

The map at right shows the project location, nearby conservation lands, and the West Eugene Conservation Opportunity Area. Pan, zoom, and click to explore the project location and conservation lands (in green).

Thirteen federally-recognized species of concern call the West Eugene Wetlands home, including western pond turtle (Actinemys marmorata), western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta), Lewis’ woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), northern red-legged frog (Rana aurora), Bradshaw’s desert parsley (Lomatium bradshawii), willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii), and chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina).

The Coyote Creek South Wet Prairie and Vernal Pool Restoration Project is located on the 116-acre portion of the property north of Coyote Creek. Recently managed for grass seed production (fescue/annual rye), the site’s hydrology had been significantly altered during its agricultural history to increase drainage and reduce standing water that would damage crops.

In 2015, ODFW partnered with the Long Tom Watershed Council to create a plan to restore more of the original hydrology and native plant composition to Coyote Creek South with funding from the ODFW Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, and in-kind support from partners.

Multiple years of critical site preparation followed, including the use of herbicide, mowing, and discing to eliminate the rye-grass crop, reduce thatch, and help discourage the germination of rye-grass or local weeds. This careful regimen helped set the trajectory for the project, as weed pressure would be one of the greatest threats to project success. Meanwhile, partners at the USFWS helped create a plan for earthwork (berm and pool construction) using LiDAR-based topographic maps (see below), and partners at the City of Eugene helped draft a seeding plan.

In 2017, the big restoration actions took place! Berms and pools were constructed during the summer, then the entire site was seeded with native species during the fall.

Meanwhile, experts have been monitoring the site pre- and post-restoration to help determine the degree to which the project is meeting its objectives. Monitoring efforts include hydrology (pool) monitoring, bird surveys, amphibian surveys, and plant surveys.

The goals of the restoration and monitoring are to:

• Restore native wet prairie and vernal pool habitat and their associated plant communities
• Foster favorable nesting and juvenile rearing conditions for native amphibians and grassland birds, including rare and listed species such as the northern red-legged frog and streaked horned lark
• Provide winter habitat for migratory waterfowl

Restoration techniques used at Coyote Creek South were heavily informed by the experience of other local practitioners.

See this link for Practical Guidelines for Wetland Prairie Restoration developed by Willamette Valley experts:

The streaked horned lark (Eremophila alpestris strigata) is a subspecies of horned lark endemic to the Pacific Northwest that was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2013. These larks are very rare: population estimates now hover around 1,500 individuals, 80% of which are in the Willamette Valley.

The Coyote Creek South site lies at the southernmost extent of streaked horned larks’ range in the Willamette Valley. Streaked horned lark have specific habitat needs that include flat, open space and ample bare ground or sparse, low-statured vegetation. The Coyote Creek South restoration project is among the first prairie restoration projects in the Willamette Valley to emphasize streaked horned lark habitat requirements.

Considerations for lark and other grassland birds at Coyote Creek South included sparser seeding of short-statured species at the interior of the site, and the management of receding spring water to try to maintain barer ground during nesting season. To that end, broad, shallow vernal pools were designed for the site's interior, with hope that winter standing water would help maintain more sparse or bare ground with less human intervention.

Learn more about streaked horned larks from these great resources:

The Northern red-legged frog is a species of conservation concern in the Willamette Valley. Northern red-legged frogs breed in shallow-water vegetated ponds that hold water for at least 5 months. Adults and juveniles also use moist riparian and upland forests as movement routes. Loss of egg-laying habitat is a major limitation to red-legged frogs, as well as hydrologic modifications, fragmentation by roads, suburban development, and other land use changes. Predation and competition by invasive fish and bullfrogs present further threats.

Photo at right of the Northern red-legged frog credited to Walter Siegmund

Click on the color-coded map at right to learn about the historic (1850's) vegetation communities of the Willamette Valley. The Coyote Creek South project area is outlined in black.

Humans have lived in the Willamette Valley for an estimated 10,000 years. Prior to Euro-American habitation, most native inhabitants belonged to the Kalapuyan family, made up of several tribes including the Calapooia, Luckiamute, and Yamhill. The Kalapuya family were known to have regularly set fires throughout the Willamette Valley. These fires helped maintain the valley’s mosaic of open prairies and oak savannas. Regular burning replenished soil carbon, managed pests, assisted with hunting and harvesting, helped perennial food and fiber plants thrive, and kept the land open to see and move with ease.

During the past 160 years, residential and agricultural development in the Willamette Valley has replaced and fragmented native habitat types, including wet prairie, open oak woodland, and riparian oak habitat. The cessation of regular fires with the removal of the native inhabitants from their traditional lands has allowed woody vegetation to encroach and establish in formerly open prairie and open canopy woodland. Combined with invasive species introductions and rising global temperature, these changes have resulted in extensive habitat loss.

The map at right depicts historical ("presettlement") vegetation and contains data from sources including: H. J. Andrews, General Land Office (GLO), Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO), BLM, Oregon Gap analysis.

In the time lapse image series to the right, you can see full winter pools gradually drying down as spring wildflowers emerge at Coyote Creek South in 2019, one-and-a-half years after initial earthwork and seeding.

Prior to European settlement, natural flooding in the Willamette Valley created braided floodplain channels and vernal (seasonal) pools, which spread water across the landscape and held water well into the summer, creating valuable habitat and water resources essential for life.

These natural hydrologic processes have been greatly altered in the last century-and-a-half through the use of drainage ditches, tilling and leveling of soil, filling of wetlands, use of dams to control flooding, and creation of large extents of impermeable surfaces (i.e. asphalt and concrete), resulting in a drier summer landscape and habitat loss for numerous species.

While farming occurred at Coyote Creek South, fields were leveled and ditches were constructed to help promote drainage and make the site amenable to commercial crop production. This resulted in less complex topography, shallower winter pools, and fewer pools remaining into May and June for amphibian reproduction.

The Coyote Creek South project is helping to restore elements of the wet prairie hydrology that once existed on site. 

In the summer of 2017, ODFW crews completed the earthwork phase of the restoration plan by using a wheel tractor-scraper, or belly scraper, to rearrange large volumes of soil. After temporarily removing layers of topsoil, crews ‘borrowed’ clay substrate from the future pools and deposited it across berms to hold back winter rains and retain more water on site.

Historically, wet prairies were persistent features on the landscape, not short-lived early successional stages of otherwise forested sites. This was due to the high frequency of Kalapuya-set fires, which effectively controlled the establishment of woody vegetation. The continued persistence of prairies over an extended period of time led to the establishment of a highly diverse assemblage of perennial and annual forbs and grasses. It is estimated that approximately 350 species, subspecies, and varieties of native plants are found within upland and wetland prairies in the lowland valleys of the Pacific Northwest. Most of these plants have a moderate to high degree of fidelity to prairies and are infrequent in other communities.

Use the map at right to explore the seeding plan for the site and see the species used!

2014 was the final year of grass seed and hay harvest at the project site. Beginning that fall and through 2018, a regimen of herbicide application and mowing was implemented to deter the continued germination of grass seed and non-native invasive species. Adequately preparing the site for seeding was critical to project's success.

In October of 2017, after the berms and pools were constructed and the rains had just begun, the entire project area was seeded with a diverse array of species native to wet prairie, upland prairie, and vernal pool habitats. A total of nine different seed mixes and over 60 unique native species were planted across the site.

Seed mixes were designed with the following in mind:

• Expected post-restoration conditions across the site (especially variations in elevation and soil moisture/standing water duration)
• Habitat requirements of ground-nesting birds, like streaked horned lark, for ample bare ground. Seeding rates were therefore sparser in the site's interior, and species lists included shorter-statured vegetation.
• Maintenance, including the need for an easily-managed weed buffer around the site's perimeter and durable, fast-establishing cover beneath power-line corridor
• Incorporation of a large diversity of native prairie species across the site as a whole.

Since seeding, ODFW has been mowing the site, applying grass-specific herbicide to areas where no grasses were seeded, and spot-spraying invasive plants. Additional, grant-funded contractor crews have also been helping with this work for the first few years to help ensure weed pressure remains low while native plants are establishing. The site will require, and ODFW will provide, ongoing maintenance to help maintain open prairie conditions and discourage invasive weeds into the future.

Vegetation monitoring at Coyote Creek South is designed to ensure the project is meeting objectives for grassland bird habitat, and overall diversity and native species cover.

Surveys that visually estimated the relative cover of seeded plant species were conducted in the spring of 2018 to assess how seed mixes were establishing and identify needs for supplemental seeding. 

Point-intercept monitoring began in summer 2019 as a joint effort between LTWC staff and a City of Eugene ecologist. In this objective method for measuring plant species cover, surveyors walked transects at regular intervals throughout the site, recording plant species encountered at discreet survey points (eight per acre).

An illustration on the map at right depicts the first few transects (black dashed lines) of point-intercept vegetation monitoring. Surveyors walked along these transect lines, identifying all plants occurring at each "x" point (4 per transect per acre). Each square of the grid represents one acre and contains 8 observation points.

Some key findings from vegetation monitoring so far include:

• 75% of the site has native plant cover
• Nearly 10% of the site remains unvegetated (habitat for lark)
• 40 of 59 seeded species were observed on site in 2019
• 11 native species that were not seeded (volunteers) were observed, including the two most abundant natives (Juncus bufonius and Alopecurus geniculatus)

Complete methods and results can be found in the 2019 vegetation monitoring report.

Since completion of the earthwork (construction of berms and pools) in 2017, we've been monitoring the changing depth and surface area extent of pools across the site as water slowly recedes. Monitoring hydrology will help us track the degree to which we are meeting objectives for:

• Winter waterfowl: Winter pools and food plants
• Lark and other grassland birds: Broad pools at the center of the site persisting through April and drying in time for May breeding (and hopefully creating dry, but sparsely-vegetated zones available for nesting)
• Amphibians: Pools around the edges of the site persisting through June to support breeding of native amphibians, but drying in the summer to discourage breeding by invasive bullfrogs and use by invasive fish like carp, both of which predate on native amphibians

All the pools were designed to dry out during the summer to prevent establishing populations of invasive (and native amphibian-eating!) fish and bullfrogs.

Use the map at right to explore pools depths and areas through time in Spring 2019. Click on the water gauges to see graphs of water depths and extents at each gauged pool!

To monitor pool depths, we installed depth gauges at seven of the vernal pools, representing a diversity of pool types across the site.

Depths were recorded by LTWC and ODFW staff and volunteers at least weekly throughout the spring of 2019.

Pool areas were collected through a combination of aerial drone flights and on-the-ground data collection using a high-accuracy GNSS (GPS) unit. Each pool area reading was taken in conjunction with a set of pool depths.

So far, hydrology monitoring shows that the earthwork is mostly meeting project objectives. Amphibian pools hold water through breeding season for at least most of the target amphibians, then dry in late May and June. Invasive carp, washed into many of the pools during April flooding, were seen throughout the site, dying in the drying pools. Successful native amphibian breeding was also observed, but more on that later!

The graphs above show overall surface water drying rates across the site compared to spring weather conditions in 2019. The red line representing the amount of the site underwater drops steeply downward in early spring, meaning that many of the pools are rapidly receding during this time.

It is, in part, this early spring drying of broad vernal pools that restoration practitioners hoped might help maintain the sparsely vegetated ground necessary for lark nesting during the nesting season. Although these centrally-located pools were not as extensive as anticipated, their hydrology seems to be timed to meet their target habitat objectives.

The area-inundated line in the above graph then levels off in early May, showing that the remaining, deeper, pools are not as quickly receding. This is good news for amphibian breeding, which requires a hyro-period lasting through late spring.

And happily none of the pools were deep enough to hold water year-round, meaning that they will not become habitat for the invasive bullfrogs that compete with or predate on native amphibians!

Refer to the map at right to see the extents and pool depth graphs for individual pools.

We've been seeing larks!  In 2018, the first year after the project's completion, our avian biologist observed five breeding pairs of streaked horned larks on site, a female carrying nesting material, and as many as 12 fledglings. In 2019, three nests were located in the restoration area, and an additional two across the creek on an ODFW field intended for future restoration. Four of the five nests were successful fledgling a total of 11 young, which were color-banded for continued population monitoring. One nest failed, likely because of predation. There were likely other undetected nests, based on the sightings of additional unbanded fledglings.

Other bird sightings include Western meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows--two bird species associated with grasslands that are also in decline because of habitat loss. In addition, vernal pools were used by migrating shorebirds such as yellowlegs, dunlin and least and western sandpipers. Bald eagles were also a common sighting.

The initial success of this project with regard to lark breeding is attributable mainly to the bare ground opened by herbicide applications and earth moving. Ongoing observation will help determine if the vernal pools and seeding design will help maintain sufficient bare ground in years to come, or if additional maintenance actions will be required.

Prior to project implementation, the fields were level and drained through a small network of ditches. Although water would pool in the winter, standing water did not persist long enough into the spring to support amphibian reproduction. This, combined with disturbance from agricultural activities, made the site relatively uninhabitable for breeding amphibian populations. Since restoration, monitoring has shown a marked increase in amphibian activity.

In 2018, our amphibian ecologist detected a total of 3 native amphibian species in 17 pools, including Pacific chorus frog adults and larvae (Pseudacris regilla), Long-toed salamander larvae (Ambystoma macrodactylum), and Rough skin newt adults (Taricha granulosa). Amphibians were most abundant in pools close to the riparian forest. No non-native predators were observed in the pools during the spring surveys although American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) inhabit the ditch along Cantrell Road.

In 2019, the population of Pacific chorus frogs increased by an order of magnitude from 2018 --a good sign! Chorus frogs are a food source for other native birds and amphibians, so their abundance many help support a thriving native ecosystem.

Although no northern red-legged frogs have yet been found within the project area, they are known to exist across Coyote creek. Similar restoration projects have shown high rates of success for red-legged frogs to colonize nearby sites with suitable habitat, so we are hopeful!

Photo at right of the Northern red-legged frog credited to Walter Siegmund

Now that you've learned all about the project, come take a look!

Take a virtual tour of the site using the map at right. Click on the placemarks to bring up photos and read about each scene.

Visiting in person? Use our visitor brochure (with map!) to help orient to the site:

Coyote Creek South is a unique opportunity to see the results of a conservation project. Its proximity to the Fern Ridge Reservoir and nearby urban centers such as Eugene and Veneta makes it a convenient location to visit. As state-managed land, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife welcomes on-foot, low-impact recreation on the site to observe and enjoy the outcomes of restoration actions.

BIRDWATCHING: Bring some binoculars and view overwintering waterfowl, seasonally migrating birds, and uncommon birds like the streaked horned lark, grasshopper sparrow, and western meadowlark.

WILDFLOWERS: Enjoy the seasonal and colorful displays of flowers, from popcorn flower, monkey flower, and blue-eyed Mary in the spring, to the culturally significant gumweed and tarweed in later summer.

VERNAL POOLS: See water levels change dramatically throughout the year, filling the vernal pools to overflowing in winter and drawing broad desiccation cracks in the soil in late summer. Take a closer look at the teeming aquatic life, including abundant Pacific chorus frogs and a myriad of macro-invertebrates.