What are foresters doing to protect salmon habitat?
Answer… Salmon need clean gravels for spawning, enough cool water to grow up in, places to hide from predators, places to rest and food to eat. Idaho’s rivers and streams provide places for spawning and rearing. The major rivers are migration corridors as the salmon head to sea. To protect the spawning and rearing areas, foresters can leave trees in streamside zones to provide shade and woody debris, and build roads and harvest timber in ways that minimize the introduction of sediment into streams. As minimums, the Idaho Forest Practices Act (FPA) requires that logging leave 75% of the shade over a stream, and leave a certain number of trees in specific size categories in the riparian area. The FPA defines stream management zones (SMZ) that exclude machines and equipment and provide some vegetative filtering, minimizing the sediment entering the stream. Class I streams, which provide domestic water and fish habitat, have 75 foot buffers. Class II (perennial) streams are not major fis
