Toutle River

Toutle River

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
The Toutle River is a A 17.2 mile tributary of the Cowlitz River in Washington. Today Josh Mills talks about the recovery of the river from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. " When Mount Saint Helens blew, one of the forks of the Toutle River, they figured would never come back. But one of the forks escaped the caustic mud flow that came from the eruption. A lot of fish found refuge in one of the Toutle forks and then within a couple of years, allowing the river to come back into shape and to rebuild itself after everything went downhill on it, they had that river re-colonized and extremely healthy without any hatchery influence just by the fish re-colonizing or coming from different areas to repopulate areas that we thought would never ever have fish habitat again. But it did.

The river was altered by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and subsequent flows of ash and other debris. It was further altered by dredging to remove sediment, and by construction of the Toutle River Sediment Retention Structure on the North Fork Toutle River.

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