Fish biologist hooked on Sisters

If there is such a thing as a knight in shining armor for fish, Mike Riehle fits the part.

The local Forest Service biologist has spent much of his career keeping an eye on fish populations in and around Sisters.

After years of protecting fish habitat in the Metolius River Basin, Riehle has landed a well-deserved promotion as Supervisory Fisheries Biologist for the Sisters Ranger District.

For years, Riehle filled a temporary assignment created to facilitate fisheries studies associated with the Pelton Round Butte Dam project. This past fall, however, he was selected for promotion to the Forest Service's permanent GS-11 slot as District Fisheries Biologist.

Riehle will continue to serve as Aquatic Team Leader for the Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric Project.

One of the group's primary goals is to help explore and hopefully facilitate the eventual reintroduction of salmon and steelhead runs to the Deschutes River Basin above the dams.

As part of those duties, Riehle represents the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in the interagency consultation process on the Fisheries Technical Subcommittee.

Actually, that's just one of the committees with which he's likely to be involved. Therein lies the one down side of his promotion.

"There won't be as much field work as I'd like," said Riehle. "There will be lots of meetings."

On the other hand, Riehle also has a lot to look forward to.

"I'll be doing much more fisheries work with the whole district," he observed. "I'm very excited about the Trout Creek Swamp project."

Trout Creek Swamp is located about halfway between the town of Sisters and the North Sister, where the mountain's snows give birth to Trout Creek.

The stream system's marshlands were drained and channelized in the mid-1900s to create dry pastureland for cattle grazing.

As part of his new job with the Sisters Ranger District, Riehle will be overseeing a project to help restore the Trout Creek wetlands to a more natural state.

"The whole idea," he said, "is to restore the wetlands and improve fish habitat."

Riehle is excited about the assignment "because it's a sizable meadow project," and such an opportunity doesn't come along very often.

The goal, he says, is to help improve natural habitat in the area for native redband trout. The native redband (rainbow) are not considered endangered but have been designated a "sensitive species."

This designation means that the fish is a "species of concern," and one of Riehle's "concerns" will be to see that the redbands get the attention they deserve and don't become endangered.

The central focus of Riehle's project will be to restore a level of water saturation to a meadow system that is currently drained by deeply cut artificial ditches.

Healthy natural wetlands require stream meanders, ponds, marshes and fully saturated soils that retain an ecosystem's water like a giant sponge.

The project is still in the planning stages, but Riehle hopes to begin taking remedial action as soon as the Environmental Assessment is approved and snow conditions permit.

With a Bachelor's degree in Fisheries Management from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and a Master's degree in Zoology/Fish Ecology from Idaho State University, Riehle is well-suited to head up the project.

He has lived in Camp Sherman and Sisters for the past 13 years. When he started as a temporary employee for the Sisters Ranger District in 1990, he was assigned entirely to field work.

Riehle observed, with detectable resignation, that his increasing seniority is also leading to more time in the office; but he still heads for the woods and water every chance he gets.

So, what does a fisheries biologist do in his off time when he's not studying fish or planning improvements in fish habitat?

You guessed it. One of Riehle's favorite pastimes is fishing, and he's made some pretty impressive catches in the years since he started working in the Sisters area.

One of those catches came on the Metolius River, not quite two years ago. It was the catch of his life.

There, on the banks of the Metolius, he married his favorite outdoor-girl, Deb Smith, a math teacher at St. Francis School.

Apparently there was never any thought of catch-and-release.

"She's a keeper," said Riehle.