COEUR d'ALENE - The Idaho Panhandle National Forest has launched one of the largest watershed restoration projects ever to be implemented in North Idaho.

The 21,600-acre Moose Drool Watershed Restoration Project will improve 21 fish passages, three miles of in-stream fish habitat, which includes the installation of more than 1,000 pieces of woody debris to improve fish habitat in the streams.

According to Will Young, a fisheries biologist with the IPNF, the forest service will spend $1.8 million on the two-year project.

"We used our small business contracting authority to hire a local general contractor who has hired a number of local subcontractors," Young said, adding there are 12 excavators, three bulldozers and one grader working on six or seven different roads at once in the Horse Haven area near the headwaters of the Little North Fork River.

North Wind Construction Services began work earlier this summer and the project is expected to continue through Oct. 7.

"The bulk of the work will be completed this summer," Young said, which includes the Iron Creek and Little North Fork drainages. "There will be some additional work in Hudlow Creek drainage next year."

Most of the work will involve the decommissioning and removal of an old rail bed. Some impassable roads will also be obliterated and re-contoured to match the slope that they are on. Other roads and trails will be reconstructed and some stream improvements will be made.

"There will be no work on the Bunco Road or any other main roads," he said, adding the bulk of the work will done on roads at stream crossings.

"Most of these aren't roads that are drivable in the first place," he said. "These were not open to motorized use anyway. Most of them were so brushed in that you get back there with an ATV or truck."

The restoration actions are designed to improve stream hydrology and enhance fish habitat for native westslope cutthroat trout and other aquatic species.