page_title: Little Butte Creek
section_title: Flora and fauna
hierarchical_section_title: Little Butte Creek / Flora and fauna
caption_attribution_description: English: Mountain Pygmy Owl Glaucidium gnoma, Patagonia Mountains, Arizona
context_page_description: Little Butte Creek is a 17-mile-long tributary of the Rogue River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Its drainage basin consists of approximately 354 square miles of Jackson County and another 19 square miles of Klamath County. Its two forks, the North Fork and the South Fork, both begin high in the Cascade Range near Mount McLoughlin and Brown Mountain. They both flow generally west until they meet near Lake Creek. The main stem continues west, flowing through the communities of Brownsboro, Eagle Point, and White City, before finally emptying into the Rogue River about 3 miles southwest of Eagle Point.
  Little Butte Creek's watershed was originally settled by the Takelma, and possibly the Shasta tribes of Native Americans. In the Rogue River Wars of the 1850s, most of the Native Americans were either killed or forced onto Indian reservations. Early settlers named Little Butte Creek and nearby Big Butte Creek after their proximity to Mount McLoughlin, which was known as Snowy Butte. In the late 19th century, the watershed was primarily used for agriculture and lumber production.
context_section_description: The flora in the Little Butte Creek watershed is predominately temperate coniferous forest, which makes up approximately 65 percent of the total area. The lower regions are covered with chaparral, and the upper regions by fir forests. The chaparral region is inhabited by oaks such as garry oak and California black oak, with an understory of buckbrush and manzanita. Coast douglas-fir, sugar pine, ponderosa pine, California incense-cedar, and white fir are the most common trees found in the mixed coniferous forest. Shasta red fir, white fir, and the noble fir grow in the higher elevations of the watershed. Mountain hemlock, lodgepole pine, Sitka mountain-ash, and squashberry also grow in this region. Chinquapin can be found around Fish Lake. The most common species of plants above 6,000 feet (1,800 m) near the tree line on Mount McLoughlin and Brown Mountain include whitebark pine, mountain hemlock, Coast Range subalpine fir, heather, and mountain heather.
  Many species of birds have been spotted in the Little Butte Creek region. Twenty-two species are known to breed in the chaparral region, including several species of wrens, blackbirds, and sparrows. The mixed coniferous forest is home to white-headed woodpeckers, pygmy nuthatches, green-tailed towhees, northern pygmy-owls, Vaux's swifts, winter wrens, and MacGillivray's warblers. The American coot has also been spotted in several places along the creek. Williamson's sapsuckers, black-backed woodpeckers, Canada jays, and hermit warblers frequent the higher elevations. The near-threatened olive-sided flycatcher and Cassin's finch also live in this area. Eurasian three-toed woodpeckers and Clark's nutcrackers have been spotted near the tree line. The endangered Townsend's big-eared bat is known to live in the watershed.
  Little Butte Creek is known to be one of the best salmon producing tributaries of the Rogue River, and is also one of only a few streams in the Upper Rogue watershed to support salmon populations. The most common anadromous fish inhabiting the creek include chinook and coho salmon, and sea-run cutthroat trout. The Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho Salmon Evolutionary Significant Unit is listed as  threatened (2011). Coho salmon are known to spawn in 46 miles (74 km) of streams in the Little Butte Creek watershed. An estimated 35,131 Coho salmon lived in the creek in 2002. Resident fish include coastal cutthroat trout, sculpins, rainbow trout, and brook trout.
caption: The northern pygmy-owl
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