SSHIAP

Salmon and Steelhead Habitat Inventory and Assessment Program (SSHIAP)

In 1991, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the western Washington Treaty Indian Tribes began the Wild Stock Restoration Initiative (WSRI) to catalog and inventory salmon and steelhead stocks for the purposes of determining their population status and extinction risk. The first product of this partnership was the Salmon and Steelhead Stock Inventory (SASSI) which delineated stocks and identified their origin and status. The Salmon and Steelhead Habitat Inventory and Assessment Program (SSHIAP) began in 1995 as the natural complement to SASSI. SSHIAP is charged with providing watershed- and stock-level habitat information to assist tribal, state, and local planners in prioritizing habitat protection and restoration measures. This information must have fine enough resolution to be useful to local planners but be in a consistent format to enable regional or stock-level comparisons of habitat conditions. With the recent listing of numerous salmon and steelhead stocks under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the project has received renewed attention as a tool to help plan recovery activities.

Washington Treaty Indian Tribes and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) are the co-managers on the SSHIAP program. The NWIFC SSHIAP program currently covers Water Resource Inventory Areas (WRIAs) 1-23. The WDFW SSHIAP program covers WRIAs 24-62.