River Delta

PBS: Salmon Streams’ Struggle Continues 40 Years After Clean Water Act

PBS recently featured a report on tribal efforts to restore salmon. The report was based on work done during the filming of “Poisoned Waters.”

From the Jim Leher News Hour:

JIM LEHRER: Next tonight, America’s waterways nearly four decades after passage of the Clean Water Act.

Our story comes from special correspondent Hedrick Smith. It was drawn from his recent “Frontline” project called “Poisoned Waters.” He reports from the Pacific Northwest, where salmon streams are endangered by manmade problems.

HEDRICK SMITH, Special Correspondent: I saw the impact of the human footprint up close here in the Skagit River delta, about 80 miles north of Seattle.

BRIAN CLADOOSBY, chairman, Swinomish tribe: We can fish from here way up the Skagit, but we just choose to fish in this location because it’s a nice, long drift.
(more…)

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Tribes’ beaver research featured in Seattle Times

The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC)  has found evidence that beavers living in the tidal marsh are creating prime salmon habitat. The SRSC is the natural resources arm of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes.

The Seattle Times reports:

Today, only about 6 percent of the tidal scrub shrub habitat is left in the Skagit River Delta, and that’s better than a lot of places where it’s gone altogether. (more…)

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King 5 on Nisqually estuary restoration

King 5 came down to Nisqually yesterday and filed this report on the Nisqually Tribe’s habitat restoration efforts:

A small tree is struggling for a foothold in the Nisqually River Delta, and it’s not alone.

There are thousands of them growing up in protective white pipes, reclaiming the lands occupied by their ancestors more than a century ago.

“Some of the trees we have here are western red cedar, we have a Sitka spruce, a cottonwood, a red alder,” said James Slape of the Nisqually Fish Commission. (more…)

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Standing Up For Salmon

At the expense of the salmon recovery effort, recreational interests have delayed plans to restore crucial chinook habitat in Wiley Slough, in the South Fork of the Skagit River delta. Puget Sound chinook salmon are listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act. Restoration work was set to begin last summer to return tidal flow to a 157-acre parcel of land around Wiley Slough. Project partners, including the Skagit River System Cooperative and state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), identified the area as a priority for estuarine restoration in accordance with 2003 state legislation to restore public lands for salmon recovery before looking to private land. The parcel, also known as the Headquarters Unit of the Skagit Wildlife Area, was acquired by the state in 1962 through a land swap with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estuary was converted for recreational use – and the salmon habitat destroyed – through dikes, drainage ditches, culverts and tide gates.

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Scientists receive $900,000 federal grant

Greg Hood of SRSC is among a group of scientists receiving a grant to devise a computer model of the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise.

The Skagit Valley Herald:

Rising ocean levels could change change approaches to restoration of salt marshes and the Skagit River estuary that the threatened Chinook and other salmon species need to thrive.

Three Western Washington scientists — Greg Hood, John Rybczyk and Tarang Khangaonkar — will build a computer model to predict what could happen to the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise. Scientists say the model will help them make decisions about where to best to restore salmon habitat restoration and what might happen if dikes are removed.

(more…)

Continue ReadingScientists receive $900,000 federal grant