Surface Water Management Division
Salmon Plan Implementation
Implementation of recovery plans is geared toward increasing population numbers of salmon. The regional and local recovery plans manage this through a combination of harvest/hatchery management and habitat improvement. Harvest and hatchery management, or habitat improvements alone will not recover salmon. Coordination effort in each of these elements is necessary.
Harvest/Hatchery Management
Harvest and hatchery management takes place at the state level, involving the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife and the treaty tribes. Though included in the local plans, local jurisdictions have no legal authority to regulate hatcheries or harvest.
Habitat Improvement
Habitat improvements attempt to restore those pieces of habitat that salmon use most for spawning and rearing: gravel (for spawning); fresh, cold water (water quality); food (the margins of the streamsides–leaf litter and insects); and hiding/resting places (woody debris, off-channel habitat). Spawning and rearing areas in our watersheds occur in the freshwater streams and in particular in the estuaries and nearshore.
Types of projects that improve habitat are: planting native vegetation along streams, woody debris, floodplain reconnections, managing erosion into stream systems, repairing culverts the block fish passage and others.
Certainty of Recovery
Being certain that our recovery actions in an incredibly complex ecosystem in which salmon function will recover salmon is difficult to determine. However, our approach and local planning efforts ensure that we can recover salmon.
The approach to salmon recovery in Puget Sound is based in local watersheds, with plans made by the people who are most affected by recovery actions. In the Snohomish and Stillaguamish Watersheds, citizens, tribes, agencies and non-government organizations have worked over a period of five years to create the salmon plans that are now a part of the regional recovery plan. Each of the plans uses models to aid in decision-making, highlighting what actions, the rate of actions, where actions take place will recover salmon in the time period listed. The Snohomish and Stillaguamish watersheds have embarked on bold recovery strategies that will produce significant recovery results in the next ten years. Finally, adaptive management is employed in each watershed. Adaptive management is essentially learning from what is happening in the watershed and changing actions to reflect that learning.
Our local plans focus on clear recovery goals in the next ten years to recover salmon. They also provide guidance and direction for recovery over the next fifty years. Creating watershed plans provides for more cost effective recovery by focusing actions on priority areas, what should take place where for the greatest salmon population effect.
Taken together, the approach, local plans and the regional plan will provide the greatest likelihood of successful recovery efforts.