Surface Water Management
Overview of Salmon Conservation & Recovery
What is salmon conservation and recovery?
Rivers and streams in Snohomish County are home to many species of salmon and other fish in the salmonid family. These species include Chinook, coho, chum, pink, and sockeye salmon, steelhead, rainbow, and cutthroat trout, bull trout, and mountain white fish. Many of these populations are healthy and abundance. However, across Puget Sound and locally in Snohomish County, Chinook salmon are at or below 10% of their estimated historic numbers. Bull trout have similarly declined. Since 1999, both species have been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. The primary reasons for the decline include a decrease in the quality and amount of nearshore, estuary and freshwater habitat; unsustainable harvest levels; and former hatchery management practices.
Four elements constitute a healthy salmon population: population size, population growth rate (to maintain or improve the population size), distribution throughout a watershed and across Puget Sound, and different genetic and behavioral traits. The factors work together to help reduce risk of extinction by ensuring that salmon populations can survive and adapt to both short- and long-term environmental and human-caused changes. Salmon conservation and recovery refers to our actions that will help keep the populations healthy and restore declining populations to self-sustaining levels that could once again be harvested. Salmon recovery means improvements in freshwater and marine habitat and changes in harvest practices and hatchery management.
Throughout Puget Sound, citizens, local governments, tribes, state and federal agencies, and a wide range of interest groups such as farming, conservation, and business are actively working together to identify salmon recovery priorities and solutions that work for both fish and people. Fourteen community-based watershed groups, including two led by Snohomish County, recently created local salmon conservation plans that are now part of a Puget Sound Regional Salmon Recovery Plan. These groups and other interests are implementing restoration projects. The Puget Sound approach–where local communities set their recovery priorities and commitments as part of a larger regional effort–is groundbreaking and has not been tried elsewhere in the country.
Why is salmon conservation and recovery important?
Salmon recovery is not just about fish. Actions taken to recover salmon populations will also improve the habitat for other species and ecosystems, as well as our quality of life. As an indicator to environmental health, as well as a Pacific Northwest icon, the status of our salmon populations can tell us about our water quality, land management practices, and quality of life.