Habitat Restoration Projects for Summer 2007
By Perry Welch

All year long our field staff looks forward to the summer project season. All instream habitat improvement projects must take place during the dry, summer months in order to minimize our impact to the aquatic environment during construction. This year we are excited to be implementing a diversity of projects in the Finney Creek, Middle Skagit and Samish watersheds. The following is a brief summary of what we will be accomplishing during the short instream season.

Morgan Creek is located just west of Day Creek. The creek flows under the South Skagit Highway into Ross Island Slough in the middle Skagit River. The stream is known to support Chinook salmon. About 500 feet from the creek mouth is an old farm crossing on Draper Valley Farms land, where an undersized culvert tends to clog with debris. With funding from NOAA through the FishAmerica Foundation, SFEG will replace the old crossing with a recycled flatcar bridge. There are more than three miles of habitat above this barrier. The project also includes riparian planting and possibly installation of large woody debris to enhance pool habitat.

The Dietrick Park property on Lake Samish is owned by Whatcom County Parks and is actually a mitigation project that SFEG has agreed to implement for the Washington Department of Transportation. SFEG engages in mitigation on a case-by-case basis and in this case the DOT is providing SFEG with a contract to remove a fish passage barrier on an abandoned driveway and replace it with a pedestrian footbridge. The unnamed creek supports cutthroat trout, coho salmon, and kokanee and will open up about 600 feet of spawning habitat. We will install grade control logs and other large woody debris. Recently SFEG field staff cleared several acres of blackberry bushes, and we will plant the site this fall. Since this is a mitigation project, there will not be any volunteer involvement.

On Anderson Slough, which drains into Anderson Creek and Ross Island Slough near the South Skagit Highway, SFEG will remove a farm crossing that spans about 100 feet of open slough habitat that is beneficial for rearing coho salmon. Seattle City Light recently purchased the property on the old Vandersar Dairy. The Salmon Recovery Funding Board in part funds the project.

The Finney Creek project is the final phase of a multi-phased project to install large woody debris jams to narrow and deepen the channel in order to moderate high temperatures and improve important habitat for multiple species of salmonids. Our projects are done in cooperation with the Forest Service and the National Park Service. This phase is funded by a Centennial Clean Water Fund Grant through the Washington Department of Ecology. The project occurs on lower Finney Creek on private land where SFEG is in the process of obtaining landowner agreements for the work.

At Ennis Creek on Whatcom Land Trust Property along the upper Samish River floodplain, SFEG has been planting native trees and shrubs on former pasture land for several years. Since the site is so wet and heavily colonized by reed canarygrass, we have initiated riparian activities on the relatively drier portions near Innis Creek Road. The remaining property is too wet to establish trees and most shrubs, and we will use a technique that we tried at Deepwater Slough. Recently SFEG has transported several loads of root wads and stumps to the site. Later this year, we plan on getting that wood out into the wetlands and using it as nurse logs to plant Sweet gale (Myrica gale) and other wood loving hydrophytes. This will allow plant establishment above the water and the reed canarygrass. The Washington State Landowner Incentive Program provides funding for this project.