We plant trees, remove culverts, and create infrastructure to help restore and maintain the habitat our valley provides. Our goal is to increase the Skagit watershed’s capacity for sheltering salmon during their freshwater life phases.  

But how do we know if our work is working? We count salmon!

Every year, we recruit a team of volunteer citizen scientists to walk local streams and conduct Spawner Surveys! Volunteers are trained and assigned to streams in early October and commit to walking their stream and collecting data until the salmon run has ended.

Their tasks include:

  • counting salmon (dead and alive!)
  • identifying the species of salmon seen
  • marking redd (salmon nest) locations
  • determining spawning status of dead salmon

Our Spawner Surveyors monitor past, present, and potential project sites–places where SFEG has done or wants to do habitat restoration of some kind—and have done so for years. We have an excellent database of fish numbers in specific streams and we can compare how many fish are able to make it back to their streams after our restoration projects compared to years past!

Interested in volunteering or learning more? Please contact us!

CLICK HERE for our 2022-2023 Spawner Survey Report!

Along with our dedicated volunteers, this work could not be completed without the generous support and donation from these sponsors! Thank you:

 

King Salmon Supporters
donating $750 or more to support our annual training workshop and volunteer mentoring

                                                                                       

Silver Salmon Supporters
contribute $250 to allow SFEG staff to mentor survey teams