Project Partners: US Forest Service, Goodyear Nelson Timber, Longview Timber, Sierra Pacific Industries, National Park Service, local landowners
Project Summary: Since 1999, the Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group has partnered with the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and local Timber Companies to restore instream habitat for threatened salmon runs on Finney Creek.
Finney Creek was historically the most important salmon stream in the lower portion of the Wild and Scenic Corridor of the Skagit River. The creek provides access to over 11 miles of habitat for Chinook, coho, chum, and pink salmon, as well as steelhead and cutthroat trout.
Currently, Finney Creek suffers from abnormally high water temperatures during the summer months, which can kill juvenile salmon. High temperatures are primarily caused by a wide and shallow channel and increased exposure to the sun. In this case the channel condition is the result of large sediment loads triggered by logging of the hillsides from the 1970′s to the present.
These projects, along with other Finney Watershed restoration efforts, are designed to decrease sediment inputs and restore channel complexity for salmon.
To date, SFEG’s projects have placed over 160 log jams to increase channel roughness and complexity, to encourage sediment storage and gravel sorting, and to accelerate natural pool development. This creates necessary habitat diversity and helps decrease water temperature and sediment pollution.
The flood in the Fall of 2003 caused many of these log jams to dislodge, creating new jams further downstream. Monitoring of this site has been ongoing, and cross sections of the channel measured throughout the project reaches have shown that the efforts are having an impact.
Channel stability and narrowing in the upper reach has facilitated revegetation of stable bars where sediment is stored. Cross sections of the lower reach are not yet conclusive with only one year of data. While the ultimate goal of the project is to decrease water temperature in the creek, upper reach data indicates that temperature trends are cooler.
SFEG plans to continue to work with the US Forest Service and other timber landowners on restoration projects farther downstream until the restoration goal is attained. Good partners have been the key so far to this success but as we progress downstream, willing landowners will be the future to the health of Finney Creek.
