Spawner Survey Successes! East Fork Walker Then and Now: How to Protect our Rivers for all Inhabitants. | Project 4 of 30

East Fork (EF) Walker is a tributary of the Nookachamps Creek. E.F. Walker drains water from the surrounding agricultural lands, logging areas, and ORV trails, making it flashy during storm events and creating high sediment loads. Like many of our monitoring projects, we began our restoration efforts by replacing a perched culvert with a bridge on a private road crossing.

By removing blackberry bushes and planting native vegetation along the upper portion of the stream, we helped stabilize the bank, created cover and shade for salmon, and provided nutrient input for macroinvertebrates (an important food source for juvenile salmon).

This project was completed in 2015 with the hope that our restoration efforts will improve fish passage, and result in a higher return of spawning salmon.

Every year, we recruit a team of volunteer citizen scientists to walk streams and conduct spawner surveys on streams like EF Walker. 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. Skagit Fisheries has been monitoring EF Walker for the past 6 years to analyze our impact. Our data showed a huge increase in salmon, carcasses, and redd activity since the start of our project in 2015.

While it is always exciting to hear the good news for salmon, we are also excited to hear stories from our surveyors about the impact our healthy streams have on greater ecosystems. EF Walker is also home to bald eagles, great blue herons, beavers and other animals that take advantage of the rich riparian ecosystem.

On January 2nd, 2021 our spawner surveyor Chad Verbitsky, and his daughter, Audrey walked EF Walker as they normally do on Saturdays.

Chad and Audrey were thrilled to see a duo of bald eagles up close. They saw the adult eagle take off, but the juvenile eagle stayed put on a branch.

Chad and Audrey saw the juvenile struggle to move, and finally flew over the trail–until it nose dived into blackberry bush.

The eagle tried to fly away but was unable to.

Chad called the first animal rehab organization he found online, who told him to put the eagle in a box. This suggestion did not sit right with Chad as despite the fact that the eagle was a baby, it was still a big bird of prey with dangerous talons. Chad then got in touch with Sarvey Wildlife Care Center, located in Arlington, WA. Sarvey was able to dispatch someone to help with the eagle. Just as the dispatcher approached the eagle to help it break free of the blackberry, it flew away. Chad was told that often younger birds deplete their energy when hunting for salmon and need to rest before they can fly off.

While we are happy that our baby eagle was able to fly away, we are glad that Chad contacted someone that can help him. If you see a hurt animal, please do not handle the bird yourself. Instead, contact a wildlife rehab center that is dedicated to saving the lives of sick, orphaned, injured, or displaced wild animals, so that they may be successfully returned to their native habitat.