More than $4.8 million has been awarded to North Olympic Peninsula salmon conservation groups to boost projects aimed at improving salmon habitat along Puget Sound.
Washington state’s Salmon Recovery Funding Board announced last week that Jefferson and Clallam county entities will receive $4,867,785 of a total $24.8 million awarded recently across the state.
“A healthy Puget Sound is critical to our salmon, economy and way of life,” Gov. Jay Inslee said in a prepared statement.
The bulk of the local funding was awarded to the North Olympic Salmon Coalition, which is working on a project to improve habitat in Kilisut Harbor, the salt marsh connection between Indian and Marrowstone islands.
The salmon coalition was awarded $3,114,230 to help replace road fill and swap out a pair of 5-foot culverts on state Route 116 for a bridge in order to improve the quality of the water that flows through the area as tides rise and fall.
The habitat hosts species like Hood Canal summer chum, Puget Sound steelhead and chinook salmon, all threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The Salmon Recovery Funding Board news release said the coalition will contribute $427,475 from an estuary and salmon restoration program grant.
Coalition officials were not available for immediate comment Monday.
The Jefferson Land Trust received a pair of grants totalling $907,160 to purchase land deemed vital to salmon habitat along the Duckabush and Lower Big Quilcene rivers.
One grant, totalling $746,000, will be used to buy 215 acres along the south bank of the Duckabush River.
Sarah Spaeth with the land trust said that property will be combined with land already owned by the trust on the north side of the river to protect more than 2.6 miles of a riverfront corridor that runs from the Olympic Canal Tracts at its mouth to the Olympic National Forest boundary.
“We see that has a real important project area,” Spaeth said.
The channel is used by Puget Sound chinook and Hood Canal summer chum.
Big Quilcene buy
The trust’s second grant was $161,160 to buy and restore 14 acres along a quarter-mile stretch of the Big Quilcene River’s bank near the town of Quilcene.
Spaeth said that property is critical to the Hood Canal summer chum, Puget Sound chinook, steelhead and coho that use the river to spawn.
Both properties are currently owned privately, and the trust is negotiating the purchases, Spaeth said.
In Clallam County, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe was granted $655,397 to conserve and restore 15 acres of Dungeness River floodplain near U.S. Highway 101 for the threatened Chinook salmon, summer chum, steelhead and bull trout species that use it along with non-listed coho, pink and fall chum.
The tribe will use the funding to either purchase property outright or buy preservation agreements from private land owners who have built roads, levees and other structures in the flood plain.
The grants are paid from the Puget Sound Acquisition and Restoration Fund, which draws its funding from state general obligation bonds authorized by the Legislature.
Grant applications are prioritized by local watershed groups and the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency charged with leading Puget Sound salmon recovery efforts.
In total, 28 grants were awarded to projects in 10 counties.
With $15,491,198, Skagit County received the most funding, with a $13.6 million grant awarded to the Department of Fish and Wildlife to move a mile-long coastal dike at Fir Island.
That project will create as much as five acres of new tidal channel habitat and an additional 12 acres on an adjacent tidal marsh, the Salmon Recovery Funding Board release said.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
