In the effort to recover Northwest salmon populations, restoring access to spawning and rearing habitat is key.
The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC), a natural resources management organization of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, is helping to reopen streams to salmon with a growing roster of fish passage improvement projects throughout the Skagit River watershed. These voluntary projects that replace culverts on roads and driveways are being implemented in partnership with a variety of landowners.
In recent years, the effort has received federal dollars through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act’s fish passage funding distributed through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. SRSC has been awarded $4.5 million for tribal priority fish passage projects including on the Green Creek, Hatchery Creek and Martin Slough tributaries to the Skagit River. Green Creek is also called, and commonly mapped as, Everett Creek.
This summer, SRSC replaced a 4-foot diameter culvert that was choking Green Creek, east of Darrington, with a 30-foot bridge.
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding has also supported the design of projects on Hatchery Creek and Martin Slough, and in future years will support on-the-ground improvements at several privately owned sites in the Green Creek system, along a USDA Forest Service road in the Suiattle River watershed, at smaller fish passage barriers on the Sauk-Suiattle and Swinomish reservations, and at the Swinomish Tribe’s Similk Bay estuary project.
“We are making progress and we also have a lot of projects in the pipeline,” said Sue Madsen, a restoration ecologist at SRSC.
The projects are scattered throughout the watershed to benefit a variety of salmonids. The Skagit River is home to all five species of Pacific salmon as well as steelhead.
“We’re really focusing on fish diversity. We want to make sure all of our salmon species in the Skagit are doing well,” Madsen said.
Improved access to Green Creek, for example, will be most beneficial for coho and steelhead, while the upcoming Similk Bay project will give chinook the biggest boost.
While SRSC is the lead on projects within Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle ownership, the organization is also plugged into a network of partners in salmon recovery.
An overarching partnership for fish passage in the Skagit River watershed is the Skagit Culvert Working Group. The group includes SRSC, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, the Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group, and Skagit and Snohomish counties.
The group has updated a catalog of known culverts in the watershed, detailing location, condition, and surrounding habitat potential in a database, which can be filtered to narrow in on the highest-benefit project sites. As of 2024, the working group identified 558 barriers to fish passage limiting access to an estimated 276 miles of habitat in the watershed.
That effort has been supported by a GIS mapping tool developed using funding from the state Salmon Recovery Funding Board and Puget Sound Energy.
“We’re focusing our effort in good places, and this tool backs that up,” said Eric Mickelson, an SRSC restoration ecologist.
Nine of the working group’s priority projects, including four led by SRSC, have funding for construction. Another 22 projects have funding for design. When complete, those 31 projects will restore fish passage to about 70 miles of habitat, meeting about 25% of the need identified by the working group.
“We feel like we’re stronger working together with those partners,” Madsen said. “We can get a lot of work done.”
On Green Creek, partnerships grew organically with neighbors of the Sauk-Suiattle trust land where the SRSC project took place this summer. Two additional culvert-to-bridge projects are now planned on the creek—which flows into the Sauk River that feeds into the Skagit—with private landowners who took interest in SRSC’s plans.
Madsen said that shows the potential of each success to inspire neighboring projects, which can multiply benefits for fish.
Above: Skagit River System Cooperative restoration ecologist Sue Madsen takes notes at an undersized, debris-impacted culvert on a Forest Service road crossing over False All Creek. Photos from Skagit River System Cooperative. Story by Kimberly Cauvel.
