Community-Led Salmon Habitat Restoration
By Yordanos Tesfazion
The Community Voices blog documents stories of our parks and public spaces and the people behind them. At Seattle Parks Foundation, we collaborate with hundreds of partners, volunteers, organizations, and city agencies who are working towards building a region that can withstand our current climate emergency. This piece is the fourth in our Partner Powered Futures series, dedicated to highlighting how they utilize parks and public spaces to foster inclusive communities and grow urban resilience.
In the greater Puget Sound region, salmon hold great significance. Five types of salmon native to the region have been swimming in the Salish Sea for millions of years: Chinook, coho, pink, chum, and sockeye. They’re central to the lives of the Coast Salish Peoples, support local economies, and play a disproportionally substantive role in the health and overall function of ecosystems.
A Salmon Society
Salmon is more than a source of food for the Coast Salish Peoples; the fish are central to their cultural and religious traditions, and also contributed to a flourishing trade economy. With the arrival of European settlers and their colonial system of governance in the 1800s, the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot People lost full access and ownership of the land and waters in the region.
The commercial significance of salmon in Washington is backed by the numbers. The industry has created upwards of 23,000 jobs, and salmon harvest is worth nearly $14 million annually. Furthermore, every $1 million that’s invested in salmon habitat restoration efforts generates up to $2.6 million in economic activity.
Salmon are a keystone species, meaning that their existence has a significant impact on their ecosystem, and if they ever ceased to exist, that ecosystem would collapse.
Correcting Human Error
Human activity in the region, especially the logging and straightening of streams, has taken a severe toll on salmon and their habitats. Across western Washington, Tribes have expressed their concerns, warning that salmon ecosystems are being destroyed at a rate that makes restoration impossible.
In the tens of thousands of years that salmon sustained the Coast Salish Peoples, the risk of endangerment was never a concern due to their self-governance. Colonial violence—such as physical attacks and displacement—pushed the Coast Salish Peoples to accept exploitative treaties.
The arrival of more settlers combined with rapid industrialization further harmed salmon populations in the Duwamish River. When the river was straightened out in the 20th century and became a major shipping hub, it was used to dispose of toxic wastewater, stormwater runoff, and chemicals from nearby shipyards and manufacturing plants. The Lower Duwamish Waterway became so polluted that it was declared a Superfund Site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2001.
According to the State of Salmon in Watersheds Executive Summary, climate change has also exacerbated the harm salmon and their habitats experience. Global warming has resulted in an uptick in flooding that prematurely flushes juvenile salmon downstream and higher water temperatures, making it more difficult for them to survive.
Colonization, industrialization, and climate change have caused irreversible damage to our waters, its salmon, and their wetland habitats. Salmon rely on wetlands for sustenance and shelter from predators as they mature and get ready to migrate to the ocean. While most restoration projects are delegated to state institutions on the federal, state, and local levels, community members can still get involved with grassroots initiatives in their neighborhoods. Our partners’ organized efforts to rebuild salmon habitats and tend to the watersheds they’re in are consistent and impactful.
Saving Communities with Community
Eight species of salmon and steelhead in Washington state are currently at risk of extinction. Many populations of salmon have experienced a small 1-2 percent average increase in numbers since being declared endangered, but wide year-to-year variability in growth reveals that it isn’t a significant trend pointing towards recovery. Salmon habitat restoration projects don’t produce results overnight and instead can take up to a decade until returning salmon populations reach their peak.
The collective efforts of our partners and other community members, public agencies, and organizations may not be felt today, but will have an impact that lasts generations.
The Rainier Beach Link2Lake Open Space Steering Committee’s salmon habitat restoration project at Be’er Sheva Park’s Mapes Creek started in 2019 after fish ecologist Ashley R. Townes observed an increase in juvenile Chinook salmon following a 2014 restoration project. In 2022, she collaborated with the Steering Committee to monitor salmon migration patterns and found that the shoreline at Be’er Sheva Park was an essential resting spot for salmon as they traveled toward the Ballard Locks to the Pacific Ocean. The Steering Committee secured a grant of half a million dollars to fund in-water construction and broader park improvements. The project aimed to rehabilitate and enhance the habitat with native vegetation, large woody debris, and experimental plant mounds.
Since 2017, the Friends of Arboretum Creek have been dedicated to improving the water quality, flow, and aquatic habitat of Arboretum Creek in the Washington Park Arboretum, which was heavily logged in the 19th century. The group’s co-founder, Larry Hubbell, was inspired to restore the creek after a conversation about the lack of bald eagles in the region. By following Indigenous practices of managing forests and restoring Arboretum Creek, fish would return to the habitat, which would then attract birds along with many other animal and plant species. The group hosts monthly volunteer restoration parties on the first Friday of each month from March to November. In total, they have received more than $2 million in funding from the King County Flood Control District.
As a strategic partner of ours, Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC) spent the last decade leading the largest environmental restoration project to have been undertaken on the Duwamish River in a generation. When the EPA categorized the Lower Duwamish River a Superfund site in 2001, they specified that Terminal 117 was an “early action” area, meaning that the risk it posed to the environment and people were too severe to be addressed until long-term site cleanup was completed. When plans to build a parking lot were proposed, DRCC advocated to restore the site and create a much-needed natural green space for the community. By 2017, the Duwamish River Peoples’s Park and Shoreline Habitat opened to the public. Since then, wildlife like salmon, seals, and birds have made themselves at home in the park. The river is still being cleaned, and the Port has plans to create 40 more acres of conservation banks in the Green-Duwamish Watershed as more wildlife move to the area. DRCC is celebrating their 25th anniversary as an organization this summer.
The throughline that connects all our partners’ habitat restoration projects is community.
For decades, community leaders and volunteers working with our partners have been patiently restoring the region’s salmon habitats and watersheds, holding public agencies and fellow community members accountable to the long-term health of the land, waters, animals, plants, and residents. Throughout the duration of their various initiatives, they’ve taught and learned from each other, bonding over their shared interests and mutual concerns. Projects come and go, but they always leave behind an enthusiastic cohort of community members with the passion and skills needed to keep the momentum going for generations.
Thanks to their work, salmon and other species are getting a better chance at forming communities and supporting communities within their ecosystem, including us. Like all of the projects our partners lead, habitat restoration projects are inherently a labor of love— love for their communities and the environment.
Sources
Climate Change – State of Salmon in Watersheds
Habitat Loss – State of Salmon in Watersheds
Habitat Loss Is Eroding Tribal Sovereignty – Johnny Sturgeon, Inside Climate News
New Report Shows Signs of Progress for Salmon But Far Too Many Still Are on the Brink of Extinction – Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office
Why Recover Salmon? – State of Salmon in Watersheds