Recovering Puget Sound Salmon

Even if you’ve never visited Pike Place Market in Seattle you’ve probably heard about the fish company where they entertain the crowd by tossing salmon over the counter into their customer’s hands.

The Pike Place Fish Market does a good business and it’s great fun. But the decline of Puget Sound salmon is no laughing matter. Puget Sound Chinook salmon, Hood Canal summer chum, bull trout and Puget Sound steelhead are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Coho salmon are federally listed as a species of concern.

What’s the problem?

Salmon provide an important role in both the marine and terrestrial food webs. Birds, marine mammals, larger fish, and many other organisms consume salmon. The huge numbers of salmon juveniles are a food source for many organisms. Returning adult salmon nourish the streams and nearby riparian forests throughout the Puget Sound region with nutrients brought from the ocean and released by the decaying of their spawned-out carcasses. A defining characteristic of the resident orca is their diet of fish, preferably salmon.

Factors limiting the survival of salmon include degraded water quality, low stream flows during key spawning times, high water flows that degrade critical spawning habitats, hatchery practices, harvest, migration barriers such as dams and culverts, ocean conditions and the loss of key habitat in marine nearshore areas, estuaries, and river environments needed for juvenile rearing.

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What’s being done?

The ESA listings of salmon and bull trout triggered an aggressive salmon and watershed recovery response. For more than 10 years, countless government agencies, tribes, environmental organizations and individuals have put aside their differences and worked together at the watershed level to come up with solutions for the salmon dilemma.

Groups in all Puget Sound watersheds are identifying local solutions that meet the needs of people and salmon as well as ESA requirements. The groups include treaty Indian tribes, state, federal and local governments, businesses, citizens and conservationists. Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council oversees the implementation of the Shared Strategy actions.

Local actions to recover salmon include:

Improving harvest management, including harvest reductions, to protect weak wild stocks.
Reforming hatchery practices to support wild salmon recovery.
Restoring marine habitat, including estuaries, deltas and marine shorelines, which are critical to juvenile salmon rearing and migration to and from the ocean.
Opening access above dams and improving fish passage at culverts and other fish barriers.
Restoring and protecting freshwater habitat including adding large woody debris, restoring side channels, and planting native vegetation along stream banks.
Addressing landslide, sedimentation and other problems that harm water quality.

Some of the accomplishments at the state level toward salmon recovery include:

The state Legislature in 1998 enacted the Watershed Planning Act, creating local planning units to decide the actions needed to provide adequate water for people and fish as well as healthy watersheds.
The state Salmon Recovery Act funded local lead entities to coordinate salmon restoration and recommend projects to the Salmon Recovery Funding Board for approval according to restoration strategies for each watershed.
The act also initiated for each watershed an analyses of factors limiting salmon recovery led by the Washington State Conservation Commission.
The Shared Strategy for Puget Sound, a public and private partnership, coordinated the development of a salmon recovery plan for Puget Sound.

>> What you can do to help salmon in Puget Sound.

>> Learn more / find resources about helping salmon in Puget Sound.

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