Salmon projects funded in Skamania, Clark

Salmon-recovery projects in Clark and Skamania counties will benefit from a series of grants announced Monday by the Washington state Salmon Recovery Funding Board.

Projects in Clark County:

• $354,966 for the Cowlitz Indian Tribe to restore a 0.2-mile side channel on the North Fork of the Lewis River near Eagle Island. The tribe will place logjams and logs in the river and floodplain.

• $531,520 for the Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement Group to excavate a half-mile side channel, complete with pools, riffles and wood habitat structures on the North Fork of the Lewis. The project also will improve a small tributary and include planting native trees and shrubs.

Projects in Skamania County include:

• The Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Group scored three grants in Skamania County totaling $1.2 million.

The biggest of those three projects will restore a half-mile portion of lower Hamilton Creek near North Bonneville with logjams and streamside plantings benefitting chum, coho, steelhead and Chinook salmon. The group will restore a chum-spawning channel and build a 400-foot-long groundwater-fed spawning channel parallel to the existing channel.

The group also will conduct the third phase of a project in the upper Washougal River to assemble log jams in concert with almost a quarter of a million dollars of donated equipment, labor and materials. Finally, its third project in Skamania County will produce a final design on a project to retrofit Duncan Creek Dam near Skamania Landing to allow better passage for coho, Chinook, steelhead and chum salmon.

• $92,487 to the Mount St. Helens Institute to place eight log jams in the upper reaches of the East Fork of the Lewis River.