Washington will use $27.5 million in federal funding to help revive imperiled salmon runs, Gov. Chris Gregoire announced Friday.
The state will use a portion of the money — $2.6 million — to monitor whether habitat restoration projects actually work. Another $1 million will go toward monitoring fish recovery in the lower Columbia River.
The money represents Washington’s share of this year’s Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, an $80 million congressional appropriation targeting salmon recovery in six Western states.
The fund was established a decade ago as a federal response to the listing of 26 stocks of salmon and steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. The fund is relatively small compared with the overall federal commitment to salmon recovery, but it’s highly prized by local fish recovery organizations because it directly underwrites in-stream work.
Measuring success remains an elusive proposition.
Fishery managers are still devising systematic ways of assessing the effectiveness of man-made log jams, side channels and riparian planting. Nationwide, the proliferation of these sorts of habitat restoration projects adds up to big bucks — $1 billion annually, by one researcher’s estimation.
“Expanding coordination of monitoring efforts in the Pacific Northwest will give federal and state legislators needed information for future funding decisions for salmon habitat restoration,” according to the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board’s fifth annual monitoring report, released in April.
The $1 million for monitoring the lower Columbia represents a new investment.
It will allow the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to fill gaps in understanding about the abundance of wild coho, chinook and steelhead returning to spawn in the lower Columbia and its tributaries, according to the state’s application for federal funding.
Generally, state officials believe the investments are beginning to pay off.
“Washington state is seeing the effects of a decade of salmon recovery funding,” Kaleen Cottingham, director of the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office, said in a prepared statement. “According to two (federal fisheries) reports, many of Washington’s salmon populations appear to be improving.”
