Yakama Nation receives grants for fish projects

YAKIMA — The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation has received more than $400,000 of state grant money for habitat restoration projects to aid with recovery efforts for steelhead trout.

The Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board, through the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, awarded the Yakama Nation $414,000 for three habitat restoration projects along Ahtanum Creek and the Tieton and Klickitat rivers to help improve conditions for the area’s steelhead trout populations, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

In a Dec. 16 press release, the board noted that the growth of Washington cities and towns destroyed many of the places salmon used to live and has led to declining populations for decades. By the end of the 1990s, salmon, steelhead and bull trout populations were listed as threatened or endangered in about 75 percent of Washington.

John Marvin, a habitat biologist with the Yakama Nation, said the fish are part of the Yakama people’s cultural history and so deserve to be protected. The Yakama Nation has led restoration efforts in the Yakima Valley for decades, he added.

“This is a part of the Yakama Nation’s cultural history, with their hunter-gatherer societies,” he said. “This is just one more source of funding for our efforts.”

Restoration projects

The first Yakama Nation project, which received $120,000, will involve design work for restoring floodplain connectivity and increasing types of habitat along a mile of Ahtanum Creek in Union Gap. A second project, which received $90,000, will plan habitat restoration along a half mile of the Tieton River near the Oak Creek Wildlife Area.

Marvin said the Tieton area had largely been written off as a possibility for fish recovery efforts because of the annual “Flip Flop” operations. But fish tagging in Prosser and subsequent tracking conducted by the Yakama Nation from 2014 until 2017 showed that steelhead were using the area.

“The Yakama Nation found steelhead populations there, so we are guiding our restoration efforts by science,” Marvin said. “We look at restoring aquatic conditions. Adding wood re-introduces complexity, because fish like varied environments.”