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Skagit River Watershed | Mt. Baker - Snoqualmie National Forest |
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The Skagit River basin is at a crossroads.
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The third-largest river on the West Coast of the contiguous United States, the Skagit travels 125 miles from the high Cascades of British Columbia to the salt water of Puget Sound. Its 3,100-square mile watershed is easily the largest in Puget Sound, and outside Canada and Alaska, the Skagit supports one of the nation's last strongholds that contains all five species of salmon. The basin's upland forests, riparian habitat and estuary house the largest chum and pink salmon populations in the entire lower 48, as well as the most abundant population of wild chinook salmon in Puget Sound. Hidden among the Skagit's superlatives is another important fact: the massive watershed sits sandwiched between the Pacific Northwest's largest metropolitan areas, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. This closeness has fueled growth - the area's population has doubled in the past 30 years, bringing homes and pavement with it. Yet despite the pressure from development in the basin, Skagit County remains the most sparsely population county in Puget Sound. The Skagit's close proximity to urban areas may also be one of its greatest assets, drawing a myriad of players to the watershed with the shared goal of recovering salmon and restoring the land. Filling the complementary roles of facilitator, broker and actor in the basin is the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which thanks to the Skagit's designation as a Wild and Scenic River in 1978, has been working closely with other agencies and organizations for nearly two decades. » » » » » » » » » » » » Walking across a rickety wooden bridge shaded by hardwood trees, we emerge into a burst of sunshine that illuminates a wide field of waist-high grasses. Our group - on a brief field trip on the middle section of the Skagit River - has arrived on Skiyou Island, a 595-acre former potato farm that is now a key public parcel of land poised for restoration. Managing this tract of riparian and floodplain habitat represents a departure of sorts for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which oversees roughly half the Skagit watershed's 1.7 million acres. The Forest is naturally inclined toward restoration in the uplands, where conifer forests dominate. "This is a new challenge for us to get involved in the lower river and not the uplands," says the Mt. Baker District's Greta Movassaghi. "But there's an opportunity in this area to look at what it takes to restore a parcel back to quality riparian habitat." Movassaghi adds that the "high public visibility" of the Skiyou project builds takes the Forest's long-running record of working closely with the basin's other agencies and organizations to a new level. The Forest had already taken a lead role in the public eye after the Skagit was designated as a Wild and Scenic River in 1978. With some sections of the Wild and Scenic River in non-federal ownership where the Forest Service holds no jurisdiction, the stage was set early for the Forest to begin its focus on building partnerships. The Skiyou Island opportunity arose out of one such partnership. The Forest acquired the Skiyou land from the Skagit Land Trust, an 11-year-old regional nonprofit focused on land conservation in the Skagit River valley. Three years ago, with assistance from the Skagit chapter of The Nature Conservancy, the Trust acquired the Skiyou property, then turned it over to the Forest Service to manage as a public resource. The Skiyou parcel is just one piece along a 34-mile segment of river habitat between the towns of Sedro-Woolley and Concrete where the Skagit still flows relatively free from rip rap armoring and dikes. Although this middle section's gentle gradient and side channels make prime habitat for juvenile salmon, until now it had been largely overlooked by land conservation interests. The Skagit Land Trust used a systematic, scientific approach to inventory and assess lands in the Skagit's middle section, with an eye toward acquiring the most important parcels for salmon and wildlife habitat. The Trust's study is timely, as development pressure looms large over the area, with larger tracts of agricultural land being transformed into smaller, fragmented residential parcels. "We're trying to get ahead of the curve and protect the best areas," says the Trust's Martha Bray. "We're focusing on the best of the best. Our priorities look at the best habitat, but we are considering restoration potential as well." The importance of securing the most valuable parcels in the middle Skagit is not lost on the Forest Service's Don Gay, a wildlife biologist who is overseeing the Skiyou Island restoration work. Gay says the Island is a key winter waterfowl spot, so he is making sure to leave some sections of the land open as wetlands while working to eradicate invasive plant species and reforest the rest as hardwood riparian habitat. Gay enlisted students from Central Elementary in Sedro-Woolley to help monitor the reforestation effort's success. The students put their science and math skills to work recording data on vole predation, which has been one problem hampering the growth of the newly planted cottonwoods, willows and alders. "There's a great opportunity here to get the local schools involved in some long-term monitoring of our restoration progress over the next 20 or more years," says Gay. "It's a great way to expand our community involvement." In fact, the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie Forest's community involvement has such a long and rich history that the staff decided to use $55,000 in Pacific Coast Watershed Partnership funds in 2001 to produce the booklet "Beyond Boundaries: Resource Stewardship in the Skagit River Basin." The colorful guide provides an overview of the Forest's participation in the Skagit's future, profiling the Forest's web of partnerships that have developed over time. In total, the Forest received $77,000 in PCWP funds in 2001 and 2002, with the remaining $22,000 assisting the Skagit Watershed Council in its plans for developing a comprehensive environmental monitoring strategy for the basin. And PCWP funds also played a role in forming the restoration plan for Skiyou Island. The PCWP funds represent just a small part in the much larger financial picture of environmental work on the Skagit. Under the auspices of the region's lead entity, the Skagit Watershed Council, its 38 member agencies and groups have been successful in crafting solid, sound project proposals, a testament to the close partnerships that have been forged. In 2001 and 2002, the Skagit received $2.7 million and $3.9 million, respectively, from Washington's Salmon Recovery Funding Board, to be put to use in restoration and monitoring projects. With a solid pool of funding and a diverse collection of partnering organizations and agencies -all focused on a common goal despite disparate missions and philosophies - the Skagit basin is brimming with the potential that it may be able to keep its wild, green landscape intact while holding urban pressures at bay. And if the effort is to be successful, partnerships will show the way. "Who among us would argue against working together? But actually working together in a way that gets things done is not particularly easy, especially in a partnership of the big tent variety that this council represents," writes Watershed Council Chairperson Shirley Solomon in the "Beyond Boundaries" report. "We are together because we know that this inclusive approach is our only hope, the only way to ensure abundant salmon in this river system in the future."
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