ARLINGTON, Wash. — The Stillaguamish Tribe completed its largest restoration project on the Stillaguamish River on Friday, when water from the North Fork rushed into a side channel for the first time in more than 150 years.
The project is the latest installment in a large-scale effort by the Tribe to restore the river to how it flowed before the area was colonized in the 1800s.
The two-mile stretch of river, 230 acres of surrounding land, and the projects to come will be vital to restoring salmon habitat, reducing wildfire risk, and protecting homes from flood damage, according to Jason Griffith and Kadi Bizyayeva with the tribe.
The footprint is easily visible from aerial maps.
“You can see this project is that large, and that’s the scale of habitat that’s been lost.” Griffith said, “We’ve lost thousands of acres of fish and wildlife habitat, and we’re working piece by piece to put thousands of acres of fish and wildlife habitat back on the landscape.”
Griffith, the environmental program manager, has helped the Tribe buy the land that was a former golf course, cattle ranch, and tree farm.
Construction and acquisition combined cost close to $15 million.
The Endangered Species List has coho salmon as endangered of extinction and chum salmon as threatened with extinction. This project primarily intends to help protect these types of fish.
Bizyayeva, the fisheries director and vice chair for the Stillaguamish Tribe, says the project will help fish on both sides of their migration.
“Salmon are going to go right by us upriver. They’re going to spawn...They need the side channel habitat to provide them with a little bit of relief.” Bizyayeve said, “Those baby salmon are out migrating-- they’ll need this type of habitat to just to grow to get bigger and to rest up for the journey back downstream.”
This is the first project the Stillaguamish Tribe and Snohomish County have partnered on the project.
The County’s floodplain supervisor says the stretch of river just north of the Trafton Trailhead Park was identified as a priority for protection in the 1990’s.
“The lowest part of the North Fork is the highest production of Chinook,” Crump said, “So every fish passes by this area and it’s been starved of wood and any relief for the fish against high flows.”
Crump says it will help protect the White Horse Trail and Bridge and slow the river for communities downriver.
“It also slows the river down as it passes under the trail bridge, and so landowners down below get a river that’s less severe.”
Downriver, on its own accord, the Tribe bought land at the mouth of the Stillaguamish River as it enters Puget Sound.
Griffith says the tribe owns 18 miles of shoreline along the sound and river with future conservation projects in mind.
“There are not enough salmon returning to the Stillaguamish to support a single Stillaguamish tribal family with fishing. That’s the goal, is to be able to economically support, through fishing, tribal members,” Griffith said, “We haven’t realized that yet, but the goal is linking together these projects over time will bring enough fish back that you can have tribal members that live from the river.”
The side channel will filter sediment and flush out mud and debris over several days as river water washes through the new drainage. Once that is finished, Griffith says with the salmon runs starting to pick up, salmon will likely be running up the side channel within a week.
“Can you put a price on beauty? I mean, have you seen a salmon swimming up from the ocean? They’re mysterious, you know?” Griffith said, “I don’t know if you can put a price tag on that. For the tribe, you certainly can’t. Salmon are a big part of who they are as Indian people and a loss of salmon has had a profound effect on their culture.”
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