Tribes receive salmon recovery grants

The Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe received a total of $643,103 in salmon recovery grants for projects aimed at monitoring salmon and restoring salmon habitat.

On December 16, the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board announced the award of $26.1 million in grants for projects across the state aimed at restoring salmon populations to healthy levels. The board awarded grants to organizations for 96 projects in 28 of the state’s 39 counties.

The Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe were Whatcom County’s two recipients. The Lummi Nation received a $64,310 grant for monitoring Chinook salmon in the South Fork Nooksack River, while the Nooksack Indian Tribe received $578,793 for restoring salmon habitat in the North Fork Nooksack River.

“The work being done across the state on salmon recovery is critical,” governor Jay Inslee said in a news release. “These grants for on-the-ground projects will help us restore salmon to healthy levels that allow for both protection and a robust fishery. We must do everything we can to restore this beloved Washington icon and help orcas, which are starving due to lack of salmon, before it is too late.”

For the Lummi Nation’s project, about 1,200 Chinook salmon will be captured upstream from late winter to late spring and tagged so that scientists can monitor their distribution and movement. The fish will be tagged with transponders, and secondary recaptures in the lower Nooksack River will give scientists an understanding of their freshwater survival. For the project, the Lummi Nation will contribute $11,541 in donations of labor.

Meanwhile, the Nooksack Indian Tribe will use its grant to build 27 log structures to restore side channels in the North Fork Nooksack River near Maple Falls. Side channels are smaller branches of the river that are important areas for salmon to spawn. Adding logjams to a river yields many benefits, such as less erosion and a more varied and productive habitat. The tribe will also plant native trees and shrubs on the log structures, providing food for the insects that salmon eat and keeping soil from entering the water. For the project, the tribe will contribute $102,147 in a federal grant.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board. Since 1999, the board has approved a total of 3,093 grants and surpassed $1 billion in investment, including matching funds from grant recipients.

Projects are chosen by watershed-based groups that include tribes, local governments, nonprofit organizations and citizens. They vet projects based on federally approved, regional salmon recovery plans and prioritize projects to submit to the Salmon Recovery Funding Board for funding. Regional salmon recovery organizations and the board then review each project for cost-effectiveness and to ensure they will benefit salmon.

“This community-based approach, combined with regional and state scientific review ensures that we are picking the projects that will benefit salmon the most,” said Kaleen Cottingham, director of the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, which administers the grants.

The grants are funded by the sale of state bonds and by the federal Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.