Spring Chinook in particular, love this big, emerald blue pool just yards from the sea. Many linger here in summer and early fall: a reason why it’s long been an important fishing area for members of the Hoh Tribe. 

And yet, in both 2020 and 2022, the Hoh Tribe largely closed its spring Chinook fishery, concerned by forecasts predicting poor returns of salmon to this 56-mile system. The Tribe’s closures aimed to help the run rebound. And in 2024, Tribal experts noted that escapement numbers—adult fish that pass upriver before harvest begins—were the highest since 2002. 

Photo Credit: Luke Kelly, Trout Unlimited

Just inside the sheltered elbow of the Hoh River estuary, hundreds of spring Chinook salmon have been obsered. The mystery is where do they go next—further upriver to spawn, or back out to sea, aiming for other rivers?

The Tribe has long focused on making sure escapement goals are met upriver. But what of the large numbers of spring Chinook pooling in the estuary?

“Even in years when we expected low numbers of Chinook and the fishery was closed, we still observed many Chinook hanging out in the lower river,” says James Losee, Wild Salmon Center’s Senior Wild Fish Manager for Washington State. “It didn’t always make sense with what we were seeing upriver.”

“Even in years when we expected low numbers of Chinook, we still observed many hanging out in the lower river. It didn’t always make sense.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

For Tribal fishery managers and research partners like Losee, that potential disconnect raised a question: what if these fish in the estuary aren’t actually Hoh River salmon? 

“Salmon migrating along ocean coastlines have been known to take breaks on their way home,” Losee says. “They’re called “dip-ins.” 

Every year, large numbers of spring Chinook salmon hang out in the Hoh River estuary. A new fish tracking project aims to find out if these are temporary visitors from other rivers, or fish that eventually will head further upriver to spawn.

With its cold, glacial waters, Losee says, the Hoh estuary would be a fantastic place to slow down for a bit on the long journey back to other home rivers.  

“If these fish lingering in the estuary are tourists, just stopping by to visit, the next thing we’d want to know is if they’re from large healthy populations,” Losee says. “If that’s the case, that might reopen some fishing options for Tribal fishers while we work to figure out what’s really going on with the Hoh’s native wild fish.”

To solve these interlocking mysteries, the Hoh Tribe invited Wild Salmon Center and other partners to join forces to genetically identify these fish and acoustically track them, potentially across oceans.

“Our first duty is to protect the fish in our home rivers,” says Bernard Afterbuffalo, a Hoh Tribal member and the Tribe’s Natural Resources Technician. “But fishing is also our way of life. That’s why we’re very interested to see what we can learn from our fish tracking project.”

“Fishing is our way of life. That’s why we’re very interested to see what we can learn from our fish tracking project.”

Hoh Tribe Natural Resources Technician Bernard Afterbuffalo

Over summer 2025, Hoh Tribe natural resource experts and other partners accompanied Wild Salmon’s Center’s James Losee on many field trips throughout the Hoh River Basin to tag wild fish and install telemetry devices along riverbanks.

The project began in earnest in spring and summer 2025, as Losee and Tribal fishery staff spent days in the Hoh River estuary simulating the traditional Tribal fishery to catch adult spring Chinook.

Moving quickly between live wells of river water, the team safely sedated each fish and performed a three-minute surgery to attach what Losee calls a “backpack”—an acoustically-tagged saddle to broadcast the fish’s location. Then, the team carefully released each fish back into the water.

The team also spent time bushwhacking throughout the watershed. Near the edges of the Hoh mainstem and several tributaries, they installed more than a dozen telemetry devices—each resembling a two-liter bottle of soda pop—to listen for fish with acoustic tags and report back.

Now, the tracking project enters data collection. For the next two years, the Hoh’s listening devices will record any passing spring Chinook wearing a backpack (along with additional fish species tagged from this and other projects).

Combined with genetic analysis, this information can help solve the mystery of whether any of the estuary springers are native to the Hoh. 

To track the movements of the rest—potential dip-ins from other rivers—the team is tapping into a growing network of similar telemetry devices up and down the Pacific Coast.

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Hoh Tribal member Phil Riebe holds up an acoustic tracking device, referred to as a “backpack.” Surgically attached to dozens of spring Chinook in the Hoh River, these devices can help us track where they go next—whether farther upriver to spawn, or back out to sea, heading for other rivers.

“This is an exciting time to be a salmon tracker,” Losee says. “Pretty much anywhere from Alaska to California, we can see almost in real-time where these salmon go. We can basically follow them to their home rivers.”

“This is an exciting time to be a salmon tracker. Anywhere from Alaska to California, we can see almost in real-time where these salmon go.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

Photo Credit: © Atlas of Pacific Salmon (X. Augerot) 2005

The full range of Chinook salmon across the Pacific Rim. While most adult Chinook find their way back to the river of their birth after their ocean life stage, a percentage of every population strays. With our partners, we aim to find out whether the Hoh’s mysterious estuary springers are native fish, strays, or temporary dip-ins from other rivers.

If Chinook salmon caught in the Hoh ultimately travel on to other home rivers, it could mean that some could be harvested without impacting Hoh spring Chinook. This ambitious project could also shed light on questions that go well beyond the Hoh—such as how best to balance fishing and conservation efforts up and down the West Coast.

“When we decide whether to fish or not, these are decisions we can make here as a Tribe, within our community,” Afterbuffalo says. “But if we do our part in the Hoh to recover salmon and yet fish keep suffering, then the solutions need to be bigger as well.”

Data collection like this is a big step in the right direction, Losee says. The more we know about how Hoh salmon move in ocean and freshwater, the more options the Hoh Tribe has to steward its fishery and advance international salmon science.

Across the Pacific, fish tracking projects like this are on the rise—starting with work by Wild Salmon Center and our partners to bring this novel science to other river systems across the Pacific Rim.

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Wild Salmon Center’s James Losee with a telemetry device ready to be installed on the Hoh River mainstem.

“What we learn in the Hoh could support Tribal fishers to get back on the water sooner,” Losee says. “But this project is also a perfect example of the nexus between salmon science, fish management, and treaty rights. Big picture science like this really does show what could be possible in other salmon rivers.”

“Big picture science like this really does show what could be possible in other salmon rivers.”

Wild Salmon Center Washington Senior Wild Fish Manager James Losee

Photo Credit: Wild Salmon Center

Project partners out in the field. Pictured: Hoh Tribe natural resource experts, Wild Salmon Center staff, and other partners including colleagues at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

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One sunny August afternoon in 2024, two fish ecologists dipped hands in a small creek framed in tall beach grass. In an eddy, finger-length wild fish darted through the clear water—coho salmon, the ecologists marveled, or possibly steelhead or cutthroat trout. 

At this early stage of life, it can be hard to distinguish these wild fish species without closer inspection. But despite their tiny size, it was clear that these adventurous young fish weren’t afraid to taste salt. They tested the water just yards from where tiny Wa’atch Creek meets the Pacific Ocean, following its short, steep descent through Olympic Peninsula rainforest. 

From Seattle, the nearest major city, it takes more than four hours by car to get to this craggy beach. This is Makah Territory, and Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin is responsible for stewarding the health of fish and wildlife across all 54 square miles of this sovereign nation at the northwesternmost corner of the contiguous United States. Now, thanks in part to Peterson Martin’s guest that afternoon—Wild Salmon Center Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen—she and her team will bring that focus on fish directly to Wa’atch Creek.

“When Nicole approached me about projects, it’s like, man, I got this whole list!” Peterson Martin recalls. “I said, I could keep you guys busy for a long time. But let’s start with one.”

“When Nicole approached me about projects, I said, I could keep you guys busy for a long time. But let’s start with one.”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

Wa’atch Creek runs more than seven miles from headwaters to ocean. But for the young fish darting in the summer eddy, it’s much, much shorter. Just a quarter-mile upstream, these fish meet a formidable relic from World War II: a squared-off tunnel that looks more like a hallway for humans than a route for small fish.

World War II was a particularly fraught period of history for the Makah. In the early 1940s, during wartime heights, the U.S. Army abruptly commandeered strategic locations across Makah Territory—building roads, radar stations, office compounds, and myriad other heavy infrastructure. 

The presence of U.S. armed forces didn’t end with the war; it wasn’t until 1988 that the U.S. Air Force finally withdrew its last stationed personnel. To this day, Makah Tribal experts are still working to clean up military debris—from asbestos siding to a warren of old, cracking water pipes, soil contaminated by leaky underground fuel storage tanks, garbage dumps, and even shipwrecks.

The military aftermath includes the Wa’atch Creek box culvert: a massive concrete tunnel installed by the Army when it paved Cape Flattery Road around the peninsula’s most remote corner. The culvert—squared on all sides and 30 feet long—turns into a firehose in the winter: shunting water through too fast for fish to navigate. In summer, the culvert’s flat floor spreads the flow fingernail-thin across the concrete: much too low and slow for fish. 

To this day, Makah Tribal experts are still working to clean up military debris—from asbestos siding to a warren of old, cracking water pipes, soil contaminated by leaky underground fuel storage tanks, garbage dumps, and even shipwrecks.

For the Makah, the problems here don’t end with fish passage. A beach ball-sized dip in the road above offers clear evidence that the box culvert is also starting to fail structurally, taking the road with it. It’s a “ticking time bomb,” says Peterson Martin, with serious consequences for her community. Cape Flattery Road is the first Tribally-owned scenic byway in the United States, and essential to the Makah’s growing tourism economy. It’s also a key evacuation route for Tribal members in the event of a tsunami.

All of this makes fixing Wa’atch Creek’s box culvert a top priority. But for years, this work has felt logistically out of reach. Work on Cape Flattery Road is subject to a morass of conflicting federal and state road standards. There are funding issues, and permitting and labor constraints. But Peterson Martin knew of Wild Salmon Center’s success in partnering with Washington Coast Tribes to find federal salmon recovery dollars for critical infrastructure projects. Why not try out a partnership, she thought—test the saltwater a bit, like those baby fish?

“I knew that Wild Salmon Center has approval to work here,” Peterson Martin says. “So the question is, can we get it done?”

From summer 2024 and into fall, plans evolved from conceptual to concrete. The two teams worked out a timeline that spanned initial design to boots-on-ground construction. Rasmussen tapped her Wild Salmon Center colleagues to help secure grant funding for initial project designs from the Resources Legacy Fund Open Rivers Fund and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

“I knew that Wild Salmon Center has approval to work here. So the question is, can we get it done?”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

In December 2024, Rasmussen and Peterson Martin bushwhacked down to the banks of Wa’atch Creek with Tribal staff and KPFF engineers. The field visit formally kicked off plans for replacing the concrete box culvert with an arched and far wider steel bridge span. By this summer, Tribal and Wild Salmon Center staff will review designs with engineers: designs that they can take back to agencies like NOAA to fund boots-on-ground construction.

Once full funding is secured, it will take three years, at least, to complete the Wa’atch Creek Project. Tourists taking camper vans to the Cape Flattery Trail and lighthouse overlook will need to endure construction delays and detours, as crews repave a dip-free road on top of the new bridge. Peterson Martin and Rasmussen will also need to exercise patience, to see if Chinook salmon, coho, steelhead, and cutthroat trout eventually find their way under the new bridge to the upstream habitat the project will reopen.

Both ecologists know that for wild fish, every new mile counts. Research shows that small creeks like Wa’atch can play an outsized role in the long-term resilience of salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Each new stretch of cold, clean water gives wild fish more room to adapt and thrive in a time of rapid climate change. 

“If this project is successful, I think it opens up the door for conversations about other projects that we also need,” Peterson Martin says. “So we are super excited about this partnership.”

Already, she and Rasmussen are scoping out other fish passage projects across Makah Territory. Many of them are barriers created by World War II’s military buildout and the long federal presence that followed. Project by project, the Makah are reclaiming their land from this unwelcomed legacy. Project by project, they’ll also be welcoming more salmon home.

“If this project is successful, I think it opens up the door for conversations about other projects that we also need. So we are super excited about this partnership.”

Makah Tribal Habitat Division Manager Stephanie Peterson Martin

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TAKING A RIVER’S TEMPERATURE

In the Siletz watershed of Oregon’s North Coast, most coho spend their first year or so of life tucked away in small tributaries. 

For vulnerable young salmon, these high streams are quite literally more chill than the Siletz mainstem—particularly during low summer flows. But some young coho, apparently, like adventure.

“We call them nomads,” says Cyndi Curtis, Wild Salmon Center’s Nehalem-based North Coast Manager. “These are juveniles who move out of their natal streams pretty early on, and rear instead in the mainstem or even further down in the estuary.”

The nomads, she says, are a great example of the many life paths that salmon make. Diverse life histories are a big part of what makes salmon so adaptable. But regardless of the life history path that a salmon chooses, one need remains constant: cold water. The nomads, for example, will have greater success if they can nose into cold water pockets as they travel downriver: high-oxygen refugia where they can breathe easier, and find food and safety. 

In rivers across the North Pacific, salmon are skilled at locating cold water, both as juveniles and as returning adults. But while humans closely monitor the air temperatures that so impact our daily lives, these data sets are often difficult to find for rivers. 

“We have the tools and tech to get this data, and it can be pretty inexpensive,” Curtis says. “The bigger investments we have to make are in time, patience, and creativity. Without that commitment, we won’t be able to see these rivers like salmon can.”

Curtis wants to know the overall temperature trends of rivers like the Siletz, particularly given heightened drought and heat across the Northwest. But she’s also hunting for those secret cold spots: pools, seeps, and upwellings key to salmon’s ability to weather volatile conditions. Protecting high-value salmon habitat is a cornerstone of our stronghold strategy. And that’s why finding and prioritizing these cold water refuges is a growing priority for WSC and our partners.

“We have the tools and tech to get this data. The bigger investments are in time, patience, and creativity. Without that, we won’t be able to see these rivers like salmon can.”

WSC Oregon North Coast Manager Cyndi Curtis

“We know that water draws, clear-cutting, and extreme drought are reducing both stream flows and the groundwater table that feeds Oregon’s coastal rivers,” Curtis says. “Imagine what we could do if we knew where salmon find cold water. We could provide shade cover, deepen pools, and enhance the exact places fish use to survive in the summer.”

All it takes for an initial longitudinal survey of a river, Curtis says, is a few kayaks trailing temperature loggers. That’s exactly what Curtis and two partners did over a few August days this summer. This field work is, as Curtis says, an investment; hot and logistically tricky. Extreme low flows meant the team portaged frequently, and completed fewer river miles than Curtis would have liked.

But it’s enough to create a temperature snapshot of a critical stretch of the Siletz mainstem: data that can inform a strategic action plan for coho recovery across the watershed with our partners in the Coast Coho Partnership. Going forward, Curtis said, temperature data like this will be key to our coho recovery work across Oregon.

“River temperature data shows us where habitat restoration can be truly effective for salmon in a warming world,” Curtis says. “It’s extra legwork, sure. But we’re starting to fill in these data gaps, and scaling in really cool ways. Like in the Olympic Peninsula.”

“Imagine what we could do if we knew where salmon find cold water. We could provide shade cover, deepen pools, and enhance the exact places fish use to survive in the summer.”

WSC Oregon North Coast Manager Cyndi Curtis

HIGH-TECH, LOW-TECH, ROCKS AND CINDER BLOCKS

Before Curtis’s hot August float on the Siletz, she sought out advice—and borrowed a handheld temperature logger—from Nicole Rasmussen. Rasmussen is one of two WSC Fish Habitat Specialists based in Forks, in the Quillayute River drainage of Washington’s remote, salmon-rich Olympic Peninsula. 

In 2021, Rasmussen helped launch an innovative temperature monitoring project on the Quillayute River on behalf of her former employer, the Quileute Tribe. Now, with WSC, she’s continuing this work as a conservation partner. Her insights are helping partners at WSC and beyond to adapt this work for vastly different geographies. 

On the Quillayute, like Curtis on the Siletz, Rasmussen’s team captured annual snapshots of the river at its hottest. But they also installed dozens of fixed sensors at different depths in the riverbanks and thalweg (the deepest part of the river). Combined, these different data points enabled the team to generate a seasonal thermal picture of the river across two years. 

“We’re finding where the cold water is coming in, and also whether that cold water source seems to be reliable,” Rasmussen says. “That’s important because if we can confirm that a seep is active year-round, we can be even more confident of a payoff for fish if we deepen and protect that pool.”

For Tribes and conservation partners like WSC, long-term river temperature data makes restoration work that much more effective. It’s also more logistically complex to get.

“If we can confirm that a seep is active year-round, we can be even more confident of a payoff for fish if we deepen and protect that pool.”

WSC Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen

“There is definitely a lot of creativity involved,” Rasmussen explains. “In the Quillayute, we need to keep the sensors away from boats, fishing nets, fishers, and swimmers. We need to account for flows and tides, and different activities across seasons. And later, you have to be able to find your sensors and get them back intact.”

But longer-term thermal detective work can also help unlock high-tech resources. Rasmussen and her colleagues, for example, scored access to a rare extra data layer for the Quillayute drainage: an infrared map of surface water temperatures captured from a 2021 FLIR flight by the U.S. Geological Survey.

“The FLIR data lets you see where plumes of colder water reach the surface, and where things are heating up,” Rasmussen says. “We can compare the thermal map with our more recent temperature readings and have a really precise picture of where to focus.”

“There is definitely a lot of creativity involved. We need to account for flows and tides, and different activities across seasons. And later, you have to be able to find your sensors and get them back.”

WSC Fish Habitat Specialist Nicole Rasmussen

But this kind of high-tech thermal detective work is expensive. (WSC helped find funding for that 2021 flight). Across the Pacific Northwest, Tribes, conservation groups, watershed councils, and others often have limited access to such advanced assists. To get the river temperature data that we need, creativity remains key.

And for WSC’s local partners in Mongolia, the tools to do this kind of research get even more basic; literally packed in on our scientists’ backs.

COLD WATER CASE STUDIES 

The rivers of Northern Mongolian are home to the largest salmonid of all: Siberian taimen. 

The remoteness of Mongolia’s taimen rivers is partly why these populations have remained relatively strong, while increasingly imperiled elsewhere. But difficult access also creates challenges for conservation scientists looking to better understand taimen and their far-ranging freshwater travels.

According to WSC Science Director Dr. Matt Sloat, river temperature monitoring is key to our efforts to build effective conservation strategies for taimen across their range—particularly in the mountains and steppes of Mongolia where air temperature warming rates are four times the northern hemisphere average.

“Taimen are massive cold water fish, and the world is warming fast around them,” Dr. Sloat says. “In Mongolia, taimen rivers are particularly at risk. We need to understand their sensitivity to climate change, and for that we need a more complete thermal picture across seasons.”

“Taimen are massive cold water fish, and the world is warming fast around them.”

WSC Science Director Dr. Matt Sloat

For the last two summers, Dr. Sloat and the WSC Science Team have trekked deep into these watersheds with core partner Mongolia River Outfitters to install and monitor year-round temperature sensors. The work is not unlike the Quillayute project—with a few twists. Where Rasmussen’s team anchored temperature sensors to large trees and trucked-in cinder blocks, Dr. Sloat and his colleagues must rely on more lightweight aids: what they can bring on in packs and rafts. 

“There’s a lot of judgment involved in placing these sensors,” Dr. Sloat says. “Good notes, sketches, and photos are also key. Because later, we have to find that exact rock again, after ice, flooding, and the low flows of summer. It’s like an Easter egg hunt.”

In these wide-open landscapes, the team uses what it can find to tether and suspend its sensors; some are attached to rock bundles in mesh nets, others are epoxied to boulders. However we can get this data, Dr. Sloat agrees with Curtis and Rasmussen that we have to keep it flowing. 

His hope is that cold water detective work will empower conservationists to better understand the climate risks that salmon strongholds face across the North Pacific. Temperature data is not only essential information for salmon conservation, he says: it could also help us understand these keystone species in new and exciting ways.

“Salmon can successfully navigate a warming world through behavioral and physiological adjustments,” Dr. Sloat says. “Salmon are amazing and adaptable creatures. We can and should know more about what their lives are like. And temperature data gives us more tools to do exactly that.”

To all the nomads out there, nosing out cold water in home rivers and beyond: we see you. And with time, patience, and creativity, we hope to get to know you better.

“Salmon are amazing and adaptable creatures. We can and should know more about what their lives are like. And temperature data gives us more tools to do exactly that.”

WSC Science Director Dr. Matt Sloat

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On Washington’s slow flowing, ferny Dickey River, the water was unusually low, even for mid-August. Normally, that would bother Betsy Krier and Nicole Rasmussen, Wild Salmon Center’s two Forks-based Fish Habitat Specialists. They worry about juvenile coho stranded in the river’s feeder creeks, and the threat of overfishing in the mainstem, where adult salmon pack more tightly into fewer cold pools.

But they saw at least one bright side. Low flows would make it easier to do the work of the next several weeks: tearing out fish barriers, while strategically “messying” up creeks with post-assisted log structures (PALS) and beaver dam analogs (BDAs).

“Salmon need options,” Krier says. “Juvenile coho might hopscotch up a creek to find a colder pool, duck back into the mainstem to find food, or hide out inside a beaver dam. They’re incredibly resilient when humans don’t get in their way.”

Unfortunately, we do get in their way, even in remote river systems like the Dickey, a Quillayute River tributary. One example is a set of 30-year-old plank weirs that staircase up streams that feed the West Fork Dickey River. 

Plank weirs were originally installed to “improve” on benefits long provided by beaver dams, like cold water pools and hopscotchability. But over time, these impermeable structures have proven more limiting than liberating. In winter high flows, the weirs become uniform gushers without choice routes for fish. And in low flow times like now, they can effectively become fish traps.

“In the past, some thought beaver dams were unreliable for fish, and that it’d be better to just bolt some big logs into the creek,” Krier says. “But it turns out that these streams function best when they’re allowed to be messy and complex.”

“Salmon need options. They’re incredibly resilient when humans don’t get in their way.”

WSC Fish Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier

Messing up the West Fork Dickey tributaries is exactly what Krier and Rasmussen set out to do this August, along with a crew of volunteers from Wild Salmon Center and staff from the Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition.

Krier came prepared. The team had permission from Rayonier—a private forestry company and the area’s major landowner—and permits from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with schematics for removing or softening the creek’s five burly plank weirs, and for placing each strategically messy structure. 

There’s urgency in this work. The plank weirs aren’t the only human hardscaping that’s actively disrupting these creeks. There’s also a warren of old and abandoned logging roads that run through this country, including one that cuts right up to the highest plank weir on one creek. Even now, with the water low, a sizable trickle flows over the rush- and sedge-covered roadbed, incising new, fish-pinching channels.

“Our plan was to use the West Fork Dickey River as a test case for our larger vision,” Krier says. “We’re aiming to show that these kinds of low-tech restoration solutions can help fish at dozens of other sites, with not much more than a little human muscle.”

And at least one ‘Arnold’—the nickname given to the largest and heaviest of the crew’s hand-held post drivers. With Arnold, Krier’s crew pounded large poles into the stream bank, then wove them with brush (or “slash,” in logging lingo). Some of these structures crossed the creek entirely; these are beaver dam analogs—a nod to what the plank weirs aimed to replace, just full of the necessary nooks and crannies for fish. Other structures, the PALS, stopped midstream, instead working to complicate, cool, and slow the creek, much as random accumulations of wood and debris would in undisturbed conditions.

With partners including PCSC, the Quileute Tribe, and willing landowners, Krier and Rasmussen next hope to roll out similar work at up to 40 other sites, drawn from an assessment of some 50 off-channel habitat sites developed in the 1990s by the WDFW’s Salmonid Screening, Habitat Enhancement, and Restoration Division, that today have deteriorated and become problematic, like the plank weirs, for overwintering coho.  

It’s work that should keep Krier’s crews busy for a few years. With work on the West Fork Dickey tributaries now complete, her crews are now driving posts with Arnold on the East Fork Dickey, with projects scoped and ready at additional sites throughout the Olympic Peninsula. Meanwhile, Krier and Rasmussen will be keeping a close eye on their pilot PALS and BDAs on the West Fork Dickey. 

“We’ll know that these structures are doing their job if, come winter, the creek starts to favor its natural channel over the roadbed,” Krier says. “Restoring natural hydrology here could open up all sorts of great habitat for coho. And maybe, one day, we’ll even see some beavers here, getting back to work.”

“Restoring natural hydrology could open up all sorts of great habitat for coho. And maybe, one day, we’ll even see some beavers here, getting back to work.”

WSC Fish Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier

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All this month, local construction crews are at work to decommission a 1.5-mile stretch of U.S. Forest Service Road 2900072 above the Sitkum River.

It’s the last project on a USFS checklist of road storage and decommissioning priorities first identified in 2012 in this steep drainage. Aging and unstable roads like this one are prone to slump and shed sediment into the Sitkum, making them unsafe for motorized transport. And during intense rain events, like the atmospheric rivers of 2021, they can wash out completely. 

That’s bad news for road users, and also salmon and steelhead that live downstream in the Calawah River and Quillayute mainstem.

During intense rains, road fill and debris travel down to the Calawah, where it can kill adult wild fish, smother redds, and wreak long-term havoc on the food webs that sustain salmon and other species.

“When some old roads get to a certain point, it makes both economic and ecological sense to safely accelerate their return to nature before they do further damage,” says Betsy Krier, Wild Salmon Center’s Forks-based Salmon Habitat Specialist. Krier is helping to supervise work on the 2900072 project. 

“Projects like this permanently remove threats for downstream fish,” she adds. “And they’re designed to transform these roads into routes that are still available for non motorized recreational and subsistence uses.”

Since 2016, the Forest Service has partnered with WSC and other regional conservation groups to help tackle its growing backlog of fish barrier corrections and restoration projects. These partners contribute technical capacity and project management to get the work done. They also bring in funding that stays in local communities. 

To date, the partners have successfully leveraged more than $750,000 in Forest Service seed money to recruit another $550,000 in funding for the Sitkum projects. That includes a new $275,000 grant for the 2900072 road project from the Washington Coast Restoration and Resiliency Initiative, a state funded program. 

This funding is sustaining good-paying jobs for local crews. This July, for example, Amanda Park contractor Mike Nelson of Olympic Resources is leading the 2900072 road work.

When the project wraps up this August, nearly 20 miles of road treatment will have been completed in the Sitkum subwatershed: work that’s employed dozens of foresters, heavy equipment operators, and other skilled workers.

“When some old roads get to a certain point, it makes both economic and ecological sense to safely accelerate their return to nature before they do further damage.”

WSC Salmon Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier

Now, organizations like the Wild Salmon Center are ready to scale this successful partner model on Forest Service lands elsewhere in the Olympic Peninsula. The timing is right, Krier says, with state and federal agencies unlocking historic levels of funding for coastal restoration and resilience projects.

Going forward, that could mean more skilled work for local forest road crews like Nelson’s, and more fish in rivers like the Calawah.

“Projects like this permanently remove threats for fish. And they transform these roads into routes that are still available for non motorized recreational and subsistence uses.”

WSC Salmon Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier

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Is this our moment to get it right for an extraordinary—and imperiled—species?

For as long as there have been Quileute people on the remote, rugged Olympic Coast, returning steelhead have signaled the end of what’s called “bad weather season,” and the beginning of fishing. In the Quileute language, early winter is literally known as “steelhead season.”

Some try to map the solar calendar onto this cycle, and peg steelhead season to a specific month. But that shifts the focus to Western ways of knowing, rather than the ancient bond between steelhead and the first people of the Pacific Northwest.  

“Fish, to us, it goes way back,” says Ann Penn-Charles, a member of the Quileute Tribe of the Quillayute River basin, prevention specialist, and teacher of the Quileute language. “If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

For Miss Ann, as she is known in the Quileute village of La Push, there isn’t a way to separate salmon and steelhead from the story of her family, her community, her history. 

There is her father, Christian “Jiggs” Penn, Jr., a fisherman, Korean War veteran, and lifelong advocate for Tribal fishing rights. And her grandmother, Lillian Payne Penn Pullen, who passed on the traditions of fish-handling, processing, and community spirit.

The story goes back farther, to her great great grandfather, one of the Quileute leaders who participated in the Treaty of Olympia in 1865. In this treaty, the United States government acknowledged the perpetual right of the Quileute people to hunt, fish, and gather in all “usual and accustomed places”—even as it sought to restrict Tribal members to a tiny reservation at the mouth of the Quillayute River. 

In 1974, Miss Ann’s father was the Quileute Tribe’s representative in U.S. vs. State of Washington, a landmark case led by Federal Judge George Boldt. Her father’s testimony, alongside dozens of other witnesses, convinced the judge to reaffirm treaty rights following more than a century of broken promises, harassment, disenfranchisement, and violent, capricious policing by non-Tribal authorities. In his ruling, Judge Boldt agreed with the plaintiffs that the Treaty of Olympia enshrined the right of signatory Tribes to co-manage fisheries across their traditional homelands.

In the five decades since the Boldt Decision remade Washington fisheries, Tribal, state, and federal agencies are still negotiating paths through these waters. Resource co-management is painstaking work, made harder by the weight of history.

Miss Ann is proud of what Quileute fisheries managers are doing to nurture the salmon and steelhead that return each year to the Quillayute River—from water temperature monitoring to natural infrastructure projects that aim to protect La Push while enhancing fish habitat. 

She’s keeping an eye on this work herself, monitoring new streamside replantings on her walks to collect items for medicine. And she enjoys hearing from fishers where salmon are showing up—especially if these are spots where her parents once were caretakers.

“As my father would paddle home with a canoe full of fish, he’d check certain areas to see how many fish were in the creeks,” Miss Ann recalls. “He’d get brush and put it along the banks, where he knew fish would spawn. My grandfather taught my father to heed all of the things taught to him. It takes all of us to be stewards of the land.”

The reward of good stewardship is health. For millennia, the flash of steelhead in rivers brightened the winters of the Quileute people—a sign of a thriving relationship. Now, with Indigenous leadership resurgent in fisheries management, Tribes and First Nations are reclaiming traditional spaces for hunting, foraging, and fishing, and their role as primary stewards.

But as the Quileute Tribe finally sees respect for sovereignty on land and water, something else has gone wrong. The steelhead are disappearing.

“If you took the fish away from the people, the people wouldn’t be able to feed their spirit. Fish are the heart of it.”

Ann Penn-Charles

Lillian Payne Penn Pullen loved steelhead, particularly smoked. Miss Ann remembers that about her grandmother, as well as her lessons on using all parts of the fish. 

Dwayne Pecosky, the Director of Quileute Natural Resources, also loves steelhead. That’s because along with his day job managing Tribal fisheries and restoration work—including an ambitious river rewilding project with Wild Salmon Center and other partners—he’s also an avid angler.

“It’s a special thing, seeing winter chrome come into the Quillayute Basin,” Pecosky says. “Steelhead are hard to catch. They call it the ‘fish of a thousand casts’—that’s the saying, but maybe I know it because I don’t catch a lot.” 

Pecosky laughs, and acknowledges that for him, it’s not really about catching fish. It’s enough just to float on a rainy winter day and know that steelhead are out there.

“You’re talking to a person who knows how amazing steelhead are in their behavior, their life history,” he says. “It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it might have made it home, went back out to the ocean, jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

“It’s incredible to be able to touch a winter steelhead and realize that it jumped through all these hoops, and made it back home again.” 

Dwayne Pecosky, Quileute Natural Resources Director

Unfortunately, steelhead are scarce in smokehouses these days. Instead, the Quileute Tribe is watching with concern as steelhead numbers drop, year after year.

“We know we’re doing the right things, and we’ll always put an emphasis on conserving for future generations,” Pecosky says. “The Tribe is doing what it can on the lower Quillayute, aiming to manage its fisheries with a meticulous eye.” 

The Tribe is worried enough that it’s taking drastic conservation measures—a reaction echoed in recent emergency rules adopted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). In recent years, the co-managers have responded to low steelhead forecasts with a suite of seasonal actions for the recreational fishery, including mandatory catch-and-release and bans on bait fishing and fishing from boats. In 2020 and 2021, the Quileute and other Washington Coast Tribes voluntarily reduced steelhead fishing days by more than half.

When decisions are made to cut back fishing days, Pecosky says it’s important to remember that’s a very big deal for the community.

“We’re salmon people and fishing is a way of life for the Quileute Tribe,” he adds. “When a Tribe shuts down their treaty fishery, that’s instrumental in demonstrating the conservation concern.” 

In 2022, with steelhead forecasts again looking dire, coastal Tribes volunteered once more to reduce fishing days. Meanwhile, WDFW announced early steps to overhaul its steelhead management strategy entirely. The era of complacent fisheries management was over. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. New research from Wild Salmon Center and our partners shows that steelhead have been in decline for decades—and perhaps more than a century, since the introduction of canneries, commercial fishing, logging, mining, and other ecosystem-altering practices.

These insights might seem obvious, in hindsight. But for Pacific Northwest fisheries managers, it hasn’t been easy to see the big picture. For these agencies, the earliest reliable steelhead spawning records date back just 40 years, to the early 1980s soon after the Boldt Decision.

Last year, one humble discovery showed us the bigger picture. Thanks to a team of scientists including WSC Director Dr. Matt Sloat, we can now track Olympic Peninsula steelhead to the late 1940s. What the data reveals is raising alarm bells all the way east to Washington, D.C.

Up and down the Washington Coast, there’s no doubt that steelhead are in trouble. Now, agencies—and fishers—need answers.

The discovery—a single dusty ledger in an Olympia office—didn’t look like much. But for Dr. Sloat and scientists from Trout Unlimited and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Office, the ledger’s data unlocked a world of insights. Starting with the vast chasm between what steelhead runs might have looked like for Miss Ann’s father, as a young man in the 1950s, and what they are today.

“Olympic Peninsula steelhead are at a fraction of their historical abundance,” Dr. Sloat says. “Until now, we weren’t able to fully appreciate that loss, because our frame of reference only went back a few decades.”

The team found that between 1948 and 2017, wild winter steelhead numbers plummeted by at least 67 percent in the Quillayute River. In the neighboring Hoh, Queets, and Quinault systems, the rates were 80, 73, and 71 percent respectively. According to Dr. Sloat, the most recent data suggest that decline rates are accelerating.

Why are steelhead in such trouble? To answer that, Dr. Sloat and his colleagues are investigating a range of potential factors including ocean warming, hatcheries, and habitat loss. Recent breakthroughs in conservation genetics are revolutionizing this work, he says, enabling us to better grasp the steelhead biodiversity that so amazes anglers like Dwayne Pecosky. 

“For millions of years, steelhead have drawn on a range of life histories and behaviors to survive,” he says. “We’re just now beginning to understand what’s in that genetic toolkit.”

One of those tools is a drive within some steelhead to return months ahead of their fellows. These are the first freshwater arrivals in the height of winter—those heralds of fishing season for the Quileute people. But across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

Across the Olympic Peninsula, steelhead runs are losing their vanguard: a clue that somehow, critical biodiversity is getting lost.

“These early returners are simply not there anymore,” Dr. Sloat says. “This fact alone might shed some light on why it feels like steelhead are vanishing in plain sight.”

If we can learn why early returners are disappearing, he says that insight could help conservation scientists and fisheries managers develop powerful new recovery strategies. But good science takes time and resources. Meanwhile, for steelhead, the clock is ticking.

That’s why Dr. Sloat isn’t surprised that NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

This  winter, NOAA announced a 90-day review period, the first step in its formal review process. Should the process move forward to public comments, rulemaking, and a final decision, more sacrifices could be ahead—both for the sport fishers who flock to the Olympic Peninsula, and for Tribes like the Quileute. ESA listing could mean yet another renegotiation of fisheries co-management: an exhausting prospect for all involved.

But while ESA listing would add complexity, it could also unlock a new level of resources for Tribal and state fisheries managers: perhaps enough to pivot away from crisis mode, and toward a consensus-driven, science-based approach to long-term conservation.

“Sound science is key to getting steelhead recovery right,” Dr. Sloat says. “Because no solution that we come up with will work without everyone agreeing on the facts and pulling in the same direction.”

NOAA Fisheries is now considering the most dramatic move of all: listing Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. 

Can we save steelhead? From La Push to Olympia to Washington, D.C., many are skeptical. When it comes to this priceless fish, our history is a fraught one. And conditions today aren’t necessarily different. Across the Pacific Northwest, and beyond, different fishing factions are often more comfortable pointing fingers than finding common ground.  

No one knows this history better than Miss Ann. And she thinks it’s high time we learn from it.

“We have to work together—sport and Tribal fishers, Washington State, everyone—to make sure that the mistakes of the past don’t happen in the future,” she says. “It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

“We have to work together. It will take all of us to make sure that our salmon and steelhead are here for the next seven generations.”

Ann Penn-Charles

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Wild steelhead populations in the Olympic Peninsula have declined by more than half since the 1950s.

This alarming fact is one of the main findings of a new paper published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management from Wild Salmon Center Science Director Matt Sloat, Trout Unlimited’s John McMillan, and Martin Liermann and George Pess from NOAA’S Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

In the study, the authors confirm another uncomfortable trend shaping reality for steelhead fishers and fishery managers: the OP’s wild steelhead are returning to freshwater an average one to two months later than they did 70 years ago.

“In the 1950s, between a quarter to nearly one-half of Peninsula steelhead returned in November and December,” Dr. Sloat says. “Now January is considered by many to be the start of the wild steelhead return season.”

The evidence suggests that steelhead aren’t simply pushing back their return season. Aided by newly-discovered troves of historical data, the study’s authors determined that steelhead runs have largely lost their early returners, truncating the run. This loss is likely connected to declining abundance, notes Sloat.

Steelhead aren’t simply pushing back their return season. Aided by new troves of historical data, the study’s authors determined that steelhead runs have largely lost their early returners.

“Run timing influences the opportunity for fish to access different habitats within a watershed,” he says. “The loss of earlier returning fish means that the remaining population has fewer options for using the available habitat. As a result, overall steelhead production suffers.”

When it comes to steelhead, historical insights like these have been hard to come by. That’s because management agencies often lack the long-term data needed to see the big picture. As a result, fisheries managers must often rely on contemporary fish counts to make decisions on everything from goals for fish reaching spawning grounds (known as escapement) to emergency regulations. And that narrow lens means we might be slow to recognize just how far these wild fish populations have declined.

Luckily, research from conservation scientists including Sloat and McMillan is expanding the historical data set available to agencies like the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. Just one of the team’s discoveries—a single dusty ledger in an Olympia office—helped to backfill daily fish count records to 1948: decades before many steelhead population-tracking datasets even start.

When combined with recent records, the study’s authors determined that just seventy years ago, Olympic Peninsula steelhead populations were more than double the size of today’s runs.

“Extending the dataset is important because it provides a longer-term context,” says McMillan. “For example, until recently, wild steelhead on the OP were considered to be healthy and relatively robust compared to many other regions. We now know not only are many contemporary populations in decline, but that the OP supported far more steelhead than we previously thought.”

So why, exactly, is steelhead run timing changing? And why are steelhead numbers dropping? It’s complicated. Factors that the paper investigates include whether earlier-returning steelhead favor different spawning habitat than later-returning steelhead—and whether the earlier run, as a result, has lost more of that habitat over the last 70 years to land use practices like logging. Another set of questions concern hatcheries.

“There has been a long-held assumption that selecting hatchery steelhead for early entry in December would reduce impacts on wild fish,” says McMillan. “That doesn’t appear to be the case on the OP. The historical catch data indicates wild steelhead were fairly common in November and abundant in December and January, so there was an extensive amount of overlap in run timing between hatchery and wild fish prior to the onset of the modern hatchery steelhead programs.”

“There has been a long-held assumption that selecting hatchery steelhead for early entry in December would reduce impacts on wild fish,” says McMillan. “That doesn’t appear to be the case on the OP.”

According to the paper, hatcheries might be impacting wild fish directly, through competition for resources—but possibly also indirectly. Since hatchery steelhead are bred to return to freshwater at times that overlap with earlier-returning wild steelhead, that might create conditions for increased accidental harvest of earlier-returning wild fish by mixed-stock fisheries. If true, this could mean that the gradual loss of earlier-returning wild steelhead is, at least in part, a result of overharvest.

These questions can make for complicated conversations among diverse stakeholders, Sloat admits. But everyone agrees that steelhead are in trouble. Last year, as steelhead numbers up and down the Washington coast entered their fourth straight year of rapid decline, WDFW enacted emergency rule changes on many coastal rivers.

Yet annual emergency rule changes don’t make for a sustainable management strategy, notes Sloat. For WDFW to build a more effective plan of action—one that can enable long term population health for steelhead—the agency will need strategies to restore steelhead diversity, including run timing, that underpinned the strong runs of the past.

In November, WDFW took a major step in that direction, creating a community advisory panel to develop new, watershed-specific management plans for the state’s steelhead populations. According to Sloat and McMillan, these plans will have the greatest chance for success if they incorporate targets for improving wild steelhead diversity and resilience, in addition to abundance.

“We have a history in fisheries management of focusing almost exclusively on the numbers of fish,” says Sloat. “It’s time we implemented a broader view of fishery management—one that considers steelhead productivity, distribution, and diversity alongside total abundance. And we applaud OP fishery managers for their recent incorporation of these additional criteria into their management efforts.”

The broader management perspective can’t come soon enough for OP steelhead, he says.

“We need all hands on deck to set coastal steelhead on a recovery path,” says Sloat. “Rebuilding won’t be easy, but our study provides a glimpse of what recovery could look like: diverse and abundant wild Peninsula steelhead runs. We look forward to collaborating with our partners on this work in the years ahead.”

“We need all hands on deck to set coastal steelhead on a recovery path,” says Sloat. “Our study provides a glimpse of what recovery could look like: diverse and abundant wild Peninsula steelhead runs.”

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In July, Nicole Rasmussen paddled the Quillayute River in a kayak, clocking the fishing boats and swimmers. She and teammate Caroline Walls were looking for just the right spot, away from the action, in the rushing water beneath their boats.

Rasmussen and Walls—Water Quality and Habitat Restoration Biologists, respectively, for the Quileute Tribe—had an intricate set-up to install in this wild Olympic Peninsula river. They stacked multiple water sensors in the riverbed to monitor temperatures and exchanges between ground and surface water. Other sensors they suspended in the water column itself, both in deep pools and in faster-moving water. Some were tethered to cables from the river banks, others floated, and still others were attached to buried cords and hid inside logjams, safe from human disturbance.

“It’s hard to work from a kayak in a tidally-influenced river,” Rasmussen says. “We got rolled a few times.”

Rasmussen has been a Quileute Tribe biologist for ten years; enough time to see shifts in the river that sustains this coastal salmon community. Some are literal. In the Quillayute’s upper reaches, its once-meandering path is straightening, creating high-energy erosion downstream. That means that one winter high-flow event might be all the river needs to jump its banks and flood the Tribal village of La Push: a threat that’s prompted an ambitious restoration campaign.

Meanwhile, the Quillayute’s ten salmon runs—particularly Chinook and steelhead—are well below their historical baselines for abundance: a heartbreaking trend across coastal Washington, one stemming from factors that include fish passage barriers, failing roadways, the loss of large wood in rivers, and changing climate and ocean conditions.

She’s also seen the river’s temperatures tick up over the years. As a key indicator of the health of the river, that’s further bad news for salmon. Both fish health and reproductive success are negatively impacted by heat spikes and long-term warming.

“We know that anything above 22 degrees Celsius is lethal for salmon,” she says, noting that one water temperature check after June’s historic heat dome clocked 23 degrees Celsius (about 73 degrees Fahrenheit). “You could tell from the kayak, just by putting your hand in the river, that things weren’t good. The water was as warm as a pool.”

According to Rasmussen, it’s one thing to take a river’s temperature on a single hot summer day. It’s another thing to know how—and where—river temperatures are changing over time. 

You need long-term water temperature data, Rasmussen says, to know whether a restoration project—like an engineered logjam—is actually working to reduce warm water impacts. It’s data that can help pinpoint the best location for that logjam in the first place. And it can help biologists like Rasmussen and Walls identify where a river is already benefiting from natural cold-water inputs from tributaries, springs, or groundwater upwellings: places high on their list for habitat conservation.

“You have to know where your cold water is,” says Rasmussen. “If you don’t know that, you don’t know where in the river to target your efforts. Where you can work to enhance that cold water habitat for fish.” 

What Rasmussen and Walls are doing on the Quillayute River is groundbreaking, says Wild Salmon Center Salmon Habitat Specialist Betsy Krier. (Wild Salmon Center, along with the US Geological Survey and Coast Salmon Partnership, are aiding parts of this project through field assistance and funding grants, including support from the Wallace Research Foundation.) Along much of the Washington Coast, river temperature data is spotty—in part due to the labor-intensive nature of sensor installation, and in part due to the limited funds to support such work by Tribal governments and local municipalities. According to Krier, there’s little time to waste in filling this data gap.

“We already know that the Olympic Peninsula is going to be one of the last, best places for salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest,” says Krier. “We absolutely need solid temperature data to make sure we’re paying attention to the right trends. Nicole and the Quileute Tribe are approaching this work with a level of precision and motivation that shows what’s possible in watersheds up and down the Washington Coast.”

“We absolutely need solid temperature data to make sure we’re paying attention to the right trends,” Krier says. “Nicole and the Quileute Tribe are showing what’s possible in watersheds up and down the Washington Coast.”

The Quileute Tribe has ample reason to want to get this work right, Rasmussen says. The Tribe’s small, low-elevation reservation is hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean and Olympic National Park. As such, the Quileute are keenly aware of what climate change could mean for their lands—threats ranging from floods and landslides to hot, salmon-killing water. 

“Most people just do the restoration work,” she says. “But the Quileute Tribe wants to know without a doubt that these big projects are working. We need to make sure that the restoration work we undertake can really change things for the fish and the community.”

“Most people just do the restoration work,” Rasmussen says. “But the Quileute Tribe wants to know without a doubt that these big projects are working.”

That’s why they’ll be back in their kayaks next summer—and for seasons after that—battling tidal currents to reinstall sensors in the exact same places. 

For Rasmussen, Walls, the Quileute Tribe, and supporters like Krier, having this data will allow them to pinpoint where and when conservation actions on the river help to break the Quillayute’s  seasonal fevers.

And that, Rasmussen says, would indeed be very cool.

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When the weather’s really bad on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula—when it’s raining sideways and the sky swirls dark gray and woolly—that’s when Betsy Krier hops into her rig and heads for the woods.

“Storm events are the best time to be out there looking for problems,” says Krier, Wild Salmon Center’s new Washington Coast fish habitat specialist. “You could drive by Anton Creek in summertime and not realize it’s an issue for fish.”

By problems, Krier means failing roads or barriers like culverts: mini-dams that, when failed or poorly built, can make life really hard for fish. A gaping hole in a failed culvert on Olympic National Forest Road 2900 (pictured at the top of this story) forced a stream to drop ten feet straight down. Winter storms at another site, Anton Creek (pictured above), squeezed water through narrow twin culverts “like a fire hose,” says Krier; force that scoured out spawning grounds and pummeled fish. Anton Creek lies within the Quillayute watershed, a stronghold that provides key spawning and rearing grounds for coho, Chinook, and steelhead. The Quillayute’s native fish are prized by the Quileute Tribe and important to Southern Resident orcas.   

Across the Olympic Peninsula, more than 4,000 known barriers prevent salmon and steelhead from reaching the cold water they need to ride out increasingly hot summers. That’s according to data compiled by the Cold Water Connection campaign—a partnership that includes WSC, Trout Unlimited, and the Coast Salmon Partnership—from tribal, regional, state and federal agencies. 

But mapping known fish barriers is just step one for the campaign. Next up is Krier (pictured below), who spent much of the last few months spring bushwhacking deep into the blown-out watersheds of the Olympic Range. Late spring is not only when she looks for problems; it’s also a good time to assess upstream habitat quality.

“Thank heavens Betsy loves the rain,” says Jess Helsley, WSC Washington Program director. “If the forecast is rainy but not dangerous, she throws on her waders and trudges down to the stream beds, where she is so focused on her habitat assessment she doesn’t notice getting slapped in the face by blackberry bushes.”

That’s because the campaign’s step two is figuring out which of these barriers could yield the biggest payoff for fish if removed or replaced. To determine that, Krier wades into springtime streams looking for a confluence of promising factors: quality habitat, the presence of fry and juvenile fish, and a stream grade gentle enough that a culvert fix could restore stress-free passage.

“Anton Creek doesn’t represent the worst-case scenario, but we can make it best case,” says Krier. “Right now, it’s what we call a velocity barrier. The goal is to replace the double culverts with one structure that allows the stream to flow naturally under the road.  When our job is done, the fish should never notice a change in the stream as they go under the road.”

The Quillayute is one of several important salmon watersheds within Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, a region that boasts some of the best cold water fish habitat in the Lower 48. Ultimately, the campaign aims to open hundreds of miles of currently inaccessible habitat in watersheds from the Hoh to the Queets. The objective is to enhance the innate resiliency of wild salmon in the face of climate change—especially their ability to seek out cold water and hold there through the summer months.

This spring, Krier and partners like the Clallam Conservation District put the final touches on funding applications for three critical restoration projects: two culvert replacements and a decommissioned road. Restoration like this is dependent upon funding from state and federal programs along with private donors recruited by WSC. 

That’s another part of Krier’s job: helping partners identify and develop funding proposals for multiple projects. If fully funded, Krier says these projects will bring more than $3 million to the Olympic Peninsula in the next few years—funds that will largely be distributed to local partners like the Clallam Conservation District to carry out project work.

“Wild Salmon Center is really just getting started with active restoration projects on the Peninsula,” says Krier. “The potential benefits are huge for salmon, and also for local communities that rely on these restoration jobs—all those surveyors, tribal biologists, and construction workers who like to pull on waders and get muddy just like me.”

“The potential benefits are huge for salmon, and also for local communities that rely on these restoration jobs,” says Krier. “All those surveyors, tribal biologists, and construction workers who like to pull on waders and get muddy just like me.”

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The Open Rivers Fund has committed $300,000 to Coast Salmon Partnership, Wild Salmon Center, and Trout Unlimited to support the Cold Water Connection campaign on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The Open Rivers Fund is a program of Resources Legacy Fund, which is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The new funding will accelerate the campaign’s work on the peninsula to open cold water for salmon and steelhead streams that are blocked by outdated culverts and other “mini-dams.”

“We’re honored and excited to have a new partner in this work,” said Jess Helsley, WSC’s Washington Senior Program Manager. “Salmon need access to quality habitat, which occurs across all types of land ownership. This new partnership will help us expand our fish passage barrier removal efforts to ensure that fish are able to access the Olympic Peninsula’s cold water habitats.”

“The Cold Water Connection campaign squares directly with the goals of the Open Rivers Fund. It’s a smart and systematic approach to culvert removal in the Olympic Peninsula,” says Julie Turrini, Resources Legacy Fund program director. “It will open miles of river for salmon and reestablish historic fishing rights of local Tribes.”

Washington’s coastal rivers are home to half of the state’s strongest salmon runs. And climate projections show that even in the face of global warming, its coastal stream temperatures are likely to remain relatively cool through the end of the century. But aging road infrastructure and outdated culverts are blocking fish from accessing those cold-water streams. There are more than 4,000 documented barriers remaining on the Washington coast.

To protect the region’s salmon strongholds into the future, blockages need to be removed—giving fish access to the cold water they need. The Cold Water Connection campaign aims to restore up to 150 miles of cold water streams.

Washington’s coastal rivers are home to half of the state’s strongest salmon runs. But aging road infrastructure and outdated culverts are blocking fish from accessing those cold-water streams.

“It’s critical that we all know which projects will have the greatest benefits for salmon,” says Mara Zimmerman, executive director of the Coast Salmon Partnership. “With this grant, we will put prioritization tools in the hands of those doing on-the-ground work to open up salmon habitat.”

The campaign’s efforts enhance those of Tribes as well as federal, state, and local organizations that have worked to restore salmon habitat of the Olympic Peninsula rivers for nearly two decades.

According to Luke Kelly, Olympic Peninsula Restoration Project Manager at Trout Unlimited, the key to the campaign is focusing first on the peninsula’s highest priority salmon streams. “This effort will not only illuminate where we should be working, but also help deliver the best return on investment of restoration dollars. That means real benefits to salmon and the communities that depend on them.“

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