The Nisqually restoration, along with other projects around Puget Sound, also shows that breaching dams versus breaching dikes isn’t an either-or when it comes to salmon recovery. “These types of systems are truly linked from the mountains to the Sound,” says Ellings. Researchers have found that much of the sediment that’s needed to rebuild the Nisqually delta is being trapped by dams upstream. So, in some large areas of the refuge restoration, the elevation is still too low for salt marsh to form, and the delta is accreting slowly – perhaps too slowly to keep pace with sea level rise.
Even so, the efforts have made a difference, Ellings says. “We can sit here today because of that work and say with a straight face that the Nisqually basin is actually in a much better condition than it was 40 years ago,” he says. “And that's pretty remarkable, given the pace of population change and everything else that's occurred around us – and that's all a direct result of the reaffirmation of the Tribe's sovereignty and treaty rights.”
Other estuary restoration efforts elsewhere in Puget Sound show that projects need not be large in area to have a big ecological and cultural impact. On the northwestern Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe led restoration efforts at the mouth of Jimmycomelately Creek, which feeds into the southern end of Sequim Bay.
In the early 2000s, the tribe and its partners renatured the lower half-mile of the stream, decommissioned a log dump and log yard and removed an RV park that had been constructed on the former estuary, constructed a new bridge for state highway 101, and restored almost 20 acres of salt marsh.
The creek had historically been an important hunting, fishing, shellfishing, and gathering area for the tribe. It was traditionally reserved for the tribal chief’s harvest of salmon and hosted several salmonid species including an especially impressive run of summer chum.
On the Olympic Peninsula, summer and fall chum are highly dependent on estuary habitat for rearing. “When they emerge from the gravel, they will likely be down in the estuary within a day or two,” says Randy Johnson, Habitat Program Manager with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. “They find a veritable banquet table down in the estuarine marsh.”
In 1999, the same year Hood Canal summer chum (a population that includes on the northwestern Olympic Peninsula) were listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, just nine of the fish returned to spawn in Jimmycomelately Creek. But thanks to the estuary restoration as well as a stock rebuilding program that has since sunset, “In recent years we generally see returns of somewhere between approximately 1,000 and 4,000 naturally produced summer chum,” says Johnson. “The project to restore Jimmycomelately summer chum has been wildly successful.”
Skokomish
Work by yet other tribes illustrates how strategically placed projects can add up to estuary restoration that is more than the sum of its parts. On Hood Canal, the Skokomish Tribe has provided leadership for a three-phase plan to restore the estuary at the mouth of the Skokomish River near the tribe’s reservation.
The Skokomish River has been heavily impacted by human activities throughout its length. A hydroelectric dam that provides power to the city of Tacoma sits in the upper reaches of the river’s North Fork, while the South Fork and Vance Creek tributary have seen intensive timber harvesting and road building. In the main stem, lower reaches of the river had nearly a century of agricultural development with associated channel straightening diking and draining of tidelands.
“Our strategy and our approach is that all of these things are connected,” says Joseph Pavel, Natural Resources Director for the Skokomish Indian Tribe and former Tribal Chair. So the tribe has done work in both the estuary and the upper watershed.
In the estuary, the Skokomish worked with Mason Conservation District and other partners to remove dikes surrounding 108 acres of former agricultural land in 2007. They conducted similar work in 2011 on 211 acres of an island of tideland between the two main river channels in the delta. Then, in the mid-2010s the tribe reconnected tidal channels and creeks to link the restored areas to remnants of upland marsh and forested wetland.
“The active construction footprint of these is in the neighborhood of around 300 acres, but when you add in all the connectivity and restored function throughout these connections, we're talking about close to 1,000 acres of the estuary environment that's considered to have been restored,” Pavel says.
As for whether that makes the Skokomish the largest estuary restoration project in Puget Sound, “We have a friendly rivalry with our friends over at Nisqually,” Pavel laughs. But natural resources staff at both tribes agree, he adds: “Whoever is ahead, the real winners are the salmon.”