|
Restoration
Our efforts to enhance salmon spawning in the Maxwelton
Creek have improved habitat and fixed fish passage issues.
Salmon need:
- cool, unpolluted water,
- clean gravel that won't entomb their eggs in
fine sediment,
- sufficient water flow at the right times,
- habitat that provide food and cover from preditors
allowing juveniles to develop, and
- passage to and from the ocean.
 Measurements
of temperature and dissolved oxygen have shown the damage
from channeling the stream and removing trees and brush
that border the creek (riparian buffer). Thick sediment
in the stream is another result of removing this barrier.
Through a collaboration with willing landowners, Adopt-a-Stream,
the State Department of Ecology and Island County Public
Works, we have restored
1000 feet of riparian buffer. This partnership also
replaced
a critical culvert blocking the migration of fish
up the middle reach of the Maxwelton.
We have plans for more habitat restoration projects
and private culvert replacements in the next few years.
In 2006, we are working with students from
Edmonds Community College to do habitat assessments
on Quade Creek pre- and post-restoration, as part of
a project for National Fish & Wildlife Foundation.
Read
more
Island County Public Works has
scheduled several public
culvert replacements that will not only enhance
road safety, but eliminate critical fish passage issues.
We will continue to monitor water quality, invertebrates
(fish food) and salmon in the various stages of their
life cycle in the Maxwelton and Quade Creek.
Students study the
culvert at the mouth of
Maxwelton Creek
Impact on the Nearshore
The Maxwelton watershed encompasses not only the drainage
basin for the Maxwelton system but the nearshore marine
environment in adjacent shoreline areas of Useless Bay,
including adjoining coastal bluffs. This nearshore habitat
is an important feeding and rearing stop for migrating
salmon in several life stages, including listed Coho
and Chum salmon.
A recent
study by Washington Trout of the nearshore on the
West side of Whidbey Island documents these findings.
|
