How You Can Help Protect and Recover Salmon

Salmon recovery in Skagit County and Puget Sound requires a concerted effort from all of us. Here are simple ways you can help. Sign up for the Skagit County Salmon Strategy e-mailing list to learn more and receive updates. Many of the activities below concern protection of streams and wetlands, both of which are vitally important to salmon habitat and spawning areas.

• People for Puget Sound's ShoreWatch and Washington State’s Shore Stewards programs enlist neighbors to work together to protect our shorelands.
• The non-profit Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group hosts planting parties, survey missions, and other habitat restoration projects.
• The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation recognize homeowners who design their backyards to enhance wildlife habitat.
• Skagit Land Trust needs volunteers to help preserve their important habitat lands.
• The local Skagit Conservation District’s Watershed Masters and Stream Team programs involve citizens educating the public about watershed issues, and in monitoring water quality.

At and Around the Home

• Reduce runoff
• Avoid paving or use permeable or porous pavement
• Garden for healthy streams and to protect backyard wildlife habitat
• Safely dispose of batteries, motor oil, and other hazardous wastes
• Get more ideas from the Puget Sound Partnership
• Plant a rain garden to filter stormwater runoff
• Safely dispose of unused and expired medicine instead of trashing or flushing it, which eventually finds its way into streams and salmon.
  

Builders

• Use Low-Impact Development techniques
• Visualize wetlands as a feature of a project, rather than a nuisance

Farmers & Land Owners

• Contact Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group for assistance with fencing, revegetation, culvert replacement, channel enhancement, bank stabilization, and other projects to help salmon on your property
• Apply for DNR’s Family Forest Fish Passage Program to get financial assistance correcting fish passage barriers in your forestlands
• Enroll in the CREP program and receive payments for stream-side habitat enhancement
• Preserve farmland by selling an agricultural easement to the Skagit County Farmland Legacy Program
• Preserve riparian habitat by selling a conservation easement to a land trust
• Learn about local NRCS programs to help reduce soil erosion, enhance water supplies, improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat, and reduce damages caused by floods and other natural disasters
• Apply to the American Farmland Trust’s Pioneers in Conservation program for a grant to restore or protect salmon habitat on agricultural and forest lands
• Certify and promote your farm as “Salmon-Safe” through the Stewardship Partners program