02/07/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 02/07/2023 13:21
Hudson Cove Habitat Protection Project. Photo courtesy of Capitol Land Trust.
We are thrilled to announce we've helped secure close to $6 million out of nearly $19 million - about 30% - in National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants to protect about 855 acres of coastal wetland habitat in Jefferson, Island, Pacific, Skagit, Snohomish, and Thurston counties.
Since 1992, we've been successful in receiving over $82 million in federal wetland conservation grants under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program. This has allowed us to help conserve over 16,000 acres of coastal wetlands in the state.
Sometimes referred to as the "kidneys" of a watershed, wetlands are renowned for improving water quality by removing excess nutrients, toxic substances, and sediments from the water that flows through them.
Wetlands help safeguard the overall health of community water supplies by helping filter and slowly recharge underground sources of water. Wetlands help reduce flood damages by soaking up rain and storing flood waters. These ecosystems provide critical habitat for plants, wildlife, and fish, including salmon. Wetlands are an effective and economical way to enhance community safety while improving quality of life.
Coastal wetlands often rival tropical rain forests and coral reefs as some of the most diverse, productive ecosystems on the planet. They include estuarine salt marshes as well as freshwater wetlands that extend inland within a watershed.
While only U.S. states and territories can apply for the federal conservation grants, we work closely with our partners in local and tribal governments, as well as conservation organizations, to identify projects and develop wetland restoration and protection proposals for the federal government to consider.
Funded in part through taxes paid on fuel and equipment purchases by recreational anglers and boaters, the federal National Coastal Wetland Conservation grant federal program provides up to $1 million for individual wetland projects.
Below are the six Washington projects receiving funding in 2023.
We're working in collaboration with Capitol Land Trust to acquire a conservation easement of more than 227 acres of mostly undeveloped marine shoreline, pocket estuary, salt marsh, and forested habitat on the Steamboat Peninsula in Thurston County. The property hosts 8,500 feet of forested shoreline on Totten Inlet, a 7.8-acre pocket estuary known locally as Hudson Cove, plus 4,745 feet of perennial and seasonal streams, for a total of over 2.5 miles of marine and freshwater shoreline.
Hudson Cove provides important habitat for juvenile chinook, steelhead, and coho salmon as they seek sheltered areas in their transition to the saltwater environment, as well as spawning habitat for forage fish. In addition to feeder bluffs along much of the marine shoreline within the project site, Hudson Cove hosts salt marsh and mud flat habitat, which provide important nesting and foraging habitat for shorebirds and waterfowl.
The property encompasses a critical nearshore salmon migration corridor along Admiralty Bay for Puget Sound salmon, including endangered chinook, threatened Hood Canal summer chum, and Endangered Species Act-listed steelhead species. It also includes habitat for protected rockfish species, as well as numerous birds and other wildlife.
Restoration will involve excavating new outlets to the bay, river distributary connections, distributary channels across the site, and an interior blind tidal network, along with creating mid- and high-marsh-zone habitat mounds.
The project aims to significantly improve estuarine habitat connectivity at a key location, creating functional linkages with adjacent conservation projects. The combined restoration work in this area could significantly increase viable habitat for Whidbey Basin salmon stocks and other species, and augment climate resilience.
The property currently supports estuarine and freshwater wetlands, coastal shoreline along a salinity gradient, and tidelands. It has approximately 1.4 miles of saltwater shoreline and 100 acres of nationally declining wetlands.
Tidal channels will be re-established. The project will increase connectivity and migratory access for salmonids and other estuary rearing species to foraging opportunities within 140 acres of restored intertidal habitat and to 8.7 miles of spawning habitat upstream, which is currently blocked by the tide gates. The project expands upon prior acquisition projects funded by the National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program, and it will complete the long-intended restoration of this critically important ecosystem.
The project will safeguard habitat and water quality in downstream Tarboo Creek and Dabob Bay for at-risk aquatic species, including steelhead, chinook salmon, coho salmon, coastal cutthroat trout, and western brook lamprey.