Restoration
The Skagit River System Cooperative has a long history of identifying, designing, and implementing projects that strive to recover freshwater and estuarine habitat for salmonids.
The Restoration program’s guiding philosophy is focused first on protecting existing functioning ecosystem processes, and second on recovering landscape processes that are not functioning within an expected natural range of variation. The program’s habitat restoration approach is firmly committed to implementing the principles of conservation biology on the landscape scale using both proven and innovative techniques on the site level.
Our on-the-ground projects have included:
Riparian Planting: Establishing native riparian shrubs and trees helps reduce stream temperature, invasive species, and offers a source of large woody debris in the future.
Dike Removal: Removal of selected dikes or portions of dikes helps restore sediment transport processes, and restores natural flow regimes to off-channel habitat.
Road Decommissioning and Upgrade/Culvert and Bridge Replacement: Road work projects help to reduce the risk of mass wasting that inputs sediment into our waterways. Culvert upgrade or removal, waterbars, insloping, and armoring help to improve drainage.
Replacement of an undersized culvert to improve drainage and reduce hillslope erosion. Sauk Roads Sediment Reduction Project.
Click on the maps below for information about our recent restoration projects. In addition to the sites shown on the maps, we are also involved in projects that have a broader geographic scope. These are listed below:
Restoration Staff:
Steve Hinton, Restoration Director
Devin Smith, Senior Restoration Ecologist
Nora Kammer, Restoration Ecologist
Brenda Clifton-Cardoso, Restoration Ecologist
Jef Parr, Field Coordinator
Kate Ramsden, Restoration/GIS Technician
Eric Mickelson, Restoration Technican
Elizabeth Gould, Grants and Contracts Administrator