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Salmonid Sanctuaries on Olympic Peninsula

By Scott Richmond

Salmon, steelhead, and trout can thrive--if they have good places to go.

Our focus," says Dave Moskowitz, "is protecting the last best places--the places where we can have the greatest impact for the near term." Moskowitz is the Director of the Cascadia Salmon Biodiversity Program at the Wild Salmon Center in Portland, Oregon.

That's a hefty job title, but the short version is that Moskowitz's mission is to identify healthy populations of salmonids on the West Coast, and keep them healthy.

Amid all the doomsaying about Pacific salmon, it's easy to forget that there are healthy populations of wild fish. There aren't nearly as many of them as there used to be, but they exist. "The Oregon north coast is a stronghold for fall chinook, winter steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat," Moskowitz says. "And the west side of the Olympic Peninsula has robust populations of winter steelhead, coho salmon and fall chinook. The Hoh and Sol Duc basins support the full gamut of salmonids, with coho, steelhead, chinook, chum, sockeye, cutthroat, bull trout, and so on."

The Wild Salmon Center (WSC) is based in Portland, Oregon. For years it was associated with steelhead and other salmonid research in the Russian northeast, including Kamchatka. But WSC's research covers the entire Pacific Rim, and Moskowitz's turf is the western half of North America: "Baja to Bering" as he puts it.

To support its Cascadia program, WSC has two field scientists who live and work on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. For the last four seasons, these biologists have snorkeled the rivers to count every juvenile salmonid, cataloged habitat, counted redds, and analyzed their data. Their goal is to understand the Peninsula's river habitat and ecology, then determine the best way to preserve it.

One way to preserve healthy stocks of salmonids is to create sanctuaries for them: places the fish can reproduce and their young can be raised before going to sea. On the Peninsula, WSC has a three-pronged approach:

1. A science program to monitor habitat and health. The field scientists are part of this effort.
2. Land conservation to preserve key habitat. A non-profit corporation, the Hoh River Trust, has been formed to hold and manage land for wild fish and wildlife. WSC's partner for this work is Western River Conservancy, the foremost specialist in riverland conservation in the US. WSC is also working on other Peninsula river basins, such as the Calawah, to preserve healthy habitat. They are attempting to purchase land on Elk Creek, a Calawah tributary that is the source of one-third of Calawah's fish.
3. Community stewardship, which teaches the benefits of healthy, sustainable resources to local communities.
4. The headwaters of the Hoh lie within Olympic National Park, and are therefore protected from logging and other development. The lower reaches are not as well protected, and that's the goal of the Wild Salmon Center. Western Rivers Conservancy and the Wild Salmon Center are halfway to their goal of protecting 10,000 acres in the Hoh River within five years. The result could be the first large river permanently protected for wild salmon.

Scott Richmond is Westfly's creator and Executive Director. He is the author of eight books on Oregon fly fishing, including Fishing Oregon's Deschutes River (second edition).

Uploaded 02/07/2004.

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The west side of the Olympic Peninsula still has strong runs of salmon, steelhead, and cutthroat trout.

Hoh River Valley (photo by Guido Rahr)