Habitat

Habitat Accomplishments 

Lower Columbia salmon and steelhead live in twenty-three hundred river miles across eighteen subbasins and the Columbia River estuary. Habitat had declined 30-90 percent when salmon were listed in 1998. While restoring all lost habitat isn’t practical or needed, recovery requires protecting good habitat and restoring high-priority areas.

Partners have done more than nine hundred projects, but restoration is slow. The partners now are focusing on large-scale projects in key watersheds such as the South Fork Toutle, Cispus, Coweeman, Grays, and East Fork Lewis Rivers. Since 2022, they have restored 756 acres of land along waterways, 165 miles of streams, and more than 280 acres of floodplains using money from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board and Cowlitz Restoration and Recovery habitat grant programs. But restoration might not keep up with habitat losses.

Additional efforts include the following:

• 593 miles of stream habitat treated*
• 647 miles of stream made accessible
• 586 blockages, impediments, and barriers impeding passage
• 2,141 estuarine and near-shore acres treated
• 1,935 riparian acres treated*
• 195 riparian stream miles treated*

*Riparian areas are streamside forests, wetlands, and vegetated areas. ”Treated” usually means fenced to exclude cattle, planted with native trees and shrubs, removed invasive plants, or a combination of them.

For more information about habitat project actions, visit the Recreation and Conservation Office’s Salmon Recovery Portal and Project Search public databases.