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The Nisqually Tribe seeks $2.6 million in state capital budget funds to restore one mile of Ohop Creek and complete the second half of a 3.4-mile habitat restoration project on the Mashel River near Eatonville.
It’s part of a $55 million state budget request targeting Puget Sound and salmon recovery that state legislators will consider when they convene in January, preoccupied by the state budget crisis.
“I’m going to ask for the money, but I don’t expect to get anything,” state Sen. Randi Becker, R-Eatonville, said before she boarded a LightHawk flight out of Olympia Regional Airport to tour the Nisqually River. “I don’t know where we’re going to be with the budget deficit we face.”
Thurston County Commissioner Sandra Romero was aboard an earlier flight and came back impressed with how much habitat restoration has already occurred on the Nisqually.
For instance, nearly 74 percent of the river’s main stem is now in protected status, compared with 3 percent 20 years ago.
And more than 900 acres at the mouth of the river have been converted from diked pastureland to their original South Sound estuary condition on tribal and Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge properties.
“This is habitat restoration work on a large scale that is working,” she said after the flight. “I’m impressed with how doable this is.”
While the state budget can’t be ignored, Romero, a former state legislator, said the public expects continued funding for Puget Sound cleanup and recovery.
“I think there will be money for these projects,” she said.
Eatonville Mayor Ray Parker was also on board one of the flights offered by LightHawk, a nonprofit conservation group that champions environmental protection by relying on volunteer pilots who take decision-makers and others in small aircraft to get an above-ground view of environmental problems and success stories.
Near Eatonville, about 1.7 miles of Mashel River habitat have been improved with log jams that attract salmon.
“Now people can go down to the river and see salmon,” the mayor said.
LightHawk is partnering with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission to offer educational aerial tours of the Nisqually and other watersheds in Western Washington where salmon recovery is in full swing. The program is called Flying for Fish.
“A lot of the benefits from these flights comes after the flights,” said fisheries commission education and outreach specialist Pam Goddard.
She said it’s easier for diverse groups to work together to solve environmental problems after they’ve seen a bird’s eye view of the connected environmental challenges within a watershed.
“The flights help push restoration along,” she said.
Since 2008, the tribe and its many partners have started or completed 11 major habitat and salmon recovery projects on the Nisqually valued at more than $20 million, noted Nisqually Tribe salmon recovery program manager Jeanette Dorner.
Just last month, water started flowing in an 0.8-mile stretch of a restored Ohop Creek channel after being stuck in a ditch for 100 years, she said.
State funding by the 2011 Legislature would allow the tribe to do an additional mile of the nearly five miles of creek that flow into the Nisqually River west of Eatonville, Dorner said.
David Troutt, the Nisqually Tribe’s natural resource director, said it would be shortsighted to suspend funding for the Nisqually projects.
“We can’t walk away from environmental protection,” he said. “For a sustainable economy, we need a healthy environment.”
John Dodge: 360-754-5444 jdodge@theolympian.com
