A little-known allocation of $11 million went to fund 22 projects in the Washington Coast Restoration Initiative — from fish-blocking culvert replacements to riverside forest restoration.
The work will create hundreds of jobs while restoring wildlife and clean water.
But there’s more to this modest allotment: It represents a profound shift in the way we protect and restore rivers, salmon and coastal fishing economies.
And it offers a smarter, more proactive approach to managing all of our precious wildlife and their habitat in a warming world.
Through the Washington Coast Sustainable Salmon Partnership, we have proved the cynics wrong. We brought 44 stakeholders from the fishing and timber industries, tribes, state agencies, watershed councils, local governments and the conservation community together to agree on a strategy that balanced salmon restoration with human needs.
Two nonprofits — Wild Salmon Center and The Nature Conservancy — brought essential resources, science and planning tools that enabled coastal stakeholders to work through differences and create a unified vision for the coast.