Bellingham has wanted to restore this salmon habitat for a decade. It’s finally happening
The water in the inlet is calm, but underneath its surface thrives a diverse collection of Pacific Northwest wildlife. A great blue heron perches by tall grasses, whose tips swing softly in the ocean breeze. In the waters below, steelhead trout and juvenile Chinook salmon weave among the plants. A pedestrian bridge arches over a narrow portion of the body of water, allowing passersby the opportunity to get a glimpse of this bustling habitat. Above the tranquil scene sits the elevated tracks of the BNSF railway, which cuts through Bellingham.
This is the vision for Little Squalicum Estuary, a city of Bellingham project that aims to restore a vital salmon habitat along Bellingham Bay. The estuary will sit in the lower portion of Little Squalicum Park, just south of where the Nooksack River meets the bay.
Little Squalicum Estuary won’t single-handedly save Chinook salmon. Even the multi-faceted approach from federal, state and tribal agencies has been unable to do that, as the region’s salmon populations remain at a fraction of historical numbers. But that doesn’t mean the estuary isn’t important — just as a house requires individual bricks to be laid, the massive undertaking that is salmon restoration rests in part on the completion of smaller projects like this one.
“To get the habitat to properly functioning conditions for Chinook recovery, it does take brick by brick,” said Kelley Turner, the Lummi Nation’s restoration manager. Turner is not actively involved in the Little Squalicum Estuary project, but helps manage recovery efforts in the forks of the Nooksack River.
Don’t be fooled by the size of the 2.4-acre site, the price tag is anything but small. Construction will cost more than $2.5 million, with funding from federal, state and local agencies. The Little Squalicum Estuary project has been in the works since 2009, and the primary reason it is taking so long is because the city struggled to pull together adequate funding, said Analiese Burns, the city’s habitat and restoration manager.
“There’s not enough money to go around for salmon recovery,” Burns said. “There’s a lot of competition and not a lot of money.”
Predicting what salmon need
Puget Sound Chinook salmon have been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1999. They are the primary food source for the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale, a large part of the local economy and culturally important to coastal tribal communities. Chinook spend much of their life out at sea, returning to the Nooksack River’s freshwater to spawn. Estuaries, often found where the river meets the sea, are an important habitat in the salmon reproductive process because they provide a space where young salmon can adapt to the salty ocean environment.
“An estuary like the one we are building would be exactly what they are looking for,” Burns said.
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The Nooksack Tribe and Lummi Nation are leading restoration efforts in the forks of the Nooksack River, which are the highest-priority projects, said Turner, the Lummi Nation’s restoration manager. Chinook in the shallower South Fork are particularly at risk, since the water frequently gets too warm for many salmon to survive in during the summer months.
Within its jurisdiction, Bellingham can support these efforts by ensuring there is a diversity of salmon habitat along the bay, Burns said. As climate change worsens, water temperatures will continue to rise, some plant species will die while others thrive and the volume of water coming down the river into the ocean will fluctuate. Without a time machine, it’s difficult to tell exactly how salmon will respond to these changes, which is why the city needs to hedge its bets and provide as many different habitats as possible.
“Climate change will change all these basic parameters,” Burns said. “We can’t predict exactly what’s needed to help fish survive when so many factors are changing.”
Cobbling together funds
A bridge can cost $20 million to repaint. Turner, with the Lummi Nation, learned that at a salmon recovery conference a few years ago and was shocked. That’s the sort of funding that would make her job restoring salmon populations far easier.
“The work we are doing to recover habitat needs that infrastructure-level funding,” she said. “To restore heavily degraded habitat, to restore those processes and conditions, it requires a lot of effort and money. These are large-scale construction projects basically.”
The state hasn’t allocated nearly enough funding for salmon recovery, according to Washington state’s 2020 State of Salmon in Watersheds report. The state set aside about $1 billion for salmon recovery between 2010 and 2019, compared to the $4.7 billion that a 2011 study estimated would be necessary to successfully implement habitat elements in regional salmon recovery plans.
Between 1999 and 2019, the average amount of funding allocated to salmon recovery was $122 million per biennium, or two years, the report said. State funding made up the majority of the amount at $718 million over the 20-year period, followed by federal funding at $510 million. Local governments contributed an average $32 million per biennium.
To fund the Little Squalicum Estuary, the city of Bellingham had to align five grant sources in the same year, plus city funding, Burns said. The city has spent years applying for grants and has only recently been successful, with construction slated to begin in spring 2022.
A contractor is yet to be selected, but once one is, a team of workers will excavate a low area of Little Squalicum Park near the bay, allowing tides to enter and retreat. The excavated gravel will be distributed along the nearby beach to provide better habitat for forage fish, which salmon feed on. Native vegetation will be planted in the estuary, with the deepest areas remaining as mudflat habitat, where bacteria and invertebrates can thrive.
The amount of time it takes jurisdictions to get funding for projects doesn’t line up with the urgency of salmon recovery, Turner said.
“It can take years to get funding in place, which limits our ability to restore the habitat quicker, “ she said. “The population has continued to decline even though habitat projects, I assume, have increased over time. We just don’t have time to wait if our intention is to recover the species.”
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The perfect place for an estuary
Bellingham Bay has lost an estimated 282 acres of aquatic land to development over the last 150 years, according to the city of Bellingham, with natural spaces being transformed into businesses, apartment buildings and the railroad that winds along the water. Little Squalicum Estuary is an ideal place to reclaim some of what once was, Burns said, since it’s one of the only spots along the bay where the railroad sits on elevated tracks.
“The railroad bounds our bay,” Burns said. “For most of the way, the tracks are at the ground level, which makes it very difficult to have an estuary built because the track is in the way.”
There are several other reasons why the site is prime real estate for estuary restoration. The plot of land sits in Little Squalicum Park, so it’s one of the few undeveloped spots in the city where a project like this is even possible. Plus, it will be the closest estuary habitat to the Nooksack River, Burns said, making it easily accessible to salmon coming out of the river.
It’s important that the city acts to convert this area to estuary now, Burns said. Once the land is developed, it will be almost impossible to restore the habitat.
Some community members have raised concerns that the estuary will interfere with their current use of Little Squalicum Park, Burns said. While there will be temporary disruption of trail use and off-leash dog areas, these resources will be fully available again once construction is completed in late 2022, albeit in slightly different locations. There will also be a pedestrian bridge over the estuary, allowing park-goers to marvel at the wildlife that the project will support, including steelhead trout and great blue herons.
“They’ll have this unique opportunity to enjoy an estuary,” Burns said, pointing out that there are only six other pocket estuaries in Bellingham Bay. “It’s a very rare habitat in Bellingham, and it’s not easy to get up close to them.”
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
