Expediting South Fork Nooksack Projects in Response to Chinook Crisis
HSIL23-24285
The purpose of this project is to expedite the ongoing efforts to recover Chinook salmon in the South Fork Nooksack River. The South Fork Chinook salmon population experienced an unprecedented pre-spawn mortality event that began in early September 2021 and coincided with record returns of Chinook to the South Fork Nooksack River. This project will allow both Lummi Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe to improve coordination within the South Fork, help build capacity for the tribes to lead planning and design for key projects, and increase project efficiency. Through previous and current restoration project work on the South Fork Nooksack (SFN), the tribes have identified opportunities for coordinated communication work, integrated project design elements, and streamlined restoration permitting processes across project reaches to improve implementation effectiveness. This approach will treat the river and its floodplain as one system and find opportunities to address a broader range of habitat limitations, rather than trying to limit the impacts of the instream restoration on adjacent floodplain areas to avoid permitting challenges.