The Stillaguamish Big Trees Project: Watershed-Scale Riparian Restoration (Washington)

Logging and subsequent agricultural and urban development have left many Puget Sound rivers and riparian forests heavily degraded and unable to support Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) at their historic levels of abundance. Given that the root cause of Pacific Northwest riparian and in-stream degradation lies in landscape-scale clearcutting of near-stream mature conifer forests, restoration of ecological processes for salmon recovery should address deforestation at the watershed scale. While numerous entities approach riparian restoration planning from a process-driven, watershed scale, project implementation largely remains at the subbasin and reach scale, emphasizing either in-stream habitat structures or streamside reveg-etation. This short-term, site-specific implementation insufficiently targets landscape-scale habitat degradation such as lethal in-stream temperatures, loss of large woody debris, and sedimentation. In response to this disconnect, Snohomish County Surface Water Management has undertaken a watershed-scale project to restore riparian conifer forests around the Stillaguamish River, remnant habitat for Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha).