The comprehensive watershed-by-watershed analysis of habitat conditions by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission tells the story of the history, present and future of local salmon conservation.
At a recent presentation for the 2025 State of our Watersheds report by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, chair Ed Johnstone put it simply: “Without the fish, we don’t exist.”
The report, which is updated about every four years, compiles the findings of 20 tribes across Puget Sound. The comprehensive watershed-by-watershed analysis of habitat conditions tells the story of “where we’ve come from, where we are and what must be done to stay the course,” according to the commission.
The new report shows that salmon have continued decades-long trends and are falling short of recovery goals. Despite local successes and efforts among tribes and state agencies, human development, stormwater runoff, climate change and other impacts continue to be huge barriers before salmon survivability.
“There has been some progress in some watersheds, but in most cases it continues to decline, and so we do have problems,” said executive director Justin Parker. “We continue to be dealing with a population increase in our state that outright boomed in my lifetime since the Boldt Decision.”
Lummi
Recovery efforts have shown slow progress on the Nooksack River watershed, a traditional home of the Lummi people, which is 832 square miles and the fourth largest drainage in the Puget sound.
Juvenile salmon monitoring over the past 15 years has shown little change, which suggests resilience to environmental pressures but also a lack of progress toward recovery.
In 2024, copper — a lethal threat to salmon — was found in 98% of marine water and 23% of freshwater samples because of stormwater runoff.
Lummi Natural Resources is still working nonstop to slow or prevent the invasion of European green crabs, which were first found in Lummi Bay in the fall of 2019.
Over 35 years of efforts to maintain and improve water flows in the Nooksack River basin have proven unsuccessful. The only measure left to use is adjudication, the legal determination of water rights for every water user.
With limited funding, it is difficult to determine whether salmon recovery projects will successfully provide the harvestable salmon Lummi relies on, the report states. Habitat restoration alone is too slow to address the critical state of salmon. Salmon recovery is lagging behind the pace originally anticipated.
Nooksack
Since 2019, the fully approved commercial shellfish area in Drayton Harbor has declined by 47% because of worsening water quality. In the past decade, little new shoreline armoring has been added, but about 68 hydraulic permits were issued for replacement or repair projects — mostly along urban areas like Bellingham and Blaine, and the Cherry Point industrial shoreline.
According the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there is no evidence that small-scale shoreline restoration promotes fish numbers in those areas. Instead, other factors such as eelgrass presence are better indicators of salmon health.
From 2005–2024, about 9,700 feet of new bank armoring were added to the Nooksack River, including 2,200 feet since 2020. Meanwhile, 5,000 feet have eroded or been removed, leaving around 65 miles of armored banks overall.
From 2012–2018, water quality worsened with more temperature- and oxygen-impaired reaches in the watershed. Comparing river flow records from 1967–1996 to 1997–2023 reveals a higher streamflow in fall and early winter and lower in summer.
Sauk-Suiattle
The Skagit River watershed is a large, glacier-fed system that provides about 30% of Puget Sound’s freshwater and contains one of the biggest glacier concentrations in the U.S. A recent culvert inventory found 931 culverts on anadromous streams, with at least 556 confirmed and 91 potential fish-passage barriers, most of them on private or county lands, highlighting connectivity problems for salmon.
Forestry-related landslides have declined in recent years after better road management and slope regulations, improving conditions for salmon, but climate-driven increases in winter rain and summer wildfire could reverse those gains and increase sediment delivery to streams. Floodplain and riparian conditions in places like the Sauk River remain mostly forested and shifting, with most recent forest loss due to natural processes, yet overall water quality in the Skagit watershed worsened between 2012 and 2018.
Longterm monitoring in the Sauk shows most surveyed streams exceed salmon temperature standards for weeks to months each year, leaving only a few refuges of cool water. Floodplain restoration has removed infrastructure, reconnected channels and modestly improved freshwater rearing habitat, but progress has been slow, with gains far below targets in the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan.
Over recent decades, natural-origin Skagit Chinook have shifted to spawn later while hatchery egg-take has shifted earlier, and rising August river temperatures suggest these changes in timing may reflect plastic or adaptive responses to warming conditions and related environmental pressures.
The Skagit River system is already showing impacts of climate change, from sea level rise affecting tidal marshes in the delta to dangerously warm summer stream temperatures in lower tributaries that can kill juvenile salmon. Glaciers in the Skagit watershed have already lost about half their area over the 20th century, and under current emission trends are projected to shrink by another half by mid-century and potentially disappear by 2100.
There have been gains in forest road upgrades, floodplain forest cover, riparian planting and control of invasive knotweed, but problems remain. Too many fish-passage barrier culverts persist, overall water quality has declined, stream temperatures are frequently too high for salmon and climate change is further stressing Chinook, altering streamflows and destabilizing glaciers.
Swinomish
Tidal marsh and estuary restoration in the Skagit delta has added only a small fraction of the habitat called for in the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan, with tens of hectares restored versus more than a thousand hectares needed, and future gains will depend heavily on tribal leadership and increased private landowner participation despite growing pressures from sea level rise and warming.
Along Samish and Skagit bays, a majority of shoreline is now mapped as modified with bulkheads and other structures, though some of the apparent increase reflects better data rather than new construction. In upland areas, improved forest road management and logging regulations have reduced forestry‑related landslides, but a comprehensive culvert inventory shows hundreds of remaining fish‑passage barriers, most on private and county lands, that still fragment salmon habitat.
The state missed its goal of fully planting impaired salmon streams in the Skagit delta by 2020. It has planted only a small share of temperature‑impaired reaches since, and most new riparian plantings occur on public and conservation lands rather than on private properties where many listed, overheated streams occur.
Floodplain restoration since 2001 — removing structures, reconnecting habitat and pulling back levees and riprap — has improved freshwater rearing conditions but only modestly; progress is well below the trajectory needed to meet Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan targets within its 50‑year window.
The McGlinn Island Jetty near La Conner remains a major barrier that kills and strands juvenile salmon despite emergency repairs, prompting ongoing tribal monitoring and a multi‑agency effort to design long‑term fixes such as jetty breaches and marsh creation to restore fish passage.
Salmon habitat restoration in the Skagit is ongoing but far too slow to meet the 2055 recovery timeline laid out in the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan.
Stillaguamish
The Stillaguamish River basin is a 694–square‑mile watershed spanning parts of Skagit and Snohomish counties, with headwaters in the North Cascades and heavily armored nearshore along Port Susan Bay. Estuary restoration is making strong but still incomplete progress toward plan goals: by 2019, 480 of 548 targeted acres had been restored, 250 acres were acquired for future work and since 2020 the tribe has secured restoration or purchase agreements for hundreds more acres, pushing the system closer to long‑term estuary targets.
The Stillaguamish Chinook recovery effort has the goal of protecting and restoring natural ecosystem conditions so salmon can sustain themselves, with habitat protection recognized as just as important as new restoration work. The 2025 picture is mixed — estuary and floodplain restoration is securing and restoring key habitats, but progress is constrained by high costs, limited funding and the need for willing landowners.
Upper Skagit
Seattle City Light’s Skagit Hydroelectric Project, now in FERC relicensing, has fundamentally altered the Skagit River since 1915 by blocking ecological processes and cutting off more than 140 miles of high‑quality cold‑water tributary habitat. According to the report, restoring both upstream and downstream fish passage at all three dams is essential.
Water quality in the Skagit River watershed declined between 2012 and 2018, compounding habitat problems. Over 74% of these blocking or unknown culverts are on private or county ownerships.
By 2015, about 35% of the floodplain was isolated or functionally impaired, and less than half retained forest cover, though riparian planting has been ramping up, with 472 acres planted watershed‑wide from 2020–2023 and 687 acres planted in the middle Skagit since 2006.
Tidal marsh recovery is far off pace: from 2000 to 2019, natural processes and active restoration produced only 44 hectares of net tidal marsh gain, and no measurable new gain has occurred since 2020, while erosion, shoreline retreat, and sea level rise are likely eating away at what remains. This modest 44‑hectare increase is a tiny fraction of the 1,114.6 hectares of estuarine habitat called for in the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan.
Salmon habitat in the Skagit remains critically degraded despite more than 20 years of research, planning, restoration, monitoring and adaptive management guided by treaty tribes and local planners. The tribe’s top priority is restoring fish passage above Seattle’s three dams, alongside major needs for additional riparian vegetation, stronger water quality protections, more instream flow, expanded floodplain habitat and more tidally influenced estuary habitat.
Solutions
After the tribes’ audits, most have come to similar conclusions — existing regulations need better enforcement and to not rely so heavily on volunteers. According to the report, education, cooperation, volunteer work and on‑the‑ground restoration are valuable and deserve recognition, but they are not enough on their own.
One example of broader enforcement proposed by Lummi is for Portage Bay to be fully opened to year-round tribal shellfish harvest only after landowners in the Nooksack watershed begin to plant and maintain riparian buffers, better manage dairy operations to protect water quality, properly manage waste from pets and non-dairy livestock, and maintain their septic systems.
The report claims that tribes need expanded and sustained funding and staffing, particularly for floodplain management and climate resilience.
“Habitat is our wealth,” said environmental protection director Fran Wilshusen, “and the good news is that when we do the work, the salmon respond quickly. But today we’re living in unprecedented times. We’re seeing dramatic changes in relationships, uses of the landscape, even the economic drivers in this state. What the tribes are contributing with this accounting of their wealth, the habitat, is that they are holding an anchor to what is true to all of us and the ecology that we all depend on.”
— Sam Fletcher
Also read in Salish Current:
• “December floods test salmon habitats, restoration efforts,” Feb. 4, 2026
• “Council member proposes Nooksack adjudication settlement,” Jan. 15, 2026
• “Commentary: Salmon Summit captures latest in restoration and recovery,” Nov. 18, 2025
• “Lummi Nation battles invasive European green crab,” Sept. 3, 2024
• “Seattle City Light and federal fisheries agency still at loggerheads,” Aug. 19, 2024