King County honors winners of Radical Salmon’ design
competition
An inexpensive, yet effective design to improve upstream fish
migration has earned top honors in King County’s annual
“Radical Salmon” competition to encourage innovative
salmon restoration solutions.
The Adopt-A-Stream Foundation’s Fish and Wildlife Division
submitted the winning design of a “stacked culvert fish
ladder,” a low-cost solution to retrofit stream culverts
that have a significant drop between the exit pipe and the level
of the stream. The design can be used as a permanent passage
structure, or as a temporary structure until a permanent design
can be put in place.
“We have taken a number of important steps in preserving and
improving fish habitat, and this fish ladder design could ease
access to that improved habitat,” said King County Executive
Ron Sims. “This winning design embodies the kind of fresh
thinking and on-the-ground innovation that gives me hope in our
effort to save salmon populations.”
The winner and runner-up were selected by a team of experts in
habitat restoration, civil engineers and fish biologists. The top
award winner receives a grant of $28,553 to implement the design.
The competition is co-sponsored by King County and the National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Community Salmon Fund
Partnership.
Representatives of the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation and the
runner-up competitors, Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands, were
presented their awards recently at the offices of the
Metropolitan King County Council by County Councilmember Dow
Constantine.
Director Mark Isaacson of the Water and Land Resources Division
of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks,
and Assistant Director Cara Rose, of the National Fish and
Wildlife Foundation, Northwest Region, were present to
congratulate the top two design teams.
“We need the region’s best minds working on solutions
to reverse the degradation of our Northwest salmon runs,”
said Constantine, who chairs the County Council’s Growth
Management and Natural Resources Committee. “Competitions
such as Radical Salmon can produce and test new design
innovations that will help us in the future.”
The Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands’ runner-up entry is
intended to increase creek bed stability by adding small
“steps” of woody material to the bed to trap incoming
sediment and reduce the movement of existing sand deposits. Using
woody or other organic materials for this purpose also creates a
new food source for invertebrates.
“Our goal is to fund the design of habitat projects to
promote new restoration techniques applicable to central Puget
Sound,” said Cara Rose, Western Partnership Office Assistant
Director, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
“Through leadership conservation investments like this, we
remain dedicated to achieving maximum conservation impact by
developing and applying best practices and innovative methods
like the designs presented by both Adopt-A-Stream and Friends of
the Hylebos Wetlands,” she said.
The runner-up design is automatically entered as a finalist for
funding through Round 10 of the Community Salmon Fund in 2007.
Should the winner not be able to install its project,
installation of the runner-up design would instead be funded.
King County is working to restore and strengthen Puget Sound
chinook salmon and bull trout, which gained federal protection in
1999 under the Endangered Species Act. Recovery Information is
available at http://dnr.metrokc.gov/topics/salmon/SALtopic.htm.