Category Overview
Urban Wildlife Habitat projects fund close-to-home places to play and explore nature. As our urban areas are increasingly expanding and densifying, these grants protect important fish and wildlife habitat within five miles of densely populated areas, creating green refuges that help keep our ecosystems healthy and provide places to enjoy nature right in our backyards.
Project Highlights
This project seeks to acquire three parcels on Issaquah Creek in the middle Issaquah Creek basin. This will be accomplished by purchasing 14 acres of mixed coniferous and deciduous forest, wetlands that are hydrologically connected to Issaquah Creek and a riparian corridor along 900 feet of both sides of Issaquah Creek. Additionally, approximately 700 feet of both sides of three salmon-bearing tributaries to Issaquah Creek will be protected. The parcels are a key component of the overall Issaquah Creek Waterways Program; a Program committed to preserving the best Riparian Protection along Issaquah basin streams. The parcels provide a link in the wildlife corridor that incorporates Tiger Mountain and Squak Mountain State Forests, Taylor Mountain Forest and other protected forests and connects to the City of Seattle watershed (90,000 acres). In addition to the on-site habitat benefits, the forests and wetlands throughout this reach are essential to the protection of water quantity, water quality and aquatic habitat for all of Issaquah Creek and Lake Sammamish. These parcels, in addition to the 118-acre Log Cabin Natural Area just downstream, provide passive recreation opportunities for Issaquah residents and the general public. Issaquah Creek supports ESA-listed Chinook, char (possibly ESA-listed bull trout), sockeye, coho, kokanee, steelhead and cutthroat. Issaquah Creek is considered a Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) 8 core area for Chinook production and the reach has been identified as a high priority acquisition site in the WRIA 8 Chinook Conservation Plan, Issaquah Waterways 2000 and the King County Greenprint.