Category Overview
Conserving land along our waterways protects important habitat and helps keep our rivers healthy, clean, and more resilient to drought. Riparian Protection projects conserve and restore fresh and saltwater habitat while protecting fish habitat. In doing so, the grants help provide our families, farms, and fisheries with clean water across the state.
Project Highlights
This project will acquire riparian properties near Bremerton in Kitsap County. These properties are highly threatened by development and are a crucial part of a larger project area that contains the highest quality occurrence of a rare forest community type and a variety of high quality wildlife habitats. Acquisition of these riparian areas will prevent indirect impacts of development (water quality, sedimentation, hydrologic alterations). Stavis Creek, which runs through the site and through the priority parcels, is one of the best remaining Hood Canal salmon spawning habitats and is a designated recovery area for threatened Hood Canal summer chum. This project will facilitate salmon recovery and other riparian restoration activities. The site also hosts an active bald eagle nest, a small great blue heron rookery, breeding mountain quail, chinook salmon, cougar, and black bear. The objective is to protect all functionally connected natural-regeneration forests and high-quality riparian areas from development, timber harvest, and other commercial uses. This project greatly enhances the long-term viability and quality of wildlife habitat in a still-intact functional riparian and forested landscape that is threatened with urban fragmentation.