2024 Summary – Seeing Returns on Restoration Investments
2024 was an outstanding year for salmon restoration in the Salish Sea and more broadly on the US’s West Coast. With record runs of sockeye in the Columbia River, chinook returning for the first time in decades after 4 dams were removed on the Klamath, and record returns of Kokanee in Lake Sammamish, there is progress to be proud of, lots to celebrate, and much work we have yet to take on.
In the Snoqualmie Tribe’s Ancestral Lands, the little red fish, ʔilaʔł, known commonly as the kokanee salmon, had an encouraging winter return in the streams that feed Lake Sammamish. After years of investment and cooperative work from Tribal & colonial governments, non-profits, community groups, consultants, and more; after culverts were replaced, roads rebuilt, and ecological restoration in progress, an estimated ~8000 kokanee returned to spawn in Lake Sammamish creeks at the end of 2024. Similar to the high number of spawners returning in 2003, but not quite 2012’s record high of 18,000, 2024’s count is the most fish we’ve seen return to spawn in the last decade and the third highest return since official counting started in 1996. After many years of planning, labor, and investing in our local ecosystems, its promising to see the ecosystem respond with record kokanee returns.
ʔilaʔł
Though there is a lot to celebrate, it is still too early to claim a kokanee restoration victory. While we applaud how effective our work has been, we must also remain invested to ensure returning celebrations continue in the years to come. With the yearly average remaining ~400 kokanee returning lake wide, which is not enough fish to be considered a stable population, the exciting journey to a sustainable kokanee population still lies ahead. While early data confirms effective restoration strategies are being used, with continued efforts, there is hope yet.
Why are local kokanee important?
Seeing these creeks teeming with fish is a reward in itself, especially after years of cooperative work restoring Kokanee habitat in Lake Sammamish. Kokanee provide a unique look into local lake and stream health. While most salmon migrate out to sea in their youth, kokanee live their whole lives in the lake systems they are born in. Impacts of pollution, predation, and habitat are extremely complex for salmon who migrate across states and oceans, but the local lifestyle of the kokanee can be more easily understood – everything that impacts these fish is happening locally in the Lake Sammamish watershed. When we see their population doing well, we can more easily tie that positive result to efforts we made in our own neighborhood.
As kokanee return, what’s worth more than knowing we’re doing a good job is seeing other plants and wildlife thrive with us. Part of protecting a Culturally Critical Resource (CCR) is protecting the systems that give those resources life. Since we can’t simply create sustainable salmon populations who thrive in the rivers ourselves, salmon conservation strategies largely rely on restoring the systems that support salmon (cooling water, increasing vegetation & biodiversity, decreasing non-native predation/competition, improving spawning conditions, etc.). These are the systems that create healthy food and comfortable homes for salmon, people, and other living beings too. Inherent in this is the idea that protecting one resource requires protecting a resource’s supportive structures. You can’t protect salmon without also protecting their environment and access to resources. Salmon populations rely on the health of the water they are in, and the health of the water relies on the health of everything water interacts with. As is often the case, the thriving is mutual.
Reciprocity and Critical Cultural Resources play together here. We support the kokanee, and they support us too. Salmon in general are an important food source for humans, but also for the otters, eagles, herons, bobcats, and even the plants that call this place home. Improving salmon habitat makes it more possible for salmon to thrive and increases access to salmon for everyone. As is often the case, the thriving is mutual.
Relationships of Reciprocity & the Snoqualmie Tribe
Improving salmon populations and ecosystem health are important goals, but larger stewardship goals should also remain in focus. The Snoqualmie Tribe has stewarded a relationship with the kokanee since time immemorial, and continues investing in that relationship today. ʔilaʔł, the “little red fish,” are an important connection to the Snoqualmie Tribe’s lake systems and were an important traditional food source when fishing them was sustainable.
This is reflected in the modern landscape, where streams on the east side of Lake Sammamish carry the names of Snoqualmie families who are connected to this land and have lived here for generations. In the 1980’s, George Davis and Zackuse Creek were given their current names to reflect the Snoqualmie families that lived there.
From the Lake Sammamish Story Map –
“Many Snoqualmie families were in this area between the mid 1800’s and the turn of the century, when there was a transition period after the treaties were signed. While we waited for our reservation, our people were burned out of their longhouses. Lake Sammamish continued to provided us with a home after the 1863 Homestead Act. The agreement was, if we adopted the colonized way of life, we could legally homestead.
Many Snoqualmie families were able to stay in our traditional lands by homesteading the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish and working in logging and the lumber mills or hop farms that filled our lands, changing the way we worked with the land.”
Change in the land continues through today, as the lake shores have been altered by modern development and the streams of Lake Sammamish are crossed by roads and private property – a development that restoration has successfully been changing over the years.
Continuing from the Lake Sammamish Story Map –
“The Snoqualmie Tribe that exists today is because of the Snoqualmie who were able to stay in our lands because of Lake Sammamish and the kokanee salmon, who provided us with a year-round food source. The kokanee came at a time of year when other food sources were less abundant.”
Considering the December timing of Kokanee runs, its not hard to imagine how thousands of fish leaving the lake and swimming up these small creeks to our homes would be a blessing to the diet as winter sets in.
Recent Restoration Efforts – what’s working, what’s yet to be done, & past record runs in context
“The Snoqualmie Tribe teaches that we are made with the land, not separate from it. This thought comes from the teaching of always thinking of those who came before you and those still to come after you. We are who we are today because of those teachers who came before us and we are shaping the future for generations still to come.”
This teaching connects with stewardship – thanking those who came before us for creating and maintaining the salmon-supporting world we know now, and working to shape the modern world into one that supports kokanee thriving into the future. But human interaction with kokanee has a complicated history. While some home owners fought to keep kokanee out of streams (a story detailed in the Spawning Grounds documentary), many others have been working hard to understand and bring kokanee runs back. Without recent human interventions in habitat restoration, Lake Sammamish’s kokanee population could continue to collapse and disappear like the Lake Washington kokanee did. But with our intervention, they can also rebound.
Efforts to restore kokanee populations have been ongoing in several creeks around Lake Sammamish, but the majority of the Snoqualmie Tribe’s efforts have been focused on Zackuse Creek, which runs between the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish and the City of Sammamish. This project started in 2009, when the outlet of Zackuse Creek was restored with help from King Conservation District and local private landowners.
Restoration work continued in planning stages until 2018, when three impassable culverts were replaced, giving kokanee access to an additional ~1,500 linear feet of stream habitat. Currently, this stretch of creek also ends at an impassable culvert.
While culverts were being made passable, the Snoqualmie Tribe treated noxious weeds and planted thousands of native plants along Zackuse Creek and the adjacent wetlands. After six years of continued attention and stewardship, Zackuse Creek now has a basic canopy over its water as trees and habitat complexity continue to grow. Although there is a long way to go before restoration is “complete” on Zackuse Creek, the visual transformation over the last several years speaks for itself. Where culverts once restricted access to nearly the whole creek for ~40 years, habitat is now being rebuilt, and a small run of kokanee is becoming a more common occurrence on Zackuse Creek.
This photo shows the restoration change at Zackuse Creek over many years from pictures taken from the same place – starting with planting on the left and the full canopy cover on the right.
While restoring vegetation helps create habitat structure for returning salmon (again looking at supporting CCR systems, not only the individual fish), other strategies were taken to bring back kokanee themselves. On Zackuse Creek, a Remote Stream Incubator, or RSI, was installed. RSI’s act as a sort of mini-hatchery for a selected group of eggs. Safe inside the RSI, and supplied with fresh water and gravel, kokanee eggs can hatch and migrate out from the creek when they are ready. After Trout Unlimited saw this process work in other creeks, Zackuse received its own RSI, and has also seen success. Thanks to non-invasive temperature markings made on ear bones early in salmon’s life, we have confirmed that fish hatched in the RSI have returned to spawn in Zackuse Creek years later. You can learn more about Trout Unlimited’s kokanee efforts on their website.
Creating habitat and seeding fish eggs were also combined with releasing young kokanee fry into Lake Sammamish in the fall, an event that brings many interested and invested parties together to celebrate the continued restoration of this local salmon population. This last fall, the Snoqualmie Tribe helped release about 12,000 hatchery–raised young kokanee into the lake, during a season when young fish have less obstacles to overcome in order to survive.
Observing returning kokanee gives us a great idea of what restoration efforts are working, but we also count salmon fry (young salmon) as they leave their home streams. After 2024’s historic run, we are seeing young kokanee fry leave streams in historic numbers, likely by the tens of thousands each night, to take residence in Lake Sammamish. This trend started at the beginning of early March and has continuing into April. Several Snoqualmie Tribal Members and staff have been involved with this volunteer effort, each counting thousands of fish per night on separate streams throughout the Lake Sammamish watershed. Collecting “fish out” data lets us know that last year’s “fish in” run was successful, that eggs are hatching in health, and helps us understand where fish are thriving, as well as being lost, in the Lake Sammamish ecosystem.
Zackuse Creek’s restoration story was captured in great detail in the Spawning Grounds documentary, which is available to stream at this link. Spawning Grounds does a great job highlighting the restoration work happening on the ground, as well as the movement building of groups that make this work happen. Habitat restoration takes many forms, whether through planting plants, offering public testimony to local leaders, or be willing to host wildlife on your land, it takes a community to bring all this work into motion.
Through the multiple strategies taken on to bring kokanee back, and the varied groups that have put actions in motion, we can see that restoration isn’t a single event. Restoration is a long-term and ongoing relationship built between people and place. With continued restoration efforts, we could see kokanee populations return to a stable place where record runs like these could be an annual occurrence. Is there anything better than a world where an abundance of fish are celebrated every year?
Thank You to our Kokanee Partners and Sponsors
The Snoqualmie Indian Tribe’s restoration and monitoring efforts are made possible with funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Tribal Wildlife Grant Program, EPA, and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
Much of this work wouldn’t be possible without support from the Kokanee Working Group. The Kokanee Working Group membership includes watershed residents, each of the five local jurisdictions in the Lake Sammamish watershed, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Parks, the Snoqualmie Tribe, Trout Unlimited, Friends of Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, Save Lake Sammamish, Friends of Pine Lake, and many others.
Thanks to all these partners and more for enabling our local kokanee’s survival and building hope in the year’s to come.