The work was completed in 2014. Replacing it with a larger culvert ended up opening 1,584 feet of stream to salmon. Most of us probably cross small streams every day without even noticing. A road, a driveway, or a bridge sits on top of it, and the water flows through a pipe below. For a fish, however, that pipe is like a locked door. One such door once stood at the mouth of West Beach Creek on Orcas Island, Washington.
The Washington state agency that leads efforts to protect Puget Sound, the Northwest Straits Foundation removed a small dam built to make a pond on private shoreline property facing President’s Channel, according to Puget Sound Partnership .
The results came fast. Salmon were seen upstream of the project site just one year after the dam was removed. Sediment started moving out of the stream, and the natural sediment flow was restored within a year. The stream followed its natural course and gathered a good deal of wood from upstream. The project has restored one acre of estuary habitat for young salmon to grow and rest before entering the ocean. The report doesn’t say how many salmon or what species , but this is an early sign. West Beach Creek is just one site, so wider research might help. The authors concluded that removing barriers on small streams provided adequate fish passage. It also appeared to add habitat and increase the number of young fish just upstream of old barriers. The study took place in inland streams, not tidal streams like West Beach Creek, so it cannot prove the same result for Orcas Island. It does show that removing small barriers can restore fish passage elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
A 2020 study in Fisheries Management and Ecology by Clark, Roni, Keeton, and Pess surveyed 32 sites in the interior Columbia River Basin where barriers had been removed or replaced.
