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Salmon and Trout in King County, Washington State

2000 Volunteer Salmon Watcher Program in the Lake Washington Watershed

Executive Summary

In 1996, the Bellevue Stream Team, King County Water and Land Resources Division, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, the Snohomish County Surface Water Management Division, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife began a jointly coordinated volunteer spawning survey program in the Lake Washington Watershed (all waters draining through the Ballard Locks). In 1997, the program evolved into the Salmon Watcher Program as it is today and has been conducted annually since. The purpose of the program is to document the distribution of spawning adult salmon throughout the basin via an active public outreach and education program, and subsequently consolidate all the information into a single resource (this report). These data can be used by policy makers and the public to improve how streams are managed, to protect salmon and trout species, and to enhance their habitat.For the 2000 program, 106 volunteers surveyed 122 sites on 52 streams throughout the Lake Washington Watershed from late August 2000 to early February 2001. Because volunteers collect the data in this program, the agencies are able to obtain information from far more locations than would otherwise be possible. However, data in this report should be used with the following limitations in mind:

  1. Volunteer expertise in locating and identifying fish species varied from very high to very low; Coverage of streams by volunteers was by no means complete; therefore, fish distribution information is not complete;Volunteers view stream sites for relatively brief periods of time during the spawning season;Determination of survey sites was based on volunteer availability and site accessibility (and some survey locations change from year to year, even on the same creek);Spawning fish can be difficult to see and therefore may have passed through reaches undetected; and
  2. Volunteer data indicate only where minimum fish distributions extend to, but do not indicate reaches where fish are definitively absent (in other words, the data confirms fish presence, but does not confirm absence).

Volunteers observed the following species: sockeye, chinook, coho, steelhead, kokanee, chum, and trout (rainbow or cutthroat). The following results were compiled from data obtained within the previously mentioned limitations of these surveys: (1) Sockeye had the widest distribution throughout the watershed (21 streams) and were seen in the greatest numbers by far; (2) Sockeye, chinook, and coho were all observed in the same six basins; (3) Kokanee were seen in four basins, including the three north basins and East Lake Sammamish; and (4) Chinook, coho, and kokanee together made up only 3.8% of fish observed, whereas sockeye made up 94.2%.

Maps included in this report have been published on the Internet, and can be found using the hyperlinks on this web page: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wlr/waterres/salmon/maps.htm

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the dedicated volunteers for spending many hours in cold and wet weather to collect the information for this report-sometimes for the fifth year in a row, and sometimes without ever seeing a fish. Without the volunteers there would be no data, no maps, no report. They help make a positive difference here in the Northwest, not only by reporting fish species, but they are also the eyes and ears of the streams, reporting blockages and illegal and other suspect activities. A huge Thank You!

Introduction

The Salmon Watcher Program is a volunteer program that originated in 1996 to observe adult fall spawning salmonids in the Lake Washington Watershed. The Salmon Watcher Program recruits and trains volunteers to identify and watch for spawning salmon throughout the Lake Washington Watershed (all waters draining through the Ballard Locks; Figure 1). In 2000, the Bellevue Stream Team, King County Water and Land Resource Division, Snohomish County Surface Water Management, and the cities of Issaquah, Kirkland, Renton, Seattle, and Woodinville actively participated in the Salmon Watcher Program.

The Salmon Watcher Program was initiated to expand on current efforts undertaken by resource agencies to document the distribution of spawning salmon in the Lake Washington Watershed Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA 8). Prior to the Salmon Watcher Program, salmon spawning observations were being reported to individual agencies. These data were not easily accessible or pro-actively shared with other agencies in WRIA 8 or the public. The Salmon Watcher Program became the centralized effort for making these data readily available for all interested parties. Salmon Watcher volunteers annually collect information on the presence of spawning salmonids, including chinook, coho, sockeye, kokanee (resident form of sockeye), and chum salmon, and steelhead and resident trout species. Data of this type become more important as salmonids in the region, such as Puget Sound chinook, are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Volunteers in this program survey the basins that make up the Lake Washington Watershed: the Bear Creek, Cedar River, East Lake Washington, West Lake Washington, Issaquah Creek, North Lake Washington, and West Lake Sammamish basins. Some volunteers also survey streams in some Puget Sound drainages. The volunteer Salmon Watcher Program does not place emphasis on a particular species of salmon, although it does focus on fall spawning species (sockeye, coho, fall chinook, and kokanee) rather than spring spawners (steelhead, spring chinook, and cutthroat trout).

The second purpose of the Salmon Watcher Program (in addition to expanding local agencies' knowledge of the distribution of spawning salmon in the region) is to actively engage the public in doing something helpful for the streams in their watershed. Because volunteers do this work, this task is accomplished with reduced resources, and the watersheds' residents can become involved and educated at the same time. Further, interactions with agency personnel foster positive relationships between the public and government agencies. With monetary and temporal constraints of agency personnel, much of the data collected in this effort could not be collected otherwise.

Figure 1. Lake Washington Watershed basins surveyed for the 2000 Salmon Watcher Program (follow link to download pdf file).

This program is conducted in cooperation with the King County Water and Land Resources Division, Bellevue Stream Team, Redmond Stream Team, and the cities of Seattle, Bothell, Kirkland, Renton, Woodinville, and the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust, with support from the King Conservation District.