King County honors winners of 'Radical Salmon' design competition

Tom Murdoch, Executive Director of the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation, accepts the 'Radical Salmon' award from King County Council member Dow Constantine and Cara Rose, Western Partnership Office Assistant Director for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

An inexpensive, yet effective design to improve upstream fish migration has earned top honors in King County's annual "Radical Salmon" competition to encourage innovative salmon restoration solutions.

The Adopt-A-Stream Foundation's Fish and Wildlife Division submitted the winning design of a "stacked culvert fish ladder," a low-cost solution to retrofit stream culverts that have a significant drop between the exit pipe and the level of the stream. The design can be used as a permanent passage structure, or as a temporary structure until a permanent design can be put in place.

"We have taken a number of important steps in preserving and improving fish habitat, and this fish ladder design could ease access to that improved habitat," said King County Executive Ron Sims. "This winning design embodies the kind of fresh thinking and on-the-ground innovation that gives me hope in our effort to save salmon populations."

The winner and runner-up were selected by a team of experts in habitat restoration, civil engineers and fish biologists. The top award winner receives a grant of $28,553 to implement the design. The competition is co-sponsored by King County and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Community Salmon Fund Partnership.

Representatives of the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation and the runner-up competitors, Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands, were presented their awards recently at the offices of the Metropolitan King County Council by County Councilmember Dow Constantine.

Director Mark Isaacson of the Water and Land Resources Division of King County's Department of Natural Resources and Parks, and Assistant Director Cara Rose, of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Northwest Region, were present to congratulate the top two design teams.

"We need the region's best minds working on solutions to reverse the degradation of our Northwest salmon runs," said Constantine, who chairs the County Council's Growth Management and Natural Resources Committee. "Competitions such as Radical Salmon can produce and test new design innovations that will help us in the future."

The Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands' runner-up entry is intended to increase creek bed stability by adding small "steps" of woody material to the bed to trap incoming sediment and reduce the movement of existing sand deposits. Using woody or other organic materials for this purpose also creates a new food source for invertebrates.

"Our goal is to fund the design of habitat projects to promote new restoration techniques applicable to central Puget Sound," said Cara Rose, Western Partnership Office Assistant Director, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

"Through leadership conservation investments like this, we remain dedicated to achieving maximum conservation impact by developing and applying best practices and innovative methods like the designs presented by both Adopt-A-Stream and Friends of the Hylebos Wetlands," she said.

The runner-up design is automatically entered as a finalist for funding through Round 10 of the Community Salmon Fund in 2007. Should the winner not be able to install its project, installation of the runner-up design would instead be funded.

King County is working to restore and strengthen Puget Sound chinook salmon and bull trout, which gained federal protection in 1999 under the Endangered Species Act. Recovery Information is available at http://dnr.metrokc.gov/topics/salmon/SALtopic.htm.