Fish Habitat
Cool, clean water is vital to maintaining healthy salmon habitat. Here is what private forest landowners
have done to implement the Forests & Fish Law:
- Streamside buffers of trees have been widened to provide shade to keep water temperatures cool to protect fish habitat. See how buffer zones work.
- The Forests & Fish Law established water temperature standards for fish. While science is ongoing, an early review of studies show that forest management practices have a low risk of exceeding these temperature limits.
- Riparian buffers of trees protect streams from too much sediment entering the water thus maintaining water quality. While sediment is a natural part of healthy forest streams, too much sediment is unhealthy for fish. A recent study shows the Forests & Fish Law protections are working to keep streams clean.
- According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources Compliance Monitoring Report, 75% of all riparian activities are compliant with regulations. WFPA members have a goal of being 100% compliant with all forest practices rules.
Learn more about how private forest landowners are protecting salmon and their habitat
Road Management
The Forest & Fish Law requires that all private forest roads be brought up to new
forest roads standards by 2016. These cover all aspects of construction and
maintenance including road locations, stream crossings, erosion control, and drainage.
- Large private forest landowners each develop a Road Maintenance & Abandonment Plan (RMAP) to upgrade and repair road systems where needed. A total of 57,442 miles of roads have been inventoried and maintained in which 15,019 miles have been improved.
- Small forest landowners have submitted 8,628 RMAP checklists with their forest practices applications instead of a full RMAP plan.
- The overall goal is to improve fish passage and stabilize their road systems so road surface runoff and erosion does not cause sediment to be delivered to streams, keeping water clean. For further information, see the WFPA Forest Roads Brochure.
- Results of a recent statewide survey show that 21% of large private forest landowners' roads could potentially deliver runoff to a stream, and 73% of roads have a low likelihood of affecting streams, while the remaining 6% have been decommissioned.
- According to a recent study conducted by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources 87% percent of road activities are in compliance with forest practices rules.
Click here for more information on forest road maintenance and abandonment.
Habitat Conservation
A Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) is a long-term land management plan designed to protect
endangered or potentially endangered plant and animal species and their habitats.
- The Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan (FPHCP), set in motion by the Forests and Fish Law, is the largest and most thorough HCP in the nation, protecting virtually all native fish species, seven species of amphibians and 60,000 miles of streams on 8 million acres of private forestland and 1.3 million acres of state forestland in Washington State.
- Adaptive Management is "learning by doing"—using the best available science to monitor and verify that forest practices are meeting standards set by the Forests & Fish Law. Forest practices rules are designed to change based on peer-reviewed scientific study.
- CMER (Cooperative Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Committee) is the science research arm of Adaptive Management and conducts scientific inquiry to inform policy makers and the Forest Practices Board, the group responsible for making changes to forest practices rules.
Steep Slopes
Landslides are a natural geologic process in the steep forestlands of
western Washington. They can play an important role in delivering wood and
gravel to streams, to create high quality stream habitat for fish. With the
Forests & Fish Law, foresters have taken important steps to include the protection
of unstable slopes in their timber harvest designs, to prevent timber harvest and
road construction activities from increasing the natural rate of landslides.
- The Landslide Hazard Zonation (LHZ) Project was created in 2002 to map potentially unstable slopes of the state. The LHZ project was developed to assist the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) with screening Forest Practices Applications for risks associated with unstable slopes.
- Currently CMER is studying the effectiveness of Forest Practices Rules at limiting landslides from forest practices by analyzing storm-related landsliding.
- Due to the extensive upgrades and new road building techniques required under the Forests & Fish Law, foresters have noticed that their roads are holding up much better during extreme weather events. Usually heavy rain can cause severe damage or completely wipe out forest roads.
A Collaborative Effort
As the first of its kind in the nation, the Forests & Fish Law was developed in
collaboration with federal, state, tribal and county governments and private forest
landowners to address threatened salmon and impaired water quality listings under the
Endangered Species and Clean Water acts.
- More than 140 individuals, including scientists, policy makers and private forest landowners worked together for 18 months to develop changes to forest practices rules to protect fish habitat and water quality on non-federal land.
- As a result of the Forest & Fish Law, private landowners work side-by-side with other stakeholder groups to restore fish habitat and improve water quality.
- For example, one WFPA member, Merrill & Ring was able to work collaboratively with the Lower Elwah tribe to create new spawning areas for fish in the South Fork Pysht River. (One reason this project was considered of such importance was the observation of adult salmon trying to swim through road ditches to reach spawning areas.) The problem was solved creatively by replacing a culvert and digging a channel so fish could pass.
After decades of conflict, the federal and state agencies, the tribes and the timber industry have come together to produce an historic agreement which will govern forest practices in the state of Washington and set a new standard of high environmental protection.
