A proposal to restore salmon habitat at the Shillapoo Wildlife Area has local hunters up in arms.
The project is being spearheaded by the Bonneville Power Administration, which is under a court order to restore salmon rearing habitat in the lower Columbia River basin.
The BPA has partnered with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to possibly make the South Shillapoo and Buckmire Slough project a reality.
The project would restore connectivity between the wildlife area’s marshes and the Columbia River, so salmon could use the habitat as they outmigrate to the ocean.
Since 2000, water in the South Unit Shillapoo is seasonally managed through a series of pumps and diversion structures, which keep marshes full that would otherwise be dry.
What has hunters and wildlife conservationists alarmed is that if the marshes are reconnected they will only hold water when the river is at high flow. That usually only happens in the winter.
That means the marshes would be dry during early fall and late spring. Hunters would not lose access, but without water there is nothing to attract the ducks.
There would also be less water available for migrating waterfowl and other wildlife.
The project would open about 540 acres of the Shillapoo South Unit wetlands to the Columbia River by cutting the main Highway 501 dike in two places.
A number of other changes would have to happen, including raising a couple roads, the removal of nine water-control structures, removing a flood gate and plug, and cutting channels to help the water come in to the marshes.
Tidal marshes along the lower Columbia have historically been diked off or filled in for development and agriculture, and the task for the BPA is to find areas that can be restored to mitigate that loss.
Even though the project has been in the planning stages since 2010, there is still a long process to go through before any earth would be turned.
Daren Hauswald, the manager at Shillapoo, says that there is no hard timeline.
“There’s nothing real definite,” Hauswald said. “Currently we are doing an analysis of waterfowl impacts, and impacts to hunting. That could be completed in October.”
Nicole Czarnomski, the Estuary Habitat Program Manager for the WDFW Region 5, agrees there is still a lot of planning to do.
“We are still making sure we do all the steps as far as feasibility,” Czarnomski said. “If we get to the point that we start the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process, that will take 1 1/2 years at a minimum.”
The NEPA process is triggered when a federal agency develops a proposal to take a major federal action.
All told, it will take up to four years once the process actually begins.
However, resistance from the hunting community and wildlife conservationists is considerable.
“This project is a huge mistake,” said Bob Taylor of the Lower Columbia Chapter of the Washington Waterfowl Association. “They are taking land purchased and managed for waterfowl and converting it for a salmon recovery project.”
Taylor and others chafe at this proposed shift in the core mission of the wildlife area.
The Shillapoo Wildlife Area was created in the 1950s to provide habitat for waterfowl. It provides habitat and refuge for endangered and threatened species including the dusky Canada Goose, sandhill cranes, and the Columbian white-tailed deer.
Al O’Conner is another local hunter who opposes the project.
“I’ve been actively following this proposal since 2010,” said O’Conner. “I’ve never liked it from the beginning.
“We need that habitat because of development in the county,” he adds. “There is only so much food for them, (the birds).”
Both men pointed to a similar project that was carried out in the Willapa Bay wildlife refuge.
“They breached the dike and waterfowl use dropped by 80 percent,” O’Conner said, “And that number is from a WDFW aerial survey.”
Taylor described the Willapa Bay project area as a “mud flat. There are no ducks there.”
The newly connected marshes would see tidal fluctuations, even during high water, that would mean low water levels for much of each day.
Questions about the project abound, although the WDFW has had few answers so far. Some of the concerns include:
• An influx of invasive plants is probable once the water-control devices are removed. Hauswald admitted as much.
“Areas that currently have native vegetation will revert to non-native vegetation,” he said. “These are higher wetlands that fall in that range of canary grass and non-native plants.”
Canary grass can be controlled by flooding the wetlands, which is done with the water-control structures that are being considered for removal.
• A loss of early fall and late spring habitat for waterfowl and other birds.
“This is critical habitat for the spring migration,” Taylor said. “In the spring thousands of ducks, geese, and cranes use this. And then there are the bald eagles. They feed on the waterfowl.”
• A loss of hunting opportunity. While the project statement proposes mitigating the losses of hunting, what that mitigation might look like has not been addressed.
“We have not discussed that much,” Hauswald said. He did say one alternative would be to acquire new lands, but that would mean getting private landowners to sell, and that could be difficult.
• How many salmon would benefit? That is another question that has been brought up frequently by members of the public during meetings with the WDFW, but there has been no analysis of that yet.
“How many fish will use this? They never tell us that,” O’Conner noted.
Taylor is also skeptical that the project will actually help salmon.
“I’m not sure the smolts are actually going to use this,” he said. “In my opinion the BPA is not interested in whether it actually works. They just want the credits toward their court order.”
“They are trying to steamroll us,” adds O’Conner.
The WDFW invites the public to comment on the project.
For more information: Nicole Czarnomski at 360-906-6732, or Daren Hauswald at 360-906-6756
