BELLINGHAM — A federal grant will allow Lummi Nation biologists to conduct habitat restoration in the Nooksack River basin and study how that affects Chinook salmon egg-to-fry survival.
Lummi Nation is receiving $9.8 million for its South Fork Nooksack watershed project, part of more than $32 million awarded last week to Indigenous tribes in Washington state to fight the effects of climate change, U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell said in a statement issued Friday.
Funding for the grants was included in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which were signature programs of the Biden administration. Cantwell and Murray, both Democrats, championed the program in Congress.
“As climate change disrupts even more of our daily lives, we have a responsibility to tribal communities to ensure they have the resources and support they need to adapt to the changing climate,” Murray said in the statement.
Funding will allow habitat restoration for endangered salmon along 3.2 miles of the South Fork of the Nooksack River and along Skookum Creek in the South Fork Valley.
Improvements will give salmon better places to spawn and increase the availability of clean, cool water for the Skookum Creek Hatchery to increase production of juvenile salmon for subsistence, ceremonial, and commercial fishing, according to the statement.
Thousands of spring-run Chinook salmon — the favorite food of the endangered southern resident orca in Puget Sound — have died in the heat of recent summers.
“These fish are dying before they can spawn,” Treva Coe, assistant natural resources director for the Nooksack Indian Tribe, told the Whatcom County Council in July 2023.
Habitat loss, low water levels and warmer temperatures are a primary threat to the salmon, Coe said.
About 2,400 Chinook died in the south fork in the summer of 2021 during a blistering “heat dome” that sent temperatures above 100 degrees.
“This funding will support critical projects like the Lummi Nation’s restoration of the South Fork Nooksack River Watershed,” Cantwell said.
