Nisqually River view from our new Middle Reach Property.
Nisqually Middle Reach: Three years, Five Salmon Species, 30,000 Native Plants
This winter it’s all hands on deck – or in the dirt!– as a team of Nisqually Watershed partners, volunteers, and students launch an ambitious three-year project to plant 30,000 native plants and restore 60 acres of high-priority salmon habitat and floodplain along one of the most dynamic reaches of the Nisqually River.
Kids, students, volunteers, and project partners will help plant native trees and shrubs on our new property.
The Land Trust acquired the site last May. It has long been the critical missing piece in our 520-acre Powell Creek Protected Area, on the Thurston County side of the river, about 12 miles above McKenna.
“I’ve been looking at that gap for almost thirty years,” said Land Trust founder George Walter. The Land Trust purchased the remote property from the Spooner family, which had used it to grow berry cane rootstock but stopped farming it several years ago, in the face of increasing transportation difficulties and other challenges.
“The Spooners were able to make productive use of this land for awhile,” Walter said. “And now productivity is being shifted back to growing salmon.”
The property is located along what is known as the Middle Reach of the Nisqually River. It is one of the river’s most productive zones for all five salmon species native to the Nisqually Watershed, including Chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Both are listed as threatend under the Endangered Speacies Act and use the Middle Reach for spawning and rearing.
The Spooner property was the critical missing piece in our Powell Creek Protected Area.
Native plants were largely removed from the site during its tenure as a commercial agricultural property. Using techniques refined over a decade of habitat restoration on adjoining properties in the Powell Creek unit, the Land Trust and its longtime partners – the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Nisqually River Education Project, and hundreds of student and adult volunteers – will remove invasive species such as Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry and install native trees and shrubs.
This site is sandy, and reestablishing native forest will require planting species that can tolerate short periods of high groundwater during high river flow but are also adapted to droughty conditions that will occur during summer. The planting will likely include shore pine, snowberry, Oregon grape, ocean spray, bitter cherry, western white pine, Douglas fir, and western-Ponderosa pine.
Over time, the Nisqually team will restore the site to naturally functioning forest, which will provide shade, shelter, nutrients, and habitat complexity. “This is a big deal for the long-term,” said George Walter. “I may not see it happen, but eventually this reach of the river will return to its natural ways. The salmon are smiling!”
The Nisqually River’s Middle Reach is 6.5 miles long, running from the Ohop Creek confluence downstream to Tanwax Creek. Almost 90 percent of the Middle Reach, on both sides of the river, is now in permanent conservation status.