In Puget Sound, Chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Their decline has deeply affected the personal, economic, cultural, and spiritual well-being of Puget Sound tribes while also causing significant losses within the region’s commercial and recreational fisheries economy. The loss of salmon is also endangering other species, including southern resident orca, which has been listed as endangered under the ESA since 2005 and relies on Chinook salmon as a primary food source.
Multiple factors have contributed to the decline of salmonids in King County, including habitat loss, high summer water stream temperatures, insufficient summer streamflow, and water pollution. Climate change is exacerbating these stressors, underscoring the need to act quickly to protect and restore salmon habitat. This includes reconnecting floodplains, restoring stream corridors and shorelines, and reconnecting groundwater with streams to support cool summer streamflows. These nature-based solutions make salmon habitat and human communities more resilient to climate change, protect and improve critical infrastructure, and support local economies by generating jobs and promoting workforce development.
What's at stake
Climate change creates significant challenges for salmon survival. Increasing water temperatures, increased “flashy” stream and river flows from more intense winter rain events, lower summer stream flows, loss of shoreline habitat due to sea level rise, and impacts on marine food webs affect salmon across all life stages.29 For example, more frequent and/or more severe floods in fall and winter can move rocks and gravel along river bottoms, scouring the riverbed and destroying salmon redds (nests). Earlier peak streamflows in spring may force young salmon to migrate out of streams too early, making it harder to compete in the marine environment and potentially creating mismatches with food availability. Lower late spring and summer streamflows may limit habitat available for spawning and rearing. Finally, warmer summer/early fall water temperatures in rivers and lakes can stress streamrearing juvenile salmon, returning adult salmon, and Lake Sammamish kokanee. These changes collectively reduce the likelihood that salmon will reach adulthood and successfully spawn in natal streams. Salmon habitat protection and restoration efforts are improving conditions for salmon, but more work is needed.
A better outcome
King County envisions a future where native, wild fish populations are thriving and able to access ample healthy habitat in county streams, rivers, lakes, and bays, helping to sustain populations in the face of rising temperatures and more variable stream conditions. A future where tribes have abundant salmon to provide for their personal, economic, cultural, and spiritual prosperity, and all people can enjoy locally caught fish. King County is providing access to high quality, connected habitat for species to adapt their life histories and minimize the potential for local extinctions.
What we've done to get here
- Worked with tribes, federal and state agencies, and local jurisdictions to increase access to high quality upstream habitat by inventorying and strategically removing fish passage barriers in King County streams.
- Enacted emergency actions recommended by regional partners to prevent the possible extinction of Lake Sammamish kokanee, helping kokanee rebound from a low of 19 returning adults in 2017-18 to more than 8,300 returning adults in 2024.
- Completed the 145-acre Fall City Floodplain Restoration Project, improving critical habitat for Chinook salmon and protecting farmland, homes, and businesses along the Snoqualmie River with funding support from the Flood Control District and other sources.
- Converted a former six-acre hotel site on the banks of the Duwamish River to provide critical intertidal habitat for juvenile salmon.
- Restored a nearly mile-long segment of the Cedar River to a more natural state as part of the 52-acre Riverbend restoration project, simultaneously improving salmon habitat and reducing flood risks for people, homes, and infrastructure with funding support from the Flood Control District and other sources.
- Partnered with watershed-based salmon recovery teams and other technical experts to develop climate change and salmon issue papers for major watersheds in King County.