All the news releases that talk about salmon recovery by fixed these culverts leave many with the impression that doing so will help in the recovery of listed species.

For the part of the State I'm familiar with (North Puget Sound - Nooksack, Samish, Skagit, Stillaguamish and Snohomish) fixing those state road culverts will not appreciably aid in the recovery of the ESA list Chinook and steelhead. However, as a sea-run cutthroat angler it is my cutthroat that will benefit most from improved passage on those small streams.

Small streams is the key here. The engineers that designed the State road crossing were not fools. The realized that for the larger streams the needed capacity to safely pass flood waters were bridges reserving the use of culverts for the smaller streams. Most of those streams at normal flows I can step across, and I can not recall a single that at low flow at even 77 years of age that I could not jump across. Those that support anadromous salmonids are coho and cutthroat creeks. I can not think of a single Chinook spawning streams in North Puget Sound region that are cross by state road that does not have a bridge. With very few exceptions the same is true for steelhead. Those steelhead exceptions are only occasionally used by steelhead on unusual waters (with climate change those exceptions are becoming rarer. Even so fixing those culverts would potential steelhead spawning by much less than 1%.

I do admit that with improved upstream passage juvenile salmonids could use that access for rearing, especially over-winter rearing. The unfortunate truth is that the state of the habitat on those rivers is in such poor shape that adding a few miles of potential juvenile will not move the recovery needle.

As much as I love my cutthroat not sure that spending nearly 8 billion dollars is the best investment in salmonid recovery.

My biggest disappointment with the co-managers which seem to be fine with and maybe encourage that public that fixing those culverts is a significant step towards recovering Puget Sound ESA listed Chinook and Steelhead.

curt