Haskell Slough is 3 miles of side channel stream area that was donated by private landowners to be restored as rearing habitat for coho, steelhead and summer chinook. The landowners wanted to gravel mine a portion of this area, creating some ponds and thus more rearing area, in an effort to raise funds to help pay for repairing a portion of failing riverbank.
The landowners were completely upfront from the beginning about the gravel mining aspect. Curt Beardslee of Washington Trout wrote an article accusing the landowners of trying to use the habitat restoration project as a cover for the gravel mining. Beardslee also claimed that some biologist said that the project was a bad idea, which is pure bull****.
This is the first full year that the rearing area was opened to the river. Our Chapter of Trout Unlimited monitored the smolt trap this spring and thousands of coho and a few hundred chinook and steelhead smolted from this area. These fish were beautiful and healthy.
The landowners have given up on the idea of gravel mining due to problems with the County but still encourage the habitat restoration project. There were a number of editorial responses disclaiming Beardslee's misgivings that were published in the Monroe Monitor.
In this era of habitat restoration, landowners like the ones who donated Haskell Slough should be considered heroes instead of conniving villains.
Thanks to jerks like Beardslee it will be hard for anyone to ask other land owners to give up use of their land for fish restoring projects.

Gary Bee
President of the Sky Valley Chapter of TU.