A River Reborn: Restoring a Stronghold for Hood Canal Summer-Run Chum Salmon

Threatened Hood Canal summer-run chum salmon represent a bright spot in Pacific salmon recovery. According to preliminary data from the Hood Canal Coordinating Council , average annual returns have nearly tripled since 2022. They've climbed from about 11,600 fish per year between 2018 and 2021 to roughly 32,600 between 2022 and 2025. That's up from a low of less than 1,000 spawners in the early 1990s.

Scientists say several years of favorable ocean conditions have contributed to the recent rebound. Cooler ocean temperatures increase the food available to salmon and improve their survival at sea. But those conditions won't last forever. Experts believe restoring river habitat will help summer chum remain resilient when the Pacific Ocean inevitably shifts back to a warmer phase in its natural cycle.

One of the healthiest summer chum populations is returning to one of the region's most degraded rivers. The number of chum spawning in the Big and Little Quilcene rivers has quadrupled in the last 4 years. This despite 2 miles of the Big Quilcene being straightened, scoured of spawning gravel, and cut off from its floodplain.

NOAA Fisheries' Office of Habitat Conservation , the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group , and the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe are restoring salmon habitat at two locations on the Big Quilcene River-Moon Valley and the Lower One Mile. The projects will:

• Create spawning and rearing habitat for Hood Canal Summer chum and threatened Puget Sound Chinook salmon and steelhead
• Improve the Quilcene Bay estuary, where juvenile salmon make their first transition to salt water
• Stop the flooding that has plagued the town of Quilcene for generations

The restoration should finish by September, just as the summer chum return to spawn.

"Restoring the Big Quilcene River has taken tribes, nonprofit organizations, local communities, state and federal agencies, and NOAA all working toward the same goal," said NOAA Marine Habitat Resource Specialist Chemine Jackels. "Together, we're giving one of Hood Canal's most important summer chum populations a healthier river and a better chance to thrive for generations to come."

Additional project partners include:

A River Put in a Straitjacket

Beginning around 1930, people reshaped the lower Big Quilcene River to create more land for farming and development. They straightened the naturally sinuous river, confined it between dikes, and disconnected it from its floodplain. These changes fundamentally altered how the river functioned.

"The new channel was basically a ditch that disconnected the river from its historic floodplain," said Gus Johnson, habitat program manager for the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group. "This disconnection resulted in flood waters being confined within the channel, which significantly increased flow velocities. High-velocity flows would often scour out salmon redds, killing all the salmon eggs in the process."

Fast-moving flows eroded an estimated 360,000 cubic yards of sediment from the Moon Valley reach of the Big Quilcene River. That's enough, Johnson said, to fill a line of dump trucks stretching bumper to bumper from Seattle to Olympia, Washington, roughly 90 miles. The river was scoured down to the bedrock in some places, eliminating the smaller stones salmon use to build their nests.

That sediment washed downstream into Quilcene Bay, burying more than 31 acres of estuary habitat. Unlike some other juvenile salmon species that stay in rivers for a year or more before migrating, juvenile chum swim out to estuaries shortly after birth. They find food there, gradually adjusting from fresh to saltwater before entering the ocean. Without this habitat, they have to transition to saltwater much faster than normal, which can reduce their chances of survival.

The sediment also accumulated in the diked Lower One Mile reach, gradually raising the riverbed and making flooding worse. For residents of Quilcene, the consequences were severe. Between 1982 and 2015, the community endured nine federally declared flood disasters. A devastating flood in 1990 killed two people and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Roads were repeatedly closed, homes were flooded, and emergency access was cut off.

Fisherman and biologist Randy Johnson (no relation to Gus Johnson) remembers seeing the damage long before he understood what caused it.

In 1975, Randy, now habitat program manager for the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, was looking for a new steelhead fishing spot. He and a friend walked what are now the Lower One Mile and Moon Valley restoration sites.

They didn't find any spots worth returning to.

"We stood on the old Linger Longer Bridge at the Lower One Mile site and thought, 'What did they do here?'" said Randy. "People had taken this river and squeezed it into such a narrow space that there was no room for it. It was like a canal."

Farther upstream in the Moon Valley reach, conditions were no better.

"The river was once again constrained, scoured deep down to the bedrock, with hardly any pools for fishing," Randy said. "We thought there would be no reason for us to ever go back there again."

Restoration Can Boost Summer Chum Recovery

Between 1995 and 2008, the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group's completed eight projects to restore the Quilcene Bay estuary. However, the terrible river conditions remained.

Despite this, the numbers of summer chum in Big and Little Quilcene rivers rebounded from fewer than 200 spawners in 1993 to more than 11,000 last year.

Scientists think much of the recent population increase is due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This natural climate cycle alternates between warm and cool phases in the northern Pacific. A cool phase from roughly 1999 to 2003 helped drive the initial recovery of Hood Canal summer chum after they were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

A warm phase from 2014 to 2018 depressed the population again, although numbers remained much higher than in the early 1990s. Since the current cool phase began around 2020, returns have nearly tripled across Hood Canal.

But scientists warn the current cool phase will eventually end. That's where river habitat restoration can help to buffer population loss caused by poor ocean conditions.

"It's vital we have quality river habitat to allow summer chum to be resilient through the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation," said Alicia Olivas, salmon recovery director for the Hood Canal Coordinating Council.

River restoration projects throughout the Hood Canal suggest that healthier rivers and a healthy estuary can help salmon and steelhead populations rebound.

On Jimmycomelately Creek near Sequim, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe relocated a degraded stream into a new half-mile channel and restored its estuary in the early 2000s. Summer chum returns, which had dwindled to near zero, climbed to thousands within 4 years. The Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group restored the estuary for the Union River. Nearly 13,000 summer chum returned in 2024, the highest count since records began in 1975.

For Olivas, restoring the Big Quilcene River is critical. "Since the Big and Little Quilcene summer chum population is already a stronghold, we anticipate that the Moon Valley and Lower One Mile projects will be one of the best things that we could do for the Hood Canal population overall."

Jeff Vanderpham, a NOAA Fisheries biologist who works on Hood Canal summer chum recovery, agrees. "These projects will become more important as we move forward," said Vanderpham. "As the environment becomes warmer, there are going to be more challenges for these species."

Restoring the Big Quilcene River

NOAA Fisheries' Office of Habitat Conservation awarded the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group $9.7 million to rebuild the Big Quilcene River channel and reconnect the floodplain at river mile 3 in Moon Valley. The project will:

• Replace an artificially straightened and constrained stream channel with a 1.84-mile braided channel network
• Reconnect the river to its 140-acre floodplain
• Install more than 180 log jams to increase habitat complexity
• Place new spawning-size gravel in the stream bed
• Reduce flood velocity downstream by half
• Halt the severe erosion that caused sediment to clog the river channel and estuary, resulting in flooding and loss of salmon habitat

Construction crews have been working all spring and summer to finish the work.

"Every time I go out there, I see some pretty significant changes happening," said Gus. "Building a new river channel network both next to and above an existing active channel has proven to be the most complicated part of the project. There are several phases where the active river channel will change places so that construction can occur where the old channel is located."

The addition of more than 180 logjams, some as big as a school bus, will increase stream complexity. Large wood, such as fallen trees and root wads, slows water velocity and creates the deep pool and the gravel deposits salmon need. The engineered logjams will replicate natural stream processes until the tree seedlings planted along the river reach maturity and begin the natural wood cycle.

Just downstream, the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group and the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe are completing the restoration of the Lower One Mile of the Big Quilcene River. They removed a 2,300-foot dike and replaced an 81-foot bridge with a 1,140-foot floodplain-spanning structure. This allowed them to build a wide multichannel network to give the river room to spread out. The Tribe raised $37 million to fund the work.

Randy believes the work will undo decades of damage.

"We're finally taking the patient out of the straitjacket and letting them run free," said Randy. "The town won't get flooded out either."

A New Beginning for the Big Quilcene

In Moon Valley, streamflow was diverted from the old river channel into the new channel network in early July.

"For the first time in quite a while, when adult salmon start returning in September," said Gus, "they'll be showing up to a really wonderful, habitat-rich channel instead of the degraded ditch that they've been faced with for so long."

The Jamestown S'Klallam, Skokomish, and Port Gamble S'Klallam tribes have fished in Big Quilcene River Bay for generations. The restoration offers a chance to renew their traditional practices.

"The Tribe views restoring salmon habitat as literally a moral responsibility-to take care of the fish and ensure that they return for future generations," said Randy. "And it's a very tangible responsibility. There's nothing abstract about it."

Randy first walked the Big Quilcene River more than 50 years ago. Over the following decades, he has worked on many habitat restoration projects across the northeast Olympic Peninsula. Yet, the Big Quilcene River has a special significance. Now, as the work nears completion, he finally sees the healthy river he dreamed of becoming a reality.

"For me," Randy said, "it's probably something like the NFL quarterback who has played almost a full career and finally got to the Super Bowl-and won it."