Riparian zones benefit salmon

Based on recent opinion pages in the La Conner Weekly News there appears to be a lack of clear or accurate information regarding protections for riparian zones adjacent to salmon streams in general and the Lorraine Loomis Act in particular.

Intact riparian zones (the land along stream banks) provide immense benefits to salmon.

They provide shade to keep streams cool, they provide large pieces of wood where juvenile fish take refuge from floods and predators, they provide bank stability, they filter and absorb nutrients coming off of farms and suburbs and they provide leaf litter and insects that form much of the basis of the aquatic food chain.

They also protect landowners from some of the effects of high-velocity flows during floods.

There is an enormous amount of scientific evidence on the benefit of riparian zones in the Pacific Northwest, not just to fish but to wildlife and humans as well.

The riparian science synthesis from our state Department of Fish and Wildlife stretches to 304 pages, but is only a summary of the peer-reviewed research that has been published to date.

There are many stream reaches in the Skagit Valley that are home to salmon and trout but have little or no intact riparian zone.

The vast majority of these are in agricultural areas.

The Voluntary Stewardship Program, passed in 2011, was supposed to result in better riparian protection on ag lands, but it didn’t.

Suburban and rural landowners are required under county regulations to leave a buffer along streams.

Even urban developers are required to leave a buffer if there is currently something there (i.e.

trees) to protect.

The timber industry agreed decades ago to limit timber harvest along their streams.

Other landowners have to retain intact riparian zones, but there are big exemptions for farmers.

Many farmers do the right thing anyway and leave ample riparian buffers, but a few do not.

The Lorraine Loomis Act would level that playing field by not carving out such exemptions for agricultural lands, which would therefore amend a very large, ecologically important and long-standing gap in riparian protection.

The Lorraine Loomis Act would compensate landowners for lands they put under riparian protection.

It is often claimed that the habitat issue boils down to one of humans vs. fish.

Not really.

Because a lot of humans like fish, or they like to fish, or, like the tribes, are dependent on fish for their culture and their livelihood.

So protecting fish benefits a lot of – I would argue all – Skagitonians.

Some humans very much want an environment that includes healthy, harvestable populations of fish that also support orcas and the rest of the aquatic environment.

That a few recalcitrant farmers have to set aside buffer areas to protect fish habitat – like the rest of us do (without the compensation) – seems to me a reasonable accommodation to assuring the continued survival of a vital public resource.