Imagine a board game in which your playing piece is a Yakima River salmon, and the goal of the game is to find a tributary that offers a suitable place for spawning and a good place for juvenile fish to thrive.
Here are some of the game cards you are likely to draw:
“Access blocked by culvert barrier, lose 1 turn."
“Water temperature too warm, go back 20 spaces.”
“No place for juvenile fish to hide and rest, lose 2 turns.”
“Mistakenly swim up irrigation diversion channel, game over.”
To give steelhead and salmon a fighting chance in the real game of life, a group of organizations have formed the Yakima Tributary Access and Habitat Program (YTAHP).
Leveraging funding from Bonneville Power Administration, YTAHP partners have surveyed access and habitat conditions in upper Yakima tributaries and are working with landowners in Kittitas and Yakima Counties to undertake voluntary projects for correcting the problems identified in the surveys.
YTAHP projects to date have included state-of-the-art fish screens to keep fish out of irrigation diversion channel; arched culverts and bridges to replace impassable barriers; and stream bank restoration projects involving bank shaping, large woody debris placement, and native plantings to provide shade and resting places for fish.
In addition, irrigation efficiency projects help prevent low summer stream flows.
The YTAHP partnership is a dynamic group whose members are dedicated to reviewing, prioritizing, and moving projects forward; supporting each other’s efforts; and collaborating to help steelhead and salmon in the Yakima River watershed “pass GO” for generations to come.
YTAHP Members include:
- Ahtanum Irrigation District
- Kittitas Conservation Trust
- Kittitas County Conservation District (KCCD)
- Kittitas County Water Purveyors
- Mid Columbia Regional Enhancement Group
- North Yakima Conservation District (NYCD)
- South Central Washington RC&D
- Yakama Nation
- Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
For more information about YTAHP, contact Anna Lael, Kittitas County Conservation District Manager,
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or Mike Tobin, North Yakima Conservation District Manager,
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.
Anna Lael, KCCD, explains the new pumping system for an efficient irrigation project on Coleman Creek in Ellensburg.
Dave Child checks on a recent fish screen installation in
North Yakima CD.
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