Seattle City Light, the Upper Skagit Tribe, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) were awarded a $255,000 grant to conduct research on the productivity and life history of juvenile steelhead in the Skagit River watershed.
The grant was awarded to our research partnership by the Environmental Protection Agency and Puget Sound Partnership (PSP), and is the first major grant awarded for steelhead research by PSP. This research project will employ mark-recapture techniques to estimate the production of steelhead smolts (juveniles swimming to the sea) in the Skagit, as well as the freshwater and ocean survival of these fish.
This study will result in a monitoring system for steelhead that can be used to gage the population health of this Endangered Species Act listed species in the Skagit watershed.