Tulalip Tribes, Snohomish County receive grants for coastal preservation
SNOHOMISH — Two conservation projects in Snohomish County will get a helping hand thanks to grants from a national fund dedicated to coastal resilience and preservation.
Earlier this month, the county Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Tulalip Tribes both received grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Coastal Resilience Fund. The foundation partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to offer 88 grants totaling $136 million to organizations across the country, according to a press release.
Snohomish County received $5.85 million from the program, to be supplemented with $2.1 million of county funds, said department spokesperson Meghan Jordan. The funds will go towards restoring salmon habitat along a 1 ½-mile stretch of the Snohomish River at Thomas’ Eddy, 5 miles south of Snohomish.
Mike Rustay, senior habitat specialist for the department, said restoring Thomas’ Eddy has been on the county’s to-do list for decades. Once privately owned, the bend in the river is now part of the county-managed Bob Heirman Wildlife Park. The original owners, who used the land for farming and gravel mining, constructed a heavily reinforced stone levee to keep the river’s annual floodwaters out. But once the land became a place for conservation and recreation, it was obvious the levee needed to come down, Rustay said.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/tulalip-tribes-snohomish-county-receive-grants-for-coastal-preservation/
