By Nathan Rice
Restoration Biologist
Lummi Nation Natural Resources

Salmon are essential in so many ways – to our health, our cultures, our economy, and as the thread that holds Northwest ecosystems together. That iconic species like Chinook and steelhead are threatened in Puget Sound, where I was born, raised, and lived most of my life, has always felt deeply unacceptable. At my first work party with NSEA more than two decades ago, I was inspired by the work to restore our streams and recover the salmon that define our home. It just made sense. Little did I know at the time, that experience would guide my career for years to come.

A few years later, way back in 2005, I joined NSEA as a Volunteer Coordinator, where I organized riparian planting parties and helped with monitoring and education programs. Engaging diverse community members in restoring habitat for the salmon we all value was very rewarding. Restoration often feels like putting things back together, and bringing people together to do that work was particularly meaningful.

My experience at NSEA helped start my career in fish and wildlife research and restoration, from surveying salmon spawners across the Nooksack watershed, to restoring Puget Sound shorelines and surveying marbled murrelet habitat – another threatened species that ties together our marine and terrestrial ecosystems. After I finished my Master’s in Environmental Science at Western Washington University, I felt pulled back to the work of ecological restoration, to apply science to pressing problems and build solutions to recover threatened species.

In 2018, I started working for Lummi Nation as a restoration biologist and soon found myself working with NSEA once again, many years later. Lummi Nation has been partnering with NSEA to restore Porter Creek, a tributary to the Middle Fork Nooksack River, where steelhead and multiple salmon species spawn. In 2020, we removed part of a decades-old berm to reconnect the creek with its historical floodplain. In November, just over a year after restoration, the creek reclaimed an old, forested channel that is quickly developing into quality habitat for salmon and other species. This February, the first salmon redd was documented in this new channel – the first of many more to come.

Today, when I see how much the alder and Doug fir saplings that we planted years ago have grown, the impact of those NSEA work parties feels very real. When I multiply that by the hundreds of projects that NSEA, Lummi, and all of our restoration partners work on, it feels like hope for a future of healthy watersheds, whole communities, and abundant salmon runs returning home again and again.