Where We Work

Habitat Restoration Program

People For Puget Sound's Habitat Restoration program began in 1995 to preserve and enhance ecosystems in some of Puget Sound's most industrialized shores on the Duwamish River. The program now includes shoreline restoration sites from Orcas Island in the San Juans to Mud Bay in Olympia, and is actively involved in promoting the practice of restoration across the Sound. Click here to go directly to a map of our restoration sites, which also illustrates the location of our citizen science projects.

Greater Puget Sound is a big place, and ecological characteristics and restoration priorities vary as you travel from South Sound's deep inlets and extensive mudflats to the rocky archipelagos of the North Sound.  Here's the way we break it down:

NORTH SOUND

This extensive region includes shorelines from Snohomish County to the BC border, and the rugged north Olympic Peninsula.  Restoration sites in northern Puget Sound are designed to provide juvenile salmon rearing for fish populations emerging from large rivers like the Fraser, Skagit and Snohomish.  Restoration of historically significant coastal habitats like lagoons and barrier estuaries shortens the distance juvenile salmon must swim between useful feeding and resting areas along their migration from the rivers, through Puget Sound and ultimately the Pacific Ocean.  These isolated features are necessary to maintain the genetic diversity of salmon populations across the vast Puget Sound landscape.  Typical restoration techniques include removing tidal and flow barriers to free fish movement and deliver needed sediments and wood to the shoreline as well as providing a shady, cool shoreline of native plants that drop insects, the juvenile salmon’s preferred food item. Click here for more information on some of our sites in the North Sound, or contact our North Sound Restoration Ecologist Rachel Benbrook.

CENTRAL SOUND

Our central Puget Sound sites are currently all in King County.  While full restoration of the historic functions of heavily populated Central Puget Sound are not likely, our habitat restoration projects along the Duwamish River provide much needed minimum survival protection for migrating juvenile salmon emerging from the Green River system, filtration of upland stormwater flows and pleasant urban public access sites that connect humans with nature. Our Maury Island restoration project supports forage fish spawning habitat necessary for general food web support in the Central Sound and a potential for reforestation of a historic gravel mine adjacent to a state aquatic reserve.  Click here for more information on Central Sound sites or contact Central Sound Restoration Ecologist Dhira Brown.

SOUTH SOUND

While the loss of functional shorelines and wetlands in South Puget Sound has been less than in King County, South Sound is one of the fastest growing communities in the basin. Acquiring and restoring shoreline habitats here is a race against time.  Similar to up north, restoration consists of removing barriers to free water flow and fish passage as well as replacing non-native infestations of the forest understory with native plants.  South Sound is also more susceptible to nutrient pollution than the rest of the Sound because of long oceanographic residence time for the water.  Restoration prevents upland nutrient loads from entering the Sound which can cause low dissolved oxygen and prevents pathogens from closing South Sound’s extensive commercial and recreational shellfish beds. Follow this link for more information on some of our South Sound sites or contact our South Sound Restoration Ecologist Christina Donehower.

Map of Restoration Sites

We keep our four Restoration Ecologists very busy working on restoration sites and citizen science projects across Puget Sound and the Northwest Straits.  This map illustrates where we are working- click on any symbol  for details and contact information.
View People For Puget Sound: Restoration Site and Project Map in a larger map