PROTECTING A WETLAND HAVEN FOR SALMON
Nestled along the Washington coast just north of the Columbia River mouth, Willapa Bay is the second-largest estuary on the West Coast and home to an extraordinary mosaic of Pacific Northwest habitats. Its salt marshes, tidal mudflats, dunes, beaches, grasslands, freshwater wetlands, and remnant old-growth forests support an abundance of fish and wildlife. Where rivers like the Bear, Palix, Nacelle, North, Willapa, Nemah, Niawiakum, and Cedar empty into the bay, a vibrant estuarine ecosystem provides rich habitats for migratory and resident coastal birds and crucial spawning and rearing grounds for native salmonids.
A key source of freshwater for the bay, the Willapa River flows 44 miles from its headwaters in the Willapa Hills through a working landscape shaped by generations of small-scale agriculture, forestry and commercial shellfishing. Its lower reaches are wider, slower and tidally influenced, winding past the communities of Willapa, Raymond, and South Bend before entering the bay.
Western Rivers Conservancy is working to protect a bounty of wetlands along the lower Willapa just upstream of Raymond. The 393-acre Willapa Wetlands property, composed almost entirely of wetlands, encompasses 2.2 miles of river frontage and 4.5 miles of inlets and sloughs lined with Sitka spruce. This combination of freshwater, estuarine, and riverine wetlands creates rich, diverse habitats for fish and wildlife, including critical transitional and rearing habitat for Chinook, coho, and chum salmon.
RARE HABITAT FOR IMPERILED BAND-TAILED PIGEON
With their key location along the Pacific Flyway, these wetlands also support an array of migratory and coastal-dependent birds, including fox sparrow, osprey, marsh wren, and yellow-throated warbler. Band-tailed pigeon, bald eagle, and dusky Canada goose—species of great conservation need—depend on the property, as do river otters. The site even harbors a rare salt mineral lick used by imperiled band-tailed pigeons to obtain the sodium they need to produce eggs and nourish their young. It’s one of only a handful of known mineral sites of its kind in the state.
Fluctuating salinity between freshwater and saltwater across the property provides a crucial transition zone that helps salmon regulate their move between saltwater and freshwater. This transitional habitat is vital for both migrating smolts headed to sea and adults returning to spawn. While much of Willapa Bay’s vegetated wetlands are blocked by berms and tide gates, the Willapa Wetlands property remains fully accessible to fish. Recognizing its ecological importance, NOAA designated the property “Essential Fish Habitat” for fall Chinook and coho.
After WRC purchases Willapa Wetlands, we will immediately transfer ownership of the property to the Chinook Indian Nation, securing lasting protection of this special property while placing ancestral homelands back into the hands of their original stewards.
Our work at Willapa Wetlands builds on WRC’s recent conservation of 2,366 acres along the Bear River (which flows into the bay to the south), expanding protections across a coastal system that remains one of the Northwest’s great estuarine landscapes.
