The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is working on an expanded effort to conserve and rebuild Puget Sound Chinook salmon runs. These efforts include support for improvements in habitat protection to ensure that Chinook salmon have the clean, productive, pollutant-free river and estuarine waters essential for their survival. We are working with our recovery partners to increase funding for habitat restoration and minimize impediments to accelerated implementation of habitat restoration projects. We are also working with the tribal co-managers to develop and submit to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a long-term fishery plan.

In a scoping plan developed as part of this effort, we have compiled and summarized information to help inform our efforts to conserve and rebuild Puget Sound Chinook salmon runs and develop the long-term fishery plan. We have focused on habitat protection and restoration because of its fundamental importance to the rebuilding of Puget Sound Chinook salmon runs, and on fisheries because of the current effort to develop a long-term fishery management plan. Although we recognize the importance of hatchery programs, much of the essential information for that topic was presented and discussed during the recently completed, extensive public process that resulted in adoption by the Fish and Wildlife Commission of a new hatchery policy.

We are seeking public input on this document and requesting suggestions and comments on the following topics: