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BPA helps restore and protect Columbia River Basin wetlands

Bulldozers enter the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge in June embarking on a two year fish habitat restoration project. The effort supported by BPA will reconnect 960 acres of wetlands that have been cut off from the Columbia River for generations.
Have you ever seen a marshy area near a river or ocean and wondered what it was? Plenty of fish, like endangered salmon and steelhead, and many species of birds and other animals rely on wetlands and their interconnected habitats for survival.
With its many environmental partners, the Bonneville Power Administration celebrates World Wetlands Day each year on Feb. 2 to help raise awareness about the vital role of wetlands for people, our region and the planet. The day marks the 1971 adoption of the Convention on Wetlands in Ramsar, Iran, on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil or is present near the surface of the ground, either seasonally or all year. They often provide critical habitat for young salmon to eat, grow and get protection from seasonal high water events and predators as they journey to the ocean. If you like Northwest salmon, thank a wetland. In addition to providing habitat and a food source for fish and wildlife, wetlands also:
  • Stabilize shorelines.
  • Filter and purify water.
  • Recharge ground water.
  • Cool water temperatures.
  • Store water and provide flood protection.
As part of its mitigation efforts for the construction and operation of Columbia and Snake river dams, BPA, with federal, state, tribal and other partners, has improved thousands of acres of fish and wildlife habitat along Northwest rivers and their tributaries.

Examples of some of the work funded by BPA ratepayers include the removal of an old water-control structure on Government Island to reconnect 289 acres of floodplain and marshland to help young salmon and steelhead. Check out Government Island and another smaller restoration project in the Columbia River estuary near Portland, Oregon.

Near Astoria, Oregon, Northwest utility ratepayers helped purchase land that farmers had diked and separated from the Wallooskee and Youngs rivers decades ago. In partnership with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Northwest utility ratepayers paid to breach the dike, allowing hundreds of acres to flood twice a day with the rise and fall of ocean tides. The reactivation of hundreds of acres of flood plain is bringing great benefits to young salmon, steelhead and other species of fish and wildlife.

Read more about the Steigerwald restoration project pictured above. It is BPA’s largest fish and wildlife habitat restoration effort in the lower Columbia River estuary.

For more on Northwest stream and wetland restoration, see BPA’s Fish and Wildlife Program site.