Middle Issaquah Creek Conservation

King County Water and Land Resources used this funding for the Middle Issaquah Conservation Project, which acquired 4 undeveloped properties, totaling 31.52 acres along Issaquah Creek in the middle Issaquah sub-basin. The immediate benefits are the protection and conservation of 31.52 acres of mature forest, wetlands and riparian corridor along approximately half a mile of both sides of Issaquah Creek and more than 500 feet of three salmonid-bearing tributaries to Issaquah Creek. The mature forests and wetlands throughout this reach are essential to the protection of water quantity, water quality and aquatic habitat and ecological processes for all of Issaquah Creek and Lake Sammamish.

Issaquah Creek is a WRIA 8 core area for Chinook production and the project site was identified as a high-priority protection site in the Lake Washington/Cedar/Sammamish Watershed Chinook Salmon Conservation Plan (WRIA 8 2005). Issaquah Creek supports Chinook, char, sockeye, coho, steelhead, kokanee, and cutthroat trout. The target parcels are a critical link to providing contiguous habitat and key ecological processes across the Issaquah basin from the protected headwaters in Tiger and Taylor Mountain to Squak Mountain and Lake Sammamish State Park at the mouth of Issaquah Creek. The Middle Issaquah Reach was designated as a Regionally Significant Resource Area and provides excellent salmonid rearing and spawning habitat including process areas that offer braided channels and pools, clean spawning gravel, large woody debris and a diverse and sinuous riparian corridor (King County 1996).

The goal of the project is to protect intact habitat from degradation. The objective of the project is to protect salmon refugia and habitat that is part of a key ecological process.