South Prairie Creek Watershed Catalog

The project will utilize existing information from past and present assessment and evaluation efforts to identify and design protection and restoration actions for the lower 15.5 miles of South Prairie Creek and the lower 6 miles of Wilkeson Creek. Project efforts will include landowner outreach to parcels identified as high priority for protection in the 2002 South Prairie Creek Action Plan that have not yet been conserved, development of preliminary designs for up to 4 reach-scale floodplain restoration projects, and detailed site specific recommendations for: other properties to be acquired, areas for improved forestry management, restoration of drainage ditches, tributary confluences, groundwater seeps, and wall based channels, fish passage improvements, beaver reintroduction and installation of beaver dam analogues.
This project will design actions to create and maintain critical habitat functionality, thermal diversity, hydrologic stability, and geomorphic structure to support adult to juvenile out-migrant survival, and productivity for spawning, rearing, foraging, migrating, and overwintering life history stages in South Prairie Creek for fall Chinook, steelhead, coho, chum, pink, and cutthroat, and bull trout.
The project team for this project includes strong partnerships between Pierce Conservation District, Forterra, Puyallup Tribe, Pierce County Public Works, and South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group.

Project goals are to accelerate the rate of restoration and protection efforts in the South Prairie Creek Basin in order to create ecological lift and ensure salmon and trout populations in the watershed can survive and thrive into the future. South Prairie Creek is host to all species of salmon and trout (with the exception of Sockeye) and life stages year round, necessitating a diversity of habitat conditions that function across broad spatial and temporal scales. Project goals strive to increase instream complexity and floodplain connectivity to improve egg-to-fry survival for peak-flow-timed spawners (Chinook, pink, coho, and chum). Floodplain reconnection efforts will also boost water storage and groundwater recharge to increase thermal diversity year-round to ease thermal stress and reduce thermal barriers impacting fall Chinook and pink adults, and juvenile Chinook, coho, Steelhead, cutthroat and bull trout juvenile-adults rearing and foraging in late July- late September. The ultimate goal of the project is to design solutions for how to address habitat issues to improve the watershed to provide the highest level of ecological function to support productive salmon and trout populations, increase survival and life history diversity, and provide year around foraging and refuge opportunities for fish into the future in the face of climate change.