Hiawata Creek is a small (1.75 mile) tributary to Pickering Passage. Many of its natural processes have been impacted on some reaches. At RM 0.5, a total barrier culvert impedes adult and juvenile fish passage, where upstream a fishway is passing some fish at some life stages. Between the two man-made structures, WDFW installed a roughened channel to mitigate the effects of the fishway. This alternative has failed and bank erosion is now taking place. The creek forks at RM 1. Timber harvests along the right bank fork have impacted the stream. The left bank fork has its headwaters in a wetland with an intact riparian corridor comprised of numerous conifers in the lower section. The system has good spawning gravel and key pieces of LWD . The estuary is intact and owned by one private landowner.

Both Hiawata and Twilight creeks have limited rural residential development and are largely held in commercial timber. One private landowner owns the estuary on Hiawata Creek and cooperative landowners dot the area.

Extensive logging in the Hiawata Creek drainage led to elevated inputs of fine sediment. Streams 14.0089 through 14.0093 had excellent quality spawning substrate in the mid-1980s (Burns 2002, personal communication). Sand, small gravel, and fines are the dominant substrates in streams 14.0084 (Hiawata Creek), 14.0087, and Jones Creek (Fraser 2002, personal communication). Substrate embeddedness was rated poor.

There are two projects on Hiawata Creek that are identified as high priority for the Pickering Passage tributaires.
1) Address fish passage barriers on Hiawata creek. A total barrier culvert, failed roughened channel and partially functioning fishway inhibit the use of the available spawning and rearing habitat on this creek.
2) Correct barrier culvert at the headwaters. The 50-acre wetland offers good rearing potential to over-wintering coho and cutthroat. The correction of this blockage will dramatically increase the amount of off-channel habitat in Pickering Passage.
3)Preserve tributary estuary on Hiawata and Twilight Creeks.

Description from the Salmonid Habitat Limiting Factors Water Resource Inventory Area 14, Kennedy-Goldsborough Basin and the Salmon Habitat Protection and Restoration Plan for Water Resource Inventory Area 14, Kennedy-Goldsborough. For fish distribution see the map image under photos. For priority projects on Hiawata Creek see Hiawata Creek -Priority Habitat Projects and Programs.