Great Peninsula Conservancy has purchased fee title to a 9.8 acre wooded parcel in the Big Beef Creek Watershed, which encompasses approximately 330 ft. along both sides of the mainstem of Big Beef Creek, and approximately 100 ft. of a small, unnamed tributary. Proportionate to its scale, the land contains a diversity of habitats-main-stem and tributary stream channels, healthy riparian woodlands, hardwood bottomlands, seeps and springs, fallen logs,old growth stumps and an older second growth conuiferous forest on steep, sloping topography. As one of the few remaining private parcels on lower Big Beef Creek, conservation of this property is invaluable in protecting fish and wildlife habitat from degradation or conversion. Lands owned by the Department of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife flank the property as part of a larger corridor of 900 acres of protected riparian lands conserved by the Hood Canal Salmon Sanctuary project between 1996 and 2001. Conservation will reduce pressure from development to maintain forest cover and recruitment of large woody debris important to enhancing channel complexity. Protection preserves high quality spawning habitat for summer chum, coho and steelhead, due in part to the presence of a gravel substrate and large woody debris in the streambed. The loss of riparian habitat is a limiting factor to salmon habitat recovery in the watershed and greater Hood Canal. Once extirpated in the 1990s, subsequent re-introduction of summer chum on the creek has been successful. Small to medium-sized pools on the site provide habitat for the variety of anadromous fish species that use the creek. The conservation-minded landowners signed a letter of intent with Great Peninsula Conservancy in fall 2008. Great Peninsula Conservancy completed purchase of the property in late November 2011.