DESCRIPTION
The Washington DNR, with assistance from the Mason Conservation District, proposes to undertake a fish passagebarrier inventory of the Mason County portion of the Tahuya Peninsula. The project will also include prioritization of the identified barriers into a rankedaction list, with30% engineered designs developed for five of the top ranked barrier sites.The study area encompasses 108 square miles which includes over 224 miles of streams that are mapped as fish bearing by WDFW. A coarse GIS analysis indicates that there are likely 600-1000 total stream crossings within the study area. Comprehensively identifying potential barriers is the first step in opening historic spawning and rearing habitat for fall chinook ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ), fall and summerchum ( O. keta ), coho ( O. kisutch ), coastal cutthroat ( O. clarki ) and steelhead trout ( O. mykiss ).