FISH AMERICA FOUNDATION
The Fish America Foundation (FAF) awarded the Task Force $10,000 to continue our work at Buck Island in Monroe. The money funds the purchase of trees, weed fabric, mulch and other project supplies to continue working to suppress invasives such as Japanese knotweed and Himalayan blackberry, to enhance the forest canopy, and to address the erosion at the toe of the island. The NOAA Restoration Center is a partial funder for this grant.

Fish America Foundation

NORTHWEST WOMEN FLYFISHERS
The Task Force has been in need of a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit for many years. With a $1,000 grant from the Northwest Women Flyfishers (NWF) in Spring 2003, our dream has become a reality. Matching funds from the Fish America Foundation grant ($1,000), and the USFWS grant (approximately $250), provided the balance of monies to purchase an excellent GPS unit. Task Force staff are now able to collect large quantities of data about site details, including site perimeters, locations of invasive and noxious weeds, placement of large woody debris, annual fluctuation of erosion and deposition on projects, the locations of macroinvertebrate sampling and carcass distribution sites, and much more. The Task Force recently completed a 2001 grant from NWF with the planting of 1,500 small native conifers in the Buck Island understory.

Northwest Women Flyfishers

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Grant
In June 2003, the USFWS awarded the Task Force $23,646 toward materials and staff time to continue our efforts on Buck Island, and in the Woods Creek basin, in and near the City of Monroe. Funds will purchase native trees and shrubs as we work towards controlling invasive and noxious weeds, restoring native conifers to the understory, and addressing erosion processes throughout the island and watershed. Project partners include the City of Monroe, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Snohomish County Surface Water Management, Fish America Foundation, NOAA Restoration Center, and the Washington State Department of Corrections.

US Fish and Wildlife Service website

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation 5 Star Community Restoration Grant
In July 2003, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation 5 Star Community Restoration Program awarded the Task Force $15,000 toward our continued efforts in the Portage Creek watershed, a tributary to the Stillaguamish River. Funds will support staff time, acquisition of native trees and shrubs, purchase and installation of large woody debris and other materials, and will support a larger cooperative effort between the Task Force, Snohomish County Parks and Recreation Department, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians, the Stilly BankSavers Project, the City of Arlington, and The Experiential Learning Team (TELT) - a group of home-schooled students from the Arlington area. Funding for this project is through the EPA and NOAA.

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation website

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Snohomish County Community Salmon Fund Grant Program

In spring 2004, the Task Force was awarded $48,300 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB) to complete the Tychman Slough Pilot Riparian Enhancement Project near Sultan, WA. This newly established grant program was created by the NFWF and SRFB to stimulate small-scale voluntary action by landowners, community groups, and businesses to support salmon recovery on private property in the Snohomish River basin. Over the next year and a half the grant will allow the Task Force to conduct community-based habitat restoration while working with private landowners living along this active side channel of the lower Skykomish River, in a very biologically productive area known as the braided reach.

Money from the grant will be used to: support staff time, purchase native plants and supplies, and to coordinate volunteer planting and monitoring activities. At least four volunteer planting events will occur at two different sites resulting in over 3+ acres of re-established riparian buffer. The Task Force will be supported on this project by willing private landowners, WDFW, Snohomish County, Monroe High School, Skagit Valley CC Student Interns, and by a Washington State Department of Corrections supervised work crew from the Everett Community Justice Center.