In December 2025, Wild Fish Conservancy secured a prestigious national grant award from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to advance a critical fish habitat restoration project in the Finn Creek Watershed on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. This federal award will support Wild Fish Conservancy and partners in the final design and permitting phase of the project to reduce flooding in the community of Hansville while restoring fish passage, recovering natural processes, and sustaining estuarine and freshwater habitats used by threatened wild salmon, forage fish, and waterfowl species.
The Finn Creek Watershed and Estuary historically provided important rearing and spawning habitat for wild salmon, trout, and other fish and wildlife species native to Puget Sound. Similar to many other small watersheds across the basin, development in the early 20th century eliminated these natural features that are essential to supporting and sustaining wild fish populations and ecosystems.
Today, the Finn Creek Estuary is buried under fill and hosts numerous artificial fish passage barriers—including a tidegate and three undersized culverts. These alterations to the natural environment continuously impede wild salmon access to two miles of intact spawning and rearing habitats located upstream in the Finn Creek Watershed. While blocking access for wild coho salmon, chum salmon, and sea-run cutthroat trout, these conditions have further destroyed estuarine foraging habitats for non-natal juvenile Chinook salmon that are imperative to the recovery of Southern Resident killer whales.
This new award from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation represents a major step forward for the Finn Creek restoration project, enabling Wild Fish Conservancy and partners to complete final designs and permitting for the habitat project throughout 2026–2027. This effort will result in a shovel-ready restoration project by 2028 to remove all fish passage barriers, restore floodplain connectivity and tidal circulation, and recover the natural processes responsible for creating and sustaining freshwater, estuarine, and nearshore habitats used by threatened fish and wildlife populations in Puget Sound.
As we advance this important effort throughout 2026, Wild Fish Conservancy will continue to keep you up to date on our progress toward restoring the northwest’s wild fish ecosystems on the Kitsap Peninsula.
