WANT FRY WITH THAT?

MAT-SU — When it comes to salmon habitat preservation, there are no fry too small to protect.

On the day before the Alaska Department of Fish and Game planned to close the Little Susitna River to king salmon fishing, about a dozen ConocoPhillips volunteers were wading through shallow water and mud Thursday reclaiming a Little Su tributary. Organized by The Nature Conservancy, the volunteers spent the afternoon shoring up and revegetating the banks of the private creek.

The property owners removed an old culvert on the tributary that was impeding the return of king salmon fry from accessing prime habitat upstream. It’s part of a project that has replaced about a dozen culverts along the Little Su system over the past four years, said Corinne Smith, Mat-Su program director for The Nature Conservancy.

“Because it was small, the culvert had a pretty high volume of water going through it and it was an impediment for young salmon to swim through it,” she said. “What we’re doing today is stabilizing the bank and bringing some vegetation back in so we don’t have to worry about erosion. It’ll just go back to a natural state.”

It’s very important work, Smith said, because the Little Susitna is a vital salmon fishery for the Valley and state. If young salmon can’t get through culverts on tributaries, they likely won’t survive to return year after year.

“This is so important, because this is where the young salmon are rearing,” she said. “So, if the young salmon can’t get upstream and can’t get to where the better habitat is, they’re not going to be surviving, going out to the ocean, and they’re not coming back. If they can’t survive the nursery, they’re not going to come back as adults.”

Replacing old and restrictive culverts can make a huge difference for the Little Su fishery, Smith said, as evidenced by this week’s announcement from the state it’s closing the Little Su to king salmon fishing as of 11 p.m., today. The action comes as the ADF&G has measured fewer escapement numbers than it needs to make its goal for the season. In fact, the king salmon harvest is the lowest on record since 2001.

Owned by the Walther family, the stream volunteers reclaimed Thursday will become part of a conservation easement, said Calli Donn, a family member.

Like many local property owners, they bought their land with the culvert already there and didn’t realize it was restrictive or was hindering the salmon population, Donn said.

“The Nature Conservancy came out probably a year or so ago to look at the culvert, and that’s when we started looking at the culvert project,” she said. “We ended up removing it instead of replacing it and have chosen not to use this trail anymore. Now the stream will just flow naturally.”

Being a responsible property owner is important to her family, Donn said.

“We’re very happy with this project,” she said. “We’re actually putting a conservation easement on this property so it’s going to be preserved. There are a lot of streams back here full of salmon.”

It’s a program Donn recommends other local property owners consider. It doesn’t cost anything to replace or remove a culvert and can make a significant difference for the Little Susitna system.

“If they have a culvert and they can be replaced and they can use their property as they’d like to, they should definitely look into this,” Dunn said. “There’s no reason not to. We’re very excited about the property. We have some pretty cool salmon streams all throughout it.”

Along with making tributaries more accessible for salmon fry, the culvert project is also used for education. Volunteers — in this case, employees and interns from ConocoPhillips — learn how to determine the overall health of a stream. By inspecting the types and numbers of insects in and around the water, they can get a reasonable accounting of how healthy a stream is.

It’s a lesson Robyn McGhee said she maybe learned back in college, but had forgotten until Thursday. McGhee was among the dozen volunteers working to reclaim the stream. An Anchorage resident who’s originally from Big Lake, McGhee said she feels good about giving back to the Valley’s habitat.

“This is just a great opportunity and a lot of fun so far,” she said. “It’s wonderful and I’m personally glad I can be part of it.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.