This is an educational multi-cache presenting the Fish Passage Restoration Project in Kitsap County's Newberry Hill Heritage Park (NHHP). You will find information signs at the posted coordinates which will help you determine the final cache location. A recent news story is provided below to encourage your visit!
The coordinates for the cache container and log are at N 47 36.ABC W 122 45.DEF.
A = How many people are in the photo of geotech engineers, foresters, and wildlife specialists?
B = The concrete “Bridge Kit” cost $_0,000.
C = The concrete bridge components arrived in September, 2_19
D = Friends of Newberry Hill Heritage Park raised $_3,000.
E = It took _ years to study the stream.
F = How many elevated culverts were installed to handle overflow storm water, while not draining the pond?
Bring your own pen!
Volunteer effort at Newberry Hill Heritage Park builds bridge for salmon habitat
Josh Farley for the Kitsap Sun, published May 5, 2021
Wetlands surrounded by evergreens seem to extend in every direction in Newberry Hill Heritage Park, a preserve of more than 1,000 acres east of Seabeck Highway. So lush with native and threatened species is one marsh that it's classified as "high conservation value" in the eyes of the state. That's where Frank Stricklin believed fish like coho salmon could also flourish — if only they could swim there. "This could be the healthiest salmon fry in the county," said Stricklin, as he looked over the vast wetland filled with a buffet of creatures the fish like to eat.
Stricklin and an army of volunteers have succeeded in clearing that very path for salmon. In the past six years, they planned, designed and built a bridge and stream channel to connect the coho and other fish with the pristine habitat. Arno Bergstrom, Kitsap County's community forester, said volunteers including Stricklin raised $14,000 for the project and provided much of the labor. "If this bridge project been your typical county project it would have cost over $200,000 rather than the $80,000 that was spent," Bergstrom said. "This was accomplished due to Frank Stricklin’s leadership, expertise and hard work."
The coho get cut off
During the last ice age thousands of years ago, glaciers cut the wetland and stream, which cascaded down to what today we call Puget Sound, part of the Salish Sea. The still-unnamed creek crosses Seabeck Highway until it merges into Lost Creek, which in turn flows into Chico Creek and finally the saltwater sound. But during a period of logging around the 1940s, a road was installed around the wetland whose culvert effectively blocked access to almost all of the small coho and other fish species. Still more barriers to fish passage came downstream, locking out salmon from former spawning habitats and interfering with the keystone species. But when Kitsap County removed one such barrier, a culvert under Seabeck Highway, coho began to propel ever higher toward the Newberry Hill Heritage Park wetland — but almost all failed to get past that old logging road.
With the establishment of the Newberry Hill Heritage Park, the old logging road had become a trail. And volunteers like Stricklin began to see the possibility of salmon recovery. At a conference about eight years ago, Stricklin had an opportunity to meet Steve and Gene Copher, a father and son who owned a company that builds modular bridges in Oregon. The pair signed on to help with the project. Surveyors and engineers also lent a hand to the army of volunteers that pushed the new project along. They donned hip boots and took measurements using lasers to find the best spot for a bridge. They had to do the math for a stream capable of carrying 300 acres' worth of rainfall as well as potential flood years.
How they hope to bring the coho back
Volunteers cut a v-shaped channel, added fill to raise the trail and installed the bridge. It's capable of holding up to 80,000 pounds, strong enough for emergency vehicles or fire trucks if the need arises. The volunteers got help from another species — the beaver, a kind of engineer in the animal kingdom. Though at times thought of as a nuisance, the beaver is found to be quite helpful by conserving water with their dams and creating habitat for salmon. The volunteers had in mind a similar goal. In total, volunteers removed five culverts, some of which had failed, that once drew water from the wetland at the expense of salmon passage. The process had to meet the approval of state departments, the Suquamish Tribe and Kitsap County.
There's still water in the wetland that in years past would've been dry by now, a sign that young coho have a potential spot where they can stay for more than a year to mature before making the journey to the ocean. "So far, it's working perfectly," Stricklin said of the finished project. Stricklin said that a typical fall of rain, in both the amount and timing, will be key to seeing the first small coho and other fish make their way into the wetland. "Maybe we'll have some this fall," Stricklin said. "We're hopeful."