Larry Phillips from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife explained how very little work has been done to assess the status of coastal cutthroat in South Puget Sound. Some work has been done in the past few years to establish potential index areas to monitor spawning cutthroat population numbers and to track cutthroat movements using acoustic tags and receivers.
Results of this work have identified Skookum Creek as a high density population of cutthroat. Other potential index areas or important spawning locations include Kennedy Creek, Little Creek, Goldsborough Creek and Mill Creek. The acoustic tagging results have suggested that the cutthroat seem to be staying in South Puget Sound and not migrating out into other parts of Puget Sound.
As I read the statement above I was thinking of my own creek out back (south fork of Muck Creek). When I established this home in 1976 there were literally hundreds of thousand Cutthroat smolt in the creek every spring. If you look for smolt now you will not find one, not even one. My concern is I think that this problem is being ignored. As a Washingtonian it hurts me to think that my posterity will never have an opportunity to witness nature at her best.
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