Lead
Entity Program
Why are Lead Entities important to salmon recovery?
Lead Entities provide an infrastructure to guide investments.
The Lead Entity infrastructure is built at the watershed level with the
involvement of local stakeholders representing diverse interests. Involving
the communities directly allows them to understand their watersheds
and the needs of fish and provides the opportunity to build consensus
on how to best protect and restore habitat. Accountability checkpoints
are built in throughout the process in the identification, evaluation
and ranking of projects based on the Lead Entity strategy and criteria
(see details in Process Overview section.) This infrastructure helps
ensure that the best projects – those that provide the highest
certainty of success and greatest benefit to salmon – are funded
and implemented.
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| Lead Entities coordinate and facilitate meetings and field visits
to help local citizen and technical committee members gain an understanding
of the salmon habitat needs in the watershed and what types of projects
can be successful. |
Lead Entities build partnerships and trust.
Lead Entities engage a wide range of participants as project sponsors,
committee members, agencies providing technical and process support,
and on-the-ground volunteers. The partnerships and relationships forged
through the Lead Entity program over the past four years constitute
a sustainable network of individuals and organizations devoted to making
salmon recovery a reality within each watershed. Lead Entities provide
an arena for participants of diverse interests to work toward common
solutions for salmon recovery, making difficult decisions possible.
Participants have included landowners, tribes, non-profit organizations,
fisheries and environmental organizations, neighborhood and other community
groups, private business/industry, local, state, and federal governments,
and local citizens.
Lead Entities combine local science and social values to identify salmon
recovery projects.
The complementary roles of the local technical and citizens committees
are essential to ensure that science and community priorities intersect.
In this manner the highest priorities of the watershed rise to the top
and the salmon habitat protection and restoration projects proposed for
funding and implementation are cost-effective and balance technical and
socio-economic factors.
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| The Lead Entity Technical Committee uses information about the
limiting factors related to habitat conditions in the watershed and
identifies gaps in existing information so future data collection
can be efficiently targeted. |
Lead Entity projects funded by the SRFB leverage substantial funding
and volunteers.
For the projects that received funding through the Lead Entity process
between 1999 and 20021 , project sponsors have leveraged millions of
dollars in matching funds. Matching funds are leveraged from a variety
of sources,
including private landowners, industry, non-profit groups, as well as
tribal, federal, state and local governments. Approximately 1,350 individuals
have been directly involved in the 26 Lead Entity programs across Washington
State. Additionally, each of the projects can attract the efforts of
numerous volunteers, extending awareness of salmon recovery efforts to
the broader community.
Lead Entities
prioritize projects to maximize the public’s investment.
Lead Entities use habitat strategies to guide habitat project lists and
the Lead Entity work schedule.2 Habitat strategies ensure that salmon
habitat projects will be prioritized and implemented in a logical sequential
manner that produces habitat capable of sustaining healthy populations
of salmon. The methodology must include a Limiting Factors Analysis,
identify local habitat project sponsors, determine how projects will
be monitored and evaluated, and develop an adaptive management strategy.
Lead Entities use scientific tools to make sound decisions.
The Limiting Factors Analysis is one tool available to Lead Entities.
It is used to prioritize projects for funding, by identifying habitat
work that will address the problems in the watershed. Limiting factors
are defined as conditions that limit the ability of habitat to fully
sustain populations of salmon. These factors are primarily associated
with fish passage barriers, degraded estuarine areas, riparian corridors,
stream channels and wetlands.
Other assessment tools that have been funded by the SRFB include Ecosystem
Diagnosis and Treatment (EDT), Salmon and Steelhead Habitat Inventory
and Assessment Project (SSHIAP), and Instream Flow Incremental Methodology
(IFIM).
1 Prior to SRFB creation in 2000, other state processes provided guidance
and
funds to salmon recovery projects.
2 The Salmon Recovery Planning Act (Chapter 77.85 RCW) directs Lead
Entities
to use a “critical pathways methodology” to develop a habitat
work schedule. Lead Entities have developed habitat strategies that
are based upon Limiting Factors Analysis and other assessment tools
to achieve this purpose.
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