Ten years of state funding directed at salmon recovery has netted a lot of improved salmon habitat, but most salmon populations still lag well beyond targeted recovery levels, a leader in the efforts said this week.

“I’m not tempted to declare victory,” said Bill Ruckelshaus, the former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency director and the original chairman of the state Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which was created by the Legislature in 1999. “But it is important to step back and see how far we’ve come.”

Ruckelshaus kicked off a two-day salmon habitat conference at the Little Creek Casino near Shelton on Wednesday that drew about 450 people engaged in salmon recovery statewide.

Since the board was created, the state has awarded $358 million in state and federal money for salmon restoration projects. Matching funds from the grant applicants bring the total spent to more than $518 million on 1,116 projects.

“Today, we’re seeing better projects and more of them tied to salmon recovery plans,” Ruckelshaus said.

Accomplishments to date identified by the Salmon Recovery Funding Board include:

 • 1,000 miles of new stream habitat opened to salmon through the removal of 220 fish barriers, such as road culverts.

 • Permanent protection of more than 28,400 acres of quality habitat.

 • Repair of more than 9,000 acres of wetlands, estuaries and streamside riparian areas.

 • Construction of 456 fish screens to keep salmon in the rivers and out of irrigation ditches.

“We’ve gone from the easy, obvious projects like replacing road culverts to the more complex projects like estuary restoration,” said Jim Kramer, an environmental planning consultant who helped shape the state’s Puget Sound chinook salmon recovery plan completed in 2005.

“We need to all work together, or we’re never going to make it,” Ruckelshaus said, adding that he expects significant improvements in overall salmon population numbers in the next 10 years.