The arrival of fall means leaf-covered sidewalks, sweater weather, and the return of salmon to the county’s waterways. This year, the Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat (Collaborative) is seeking the public’s help to document where they are seeing salmon.

Kirsten Joy Harma, the watershed coordinator for the Chehalis Basin Partnership and Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat, said that the inspiration for the survey was Bob Russell, a Lewis County citizen representative with the Collaborative. Russell would receive videos that people took of salmon in their creek or areas they were visiting and wondered what to do with the videos.

Russell would say, “’We need people to know there’s salmon here in order to care that we’re doing all this great habitat work,’” Harma said, adding that this survey is a way for citizens to share with their neighbors and friends the salmon they are seeing.

As culverts are replaced or restoration undertaken, it’s not unusual to find salmon in new areas because more habitat is available to them.

“That’s an immediate impact [after a culvert replacement project] to start seeing fish above one that’s been recently replaced, so it’s kind of neat to show the impact of those kind of projects too,” said Harma.

The Collaborative created an online survey accessible via a QR code that allows people to record where they saw the salmon, the date and time, weather and stream observations. As sightings are recorded, they will populate a map that will be available for viewing.

This Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. at Schafer State Park, there will (hopefully) be salmon viewing opportunities at the annual Return of the Salmon event hosted by Washington State Parks and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Harma will also have a booth there too, promoting the Chehalis Basin Partnership and Chehalis Basin Collaborative for Salmon Habitat, and the new survey. During this family-friend event, attendees can learn all about salmon, and there are children’s activities too.

“There’s a lot of demand for a place where the public can see salmon, and on the Chehalis, there just isn’t that amount of land available,” Harma said. “This is a rare spot at a park where you can generally see them coming back this time of year.”

To take the survey go to www.chehalisleadentity.org and the survey is under What’s New.