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The Kalispel Tribe of Indians will put more than $900,000 into a stretch of Flume Creek near Metaline this fall and winter, after the Washington Salmon Recovery Funding Board approved three grants for tribal habitat work in the far north end of Pend Oreille County.
The state board announced $21.5 million in salmon-habitat grants for 75 projects in 27 counties on Sept. 16, 2026. Of that statewide total, $901,289 is earmarked for Pend Oreille County, and every dollar of it goes to the Kalispel Tribe of Indians for work on or near Flume Creek, a small western tributary that feeds Boundary Reservoir on the Pend Oreille River a few miles from Metaline and Metaline Falls.
The largest of the three awards, $323,000, is for a project the state calls “Restoring Flume Creek.” According to the grant record, crews will add wood — logs and root wads — to nearly a half-mile of the creek to slow the current and create pools where fish can rest, feed, hide and spawn. A new starter channel is meant to reconnect an old side channel to the floodplain, adding habitat that has been cut off. The creek’s cold water and steady flow matter because Flume Creek supports both bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout — bull trout are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
A second grant, $243,289, funds “Planting the Banks of Flume Creek.” That money pays for removing reed canary grass, an aggressive invasive species that chokes out native streamside vegetation, and replacing it along a half-mile of bank with native trees and shrubs. The state’s project summary explains the mechanics plainly: shade from the new plantings keeps water cool, fallen branches and leaves feed the aquatic insects salmon and trout depend on, and root systems hold soil in place instead of letting it wash into the creek, where it can smother the gravel fish need for spawning.
The third award, $335,000, does not touch Flume Creek directly. It goes to the Tribe’s Indian Creek Native Plant Nursery, which currently can grow only a handful of tree species. The grant pays for a greenhouse, a mobile irrigation system, electrified fencing to keep deer and elk from the young stock, and other propagation equipment. The goal, per the state’s description, is a nursery able to grow a wider range of trees, shrubs and wetland sedges suited to Pend Oreille County’s specific conditions — plants that will then be used on the Tribe’s other local restoration sites, Flume Creek included.
None of this is new territory for the Tribe. State grant records show the Kalispel Tribe of Indians has been working on Flume Creek restoration design since at least 2023, when it received a separate $350,000 grant for planning. This year’s awards move that multi-year effort from design into construction and planting.
The Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which is housed within the state Recreation and Conservation Office, draws its money from several pots: the state’s Salmon Recovery Program, the Riparian Grant Program, the federal Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, and the state’s Climate Commitment Act revenues. Board chair Jeff Breckel said in the announcement that the projects are meant to “give salmon the clean, cold and plentiful water they need to survive,” and that restoring more natural river flow also reduces flood risk to towns and cuts erosion. RCO Director Megan Duffy said applications go through “a rigorous screening process” and are “prioritized by local communities, reviewed for scientific validity” before they compete regionally for funding.
That regional competition is worth noting for a county the size of Pend Oreille: this round funded projects in 27 of Washington’s 39 counties, and Pend Oreille’s roughly $900,000 share, while real money for local restoration work, is a sliver of a $21.5 million pot spread from the Olympic Peninsula to the Snake River. The three Flume Creek-area awards are the only Pend Oreille County projects in this round — no county government, port district or conservation group here received a match in this cycle, only the Tribe.
Flume Creek itself is not a name most county residents outside its immediate watershed will recognize. It drains a modest area in the mountains west of the reservoir, well north of Newport and closer to the Canadian border than to the county seat. But the creek’s fish — bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout — are among the reasons Pend Oreille County shows up at all in state and federal salmon-recovery bookkeeping, since neither species can reach the anadromous salmon runs that give the funding board its name; upstream and downstream fish passage on the Pend Oreille River has long been blocked by dams, including Boundary Dam itself.
The state’s project-tracking system lists the two Flume Creek grants under project numbers 26-1726 and 26-1457. Neither the RCO announcement nor the Tribe has released a construction timeline for this round of work; past Flume Creek grants have typically moved from award to fieldwork within one to two construction seasons.
Sources: Washington Recreation and Conservation Office, ThurstonTalk, EIN Presswire
