Lead Entities

Lead entities are local, watershed-based organizations that develop local salmon habitat recovery strategies and then recruit organizations to do habitat protection and restoration projects that will implement the strategies.

Lead entities consist of:

• A coordinator or administrative body (usually county, conservation district, or tribal staff)
• A committee of local, technical experts
• A committee of local citizens

Who Can be a Lead Entity?

Nonprofit organizations, tribes, and local governments are eligible to provide the administrative duties of a lead entity.

How are They Funded?

The Salmon Recovery Funding Board provides financial support to lead entities. Lead entities also get support from other organizations.

How Do Lead Entities Work?

Each lead entity develops a habitat restoration strategy to guide its selection and ranking of salmon recovery projects. The strategy prioritizes geographic areas and types of restoration and protection actions; identifies salmon species’ needs; and identifies social, economic, and cultural factors that might affect salmon recovery.

Lead Entity Strategies

A Guide to Lead Entity Strategy Development

Project Applicants

Chelan County Lead Entity Foster Creek Conservation District Lead Entity Grays Harbor County Lead Entity Green/Duwamish and Central Puget Sound Watershed Lead Entity Hood Canal Coordinating Council Lead Entity Island County Lead Entity Klickitat County Lead Entity Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board Lead Entity Mason Conservation District Lead Entity

Nisqually River Watershed Salmon Recovery Lead Entity North Olympic Peninsula Lead Entity North Pacific Coast Lead Entity Okanogan County/Colville Tribe Lead Entity Pacific County Lead Entity Pend Oreille Lead Entity Pierce County Lead Entity Quinault Indian Nation Lead Entity San Juan County Lead Entity Skagit Watershed Council Lead Entity

Snake River Salmon Recovery Board Lead Entity Snohomish County Lead Entity Stillaguamish River Salmon Recovery Co-Lead Entity Thurston Conservation District Lead Entity West Sound Watersheds Lead Entity WRIA 1 Salmon Reocvery Board Lead Entity WRIA 9 Lead Entity (King County) Yakima Basin Fish & Wildlife Recovery Board

Lead entities recruit project applicants, who use regional recovery plans or lead entity strategies to develop projects. Grant applicants typically are regional fisheries enhancement groups, local governments, tribes, state agencies, community groups, land trusts, and others. Project applicants fill out applications and submit them to lead entities for consideration. Lead entities’ technical and citizens committees evaluate and prioritize the projects.

Review Committees

Lead Entity Technical Committees: The technical committee, made up of local experts knowledgeable about the watershed, habitat, and fish conditions, rates projects on their technical merits, benefits to salmon, and the certainty that the benefits will occur. The technical committee submits its evaluation of projects to the citizens committee.

Lead Entity Citizens Committees: The citizens committee includes local residents, regional fisheries enhancement groups, and a combination of state, federal, and tribal government representatives, community groups, environmental and fisheries groups, conservation districts, and industry representatives. The citizens committee is critical to ensure that projects have enough community support for success. Citizens committee members are often the best judges of the community’s social, cultural, and economic values. The citizens committee ranks the projects and submits them through the lead entity or recovery region to the Salmon Recovery Funding Board for funding consideration.

Salmon Recovery Funding Board

Members of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board are appointed by the Governor to administer federal and state funding for salmon recovery. The board’s evaluation occurs in two phases. The board reviews all projects for eligibility and then has its scientific Review Panel evaluate each project for technical merits and to ensure there are benefits to salmon and certainty of success.

Why are Lead Entities Important to Salmon Recovery?

1. Lead entities provide an infrastructure to guide investments.
   Lead entities involve a wide range of participants as project applicants, committee members, technical experts, and on-the-ground volunteers. Involving diverse interests helps lead entities better understand the needs of fish and how to best protect and restore habitat. The partnerships and relationships forged through the lead entity program during the past ten years have created a network of people and organizations devoted to making salmon recovery a reality in each watershed. More than 800 people are directly involved in the lead entity programs across Washington.
   
   
2. Lead entities combine local science and social values to identify salmon recovery projects.
   The complementary roles of the local technical and citizens committees ensure that science and community priorities intersect and that the highest priorities of the watershed rise to the top.
   
   
3. Lead entities prioritize projects to maximize the public’s investment.
   Lead entities use habitat strategies and priorities in their recovery plans to guide project lists. This approach ensures that projects will be done in a sequence that produces habitats capable of sustaining healthy populations of salmon. The lead entities determine what conditions limit the habitat from fully supporting salmon populations, identify project applicants, and determine how projects will be monitored and evaluated.

Lead Entity Documents

2008 Directory of Lead Entities for Salmon Recovery

2002 Program Report