STANWOOD, WASHINGTON — The Stillaguamish Tribe removed two miles of an earthen levee at the mouth of the Stillaguamish River north of Seattle in October 2025, allowing tidewater to reach the land for the first time in over a century. The breach created a 230-acre tidal marsh intended to restore habitat for Chinook salmon, a federally threatened species in Puget Sound.

Restoration crews dug channels into the former farmland before breaching the levee to accelerate natural marsh rebuilding. Earlier in 2025, the tribe built a new levee farther back from the river before removing the old one. During site preparation, crews discovered clam shell middens dating up to 1,500 years old.

Scott Boyd, a Stillaguamish tribal member and fisheries manager, described the change on the land. "Before, it was a dairy operation, and now it's a big tidal marsh," Boyd said.

The restored wetland, known as zis a ba 2, is named after a 19th-century chief and is the second of three large marshes the tribe is restoring in the area. Over the past 15 years, the tribe has purchased 2,000 acres of land for fish and wildlife habitat. Tidal marshes serve as nurseries for young Chinook salmon. In 2025, so few Chinook returned to the Stillaguamish River that the tribe was allowed to catch only 26 fish.

Stillaguamish Tribe biologist Jason Griffith linked the project to broader flood management. "By giving the river more space, we are reducing the damage and the expense to society to maintain infrastructure. It's cheaper to maintain if you stay further away," he said. Griffith also observed wildlife returning to the site, saying, "Watch these dunlins. It's a visual symphony."

Tyler Breum, who farms potatoes and seed crops a few miles north of the zis a ba wetlands near Stanwood, Washington, said farmland should be preserved. "There's only so much farmland. The population of the country, of the world, it's still increasing, and they've got to get their food from somewhere," he said. "The levees make life in the floodplain possible, and we wouldn't be able to farm or to live there without the levees."

The Stillaguamish Tribe has about 400 members and gained federal recognition in 1976. Tribal leaders signed the Treaty of Point Elliott with the U.S. government in 1855, relinquishing most of their land while retaining fishing and hunting rights.

In December 2025, floodwaters scoured the new wetland and deposited sediment and uprooted trees from upriver. A series of intense storms that month caused flooding across Washington and Oregon that forced thousands of people to evacuate.