Marta Murvosh has the story in the Skagit Valley Herald:
ANACORTES — To save a beach, the Samish Indian Nation raced against time to raise money to use 1,982 tons of sand, pea gravel and cobblestone-sized rocks to stabilize a section of the shoreline along Weaverling Spit on Fidalgo Bay.
If the restoration project wasn’t funded by this fall, tribal scientists feared the beach would be devoured by winter storms, said Christine Woodward, Samish director of natural resources.
Most of the work was completed Monday, and Woodward and her staff saw green and silver surf smelt in the bay nearby. The smelt spawn, which are the prey of salmon, haven’t been able to spawn on that area of the beach for a number of years, she said. Woodward also saw otters playing in gravel.
