The Stillaguamish Tribe has literally given its river room to roam, carving open old farm dikes at the mouth of the Stillaguamish River north of Seattle and letting the tides pour back in. Heavy equipment and carefully sequenced engineering turned long-drained fields into a young tidal marsh that shorebirds and returning fish are already starting to claim. Tribal leaders say the shift revives a landscape their ancestors tended while also easing flood pressure on nearby farms and on the town of Stanwood.
How the breach was engineered
To pull this off, crews first cut a network of distributary channels across the site, then opened roughly two miles of earthen embankment this fall so the Salish Sea could surge into what used to be farmland. Project…..