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WA State TU’s Barrier Assessment Team (BAT) Program

Background

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that WA State must fund the work necessary to replace all culverts on state land that represent a significant barrier to migrating fish. Although the ruling applied only to state lands, all landowners, including federal, county and private, are now aware that problem barriers must be replaced. Given that there are as many as 40,000 culverts around the state, and not all are equally harmful to fish, there is an immediate need to assess and prioritize culverts regarding potential impacts.

WATU & WDFW Partnership

WA TU State Council has created a unique partnership with WDFW to train and deploy a team of TU volunteers willing and able to conduct these assessments. We’re currently working to finalize the processes and procedures necessary to begin conducting the assessments after it becomes safe to do so – we will always keep the safety of our volunteers at the top of our priorities.

This web page is designed to provide accurate and up-to-date information regarding all-things-BAT-related. It’s new, so there will be on-going changes and improvements over time – suggestions are always welcome.

Welcome to BAT Land!

Header photo credit: Luke Kelly

BAT Land (a work in progress)

BAT INFO

Please use the informational tabs below to navigate around the BAT SQUAD’s wealth of fish barrier assessment information.

Specifically, you can:

Educate yourself on the BAT program
Refresh your memory from in-person training
Reference WDFW’s manual
Reserve a BAT assessment kit
Complete required forms to input assessment data

BAT RULES & FAQs

You must successfully complete a barrier assessment training session prior to requesting a kit and going out in to the field.
We have 5 assessment kits of equipment available to volunteers.
TU has created an ArcGIS portal that allows us to directly link to WDFW’s culvert database to determine where culverts are, show whatever assessment info is available for that culvert, etc (see TU Barrier Viewer below).

Training Slides
Training Videos
Barrier Map
Reserve Kits
Assessment Forms
WDFW Manual
WDFW Links
Resources

WA TU Official Training Video

WDFW Training Video

Marking a Site as Resurveyed on BAT Map - How To

Submitting Data - How To

Finding Culverts to Survey - How To

Turning Point - How To

Reserving a BAT Kit How To

TU Fish Passage Barrier Assessment Viewer

Launch Map Fullscreen

BAT Kit Reservations

Current BAT Kit Location are as follows (Eventually there will be at least one in each of the regions on the map above):

· Edmonds · North Bend · Sammamish · Seattle · Kitsap County·

Kit Reservation Form

Before you head out into the field to conduct a barrier assessment you will need to download and print the following forms.

Please use the button below to open the form in a new browser tab/window. The form is broken up into five sections that correspond with the forms above and the training information provided. Because the form is long there is an option to save and continue later which will provide you with a unique link to come back to the form and complete at a later time.

View & Complete Forms

FISH PASSAGE INVENTORY, ASSESSMENT & PRIORITIZATION MANUAL

WDFW’s website explaining culvert assessment and the fish passage program is here.

WDFW has created a comprehensive manual that provides detailed instructions on how to do culvert assessments. Embedded below is a copy of this PDF. This manual is the basis for all of their training.

You need to know there are two separate types of assessments and related training included in the manual:

Fish barriers (culverts)
Fish habitat.

Both types are discussed in the manual, but for now we need to limit our focus to the fish barrier material.

The forms people will need to access and use are found in Appendix E, pages E1 – E6, and instructions are included for each form. The required forms have been digitized and can be submitted on this page.

There’s also some additional information people may find helpful when completing the forms. That in-depth material can be found in Chapter 3, Section 3.3 “Level A Culvert Assessment”, which starts halfway down on page 3-4 and continues through p. 3-42.

If the embedded manual below doesn’t load, refresh the page and come back to this tab or download the PDF.

WDFW Links

Fish Passage Program Overview

Fish Passage Training

Fish Passage Inventory, Assessment, and Prioritization Manual

WA State Fish Passage Map

A list of resources we have for the BAT Program:

Culvert Tuesday Letters – Weekly newsletters sent out to volunteers!

State of Salmon in Watersheds – Check out page 14 of this slide show for info on Barriers/Culverts!

Fish passage barrier assessment in Western Washington

Training Slides

Training Videos