La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Based on recent opinion pages in the La Conner Weekly News there appears to be a lack of clear or accurate information regarding protections for riparian zones adjacent to salmon streams in general and the Lorraine Loomis Act in particular.

Intact riparian zones (the land along stream banks) provide immense benefits to salmon.

They provide shade to keep streams cool, they provide large pieces of wood where juvenile fish take refuge from floods and predators, they provide bank stability, they filter and absorb nutrients coming off of farms and suburbs and they provide leaf litter and insects th...