Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

For the Quinault Indian Nation (QIN), it is a grim truth that to protect the marine resources that sustain them, they must meticulously inventory those resources.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska graphically demonstrated the need to quantify baseline populations of marine and intertidal life. To accomplish the task, QIN and other tribal communities are using a common data-gathering method established by the Multi-Agency Rocky …

An important winter refuge for salmon and trout has been reconnected to Thirty Cent Creek, a tributary of the Sooes River on the Makah Tribe’s reservation.

“This project has been identified for some time and we were finally able to get the pieces to line up to make it happen,” said Ray Colby, water quality specialist for the Makah Tribe. Previously located on private commercial timberlands, …

It’s a mixed bag of razor clam populations on beaches from Copalis to Kalaloch, an annual survey by the Quinault Indian Nation (QIN) and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife shows. While some beaches had fewer clams available for harvest, others had more.

The co-managers use seawater to pump razor clams to the surface inside a 3-foot-wide mesh tube sunk vertically into the beach sand, enabling …

Bull elk on the north Olympic Peninsula are surviving today at roughly the same rate as they did in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to early results of a two-year study by the Makah Tribe.

The tribe is halfway through the second year of a bull and calf elk survival study to update survival rate information gathered in the 1980s. “We want to be …

Elwha Dam removal is visible from a public viewing area off Highway 112 west of Port Angeles. Work also continues to remove the Glines Canyon Dam.

The Peninsula Daily News has a column regarding the upcoming razor clam harvest for Kalaloch Beach.

The treed cougar flattens his ears as the howls of professional hunting dogs mix with the shouts of Makah tribal wildlife biologists in a snowy forest in the hook Game Management Unit near Neah Bay.

A tranquilizer dart finds its mark and the adult male falls with a whump into a tarp rigged as a safety net. Carefully lowered to the ground, the 170-pound, 7-foot, 7-inch …

Micah McCarty and Russell Svec, Makah tribal members, made a presentation about Makah culture, including whaling, to a a South Puget Sound Community College audience. The college created a video of the presentation that can be watched here:

The Quinault Indian Nation opposes the construction of two dams proposed for the Chehalis River basin and has requested government-to-government consultation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to discuss potential environmental impacts. “We fear that constructing the dams would add to the sad legacy of problems caused by decades of neglect and damage to ecological processes that are vital to the salmon resources protected by …

The Seattle Times has a story in their Travel/Outdoors section about a weekend in Neah Bay visiting the Makah Cultural and Research Center as well as talking with several local carvers.