Unlike most species of salmon, steelhead can spawn repeatedly before they die. They mature at 2 or 3 years, and can stay at sea up to three years before returning to fresh water to spawn.

Upper Skagit tribal staff took scale samples from 75 wild steelhead to be examined using equipment at the University of Washington. Analysis of steelhead scales can tell researchers how many years a steelhead has spent in fresh water before out-migrating and how long it spent at sea. The analysis also will show whether the steelhead migrated back out to sea after spawning in fresh water.

‘’It’s important to continue to collect data so we can sustainably manage the steelhead population, which was historically available to the tribe through the long winter months when other species were not available to sustain our culture and feed our families,” said Scott Schuyler, natural resources director for the tribe.

Eventually, the tribe plans to acquire its own equipment so tribal technicians can process the scale samples themselves.

Compared to other river systems in Puget Sound, the Skagit River still has an abundance of wild steelhead. Both tribal and non-Indian fisheries have been reduced dramatically since the 2007 listing of Puget Sound steelhead as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The primary causes of the decline of steelhead runs are believed to be degraded habitat, fish-blocking culverts and unfavorable ocean conditions.

For more information, contact: Scott Schuyler, Upper Skagit Tribe, 360-854-7090 or sschuyler@upperskagit.com; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

Washington state’s Swinomish tribe faces a water rights battle in the Skagit River basin, the likes of which we have seen before. It’s reminiscent of the dispute that broke out around a decade ago in the Klamath River basin in California and Oregon. That dispute led to a fish kill of about 70,000 salmon after federal intervention severely reduced water flows in the Klamath and its tributaries.

The Swinomish tribe’s fight, however, is uniquely theirs. The tribe is currently arguing before the Washington State Court of Appeals that the Washington Department of Ecology acted illegally in exercising a rarely invoked “overriding consideration of public interest” (OCPI) state water law loophole.

Using OCPI, the Department of Ecology could designate large quantities of water from the Skagit River and its tributaries for domestic, municipal, commercial, industrial, agricultural and livestock watering uses despite the fact that the river consistently fails to meet the basic flow requirements to sustain its health. This broadening and misuse of OCPI is also the topic of a recent amicus brief filed in support of the Swinomish tribe jointly by Earthjustice and the Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

The Skagit River system is the third largest in the western United States and the only one in the lower 48 states to harbor all six species of Pacific salmon. The rivers and streams that flow into the Skagit account for a quarter of all the fresh water flowing into the Puget Sound.

The Swinomish people depend heavily on the salmon and other migratory fish of the Skagit River system for “subsistence, culture, identity and economy,” as they describe in their opening brief to the appellate court. Low river flows have already adversely impacted salmon populations and the tribe’s ability to exercise these practices, which are protected by federal treaty. Further state mismanagement could have catastrophic effects on salmon populations and the communities that rely on them.

Similk Bay Road before excavation. Photo: Nora Kammer, SRSC

Fish access and tidal flow were restored in March to a high-priority pocket estuary near the Swinomish reservation.

The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC) removed a portion of Similk Bay Road and a non-functioning tide gate that isolated about 8 acres of estuary in Turners Bay. SRSC is the natural resources extension of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes.

The road removal restored natural processes to a nearly 60-acre pocket estuary at the head of Similk Bay, which is part of Skagit Bay. This type of small, sub-estuary is essential habitat for out-migrating chinook fry.

“Pocket estuaries give juvenile salmon a protected place to acclimate to salt water,” said Steve Hinton, SRSC restoration director. “Restoring this habitat will lower the risk of mortality by reducing the amount of time salmon fry are exposed to hazards in the nearshore.”

Turners Bay is about 7 miles from the Skagit River delta. The site was identified using historic survey maps and ocean current data to find pocket estuaries about a day’s migration from the delta for juvenile chinook. About 80 percent of the Whidbey basin’s historic pocket estuaries have been lost because of development; including nearly 90 percent of those close to the Skagit delta.

The project involved closing and removing part of a county roadway, rerouting utilities, restoring sediment sources and tidal hydrology, removing debris and dredge spoils, permanently removing undersized culverts, controlling invasive spartina and restoring native vegetation. Also part of the project was raising and rebuilding a county road to protect residences from storm tides.

For more information, contact: Steve Hinton, Skagit River System Cooperative, 360-466-7243 or shinton@skagitcoop.org; Kari Neumeyer, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

From the Cowichan News Leader:

Dozens of West Coast chiefs and Native leaders representing 66 tribes met with scientists in Duncan this week in an effort to find new approaches to climate change.

A few hundred participants took part in a three-day Coast Salish gathering at the Qu’wutsun’ Cultural Centre to discuss what most agreed was a  critical period for both the ecology and the economy.

“There’s no profit in truth,” said Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission member Darrell Phare of Washington state’s Lummi Nation.

“Nature only deals in truths. We can ignore its signs, but it will come back to us…those people in government are totally afraid of the truth. It all goes back to making money.”

Scientists expect dramatic temperature changes by 2050, which will heavily effect areas like the Cowichan Valley, where communities have thrived off the river’s extensive ecosystem.

Climate change, glacier retreat, hydrological boundaries, greenhouse gases, global warming and rising water levels were up for discussion and frustration about how little is being done in response.

Tribal and state wildlife co-managers monitor the Nooksack herd via helicopter surveys. In the past, animals were fitted with tracking collars after being tranquilized by aerial darts. However, helicopter time is expensive and aerial darting poses a safety risk.

“We’re looking at ways to put collars on elk without putting people or animals at risk,” said Chris Madsen, wildlife biologist for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

This winter, staff from the Sauk-Suiattle, Swinomish and Upper Skagit tribes, and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife baited elk at various sites in the North Cascades Mountains. When remote cameras showed heavy elk use in one of the areas, technicians set a trap to capture a cow elk.

“We choose cows because we want collars on animals that will be out there a long time due to a closed cow hunting season,” Madsen said. “When we do surveys, we’re looking for herds.”

Tribal and state co-managers collared and relocated about 100 cow elk from the Mount St. Helens region in 2003 and 2005. The batteries in those collars are reaching the end of their lifespans, which is one of the reasons for the increased effort to collar more animals.

The on-the-ground trapping method allows the tribes to seek out elk subgroups that don’t already include a collared animal, said Todd Wilbur, Swinomish tribal member and chairman of the Inter-tribal Wildlife Committee.

“We need a certain number of active collars to keep the population model active,” he added.

With radio telemetry collars, wildlife technicians can track the elk herds and determine overall herd size.

The tribal and state co-managers have worked for years to recover the dwindling elk population in the North Cascades Mountains. Twenty years ago, the Nooksack elk population was about 1,700 elk. By 2003, the herd had declined to about 300 elk, largely because of degraded and disconnected habitat.

Tribal and state wildlife managers agreed to stop hunting the herd in the 1990s, because of the population decline. One of the strongest signs that recovery efforts were working came in 2007, when tribal and state wildlife co-managers determined that the Nooksack herd was stable enough to support a small hunt of 30 elk. Limited hunts have taken place each year since then.

The Point Elliott Treaty tribes are Lummi, Nooksack, Muckleshoot, Sauk-Suiattle, Stillaguamish, Suquamish, Swinomish, Tulalip and Upper Skagit.

For more information, contact: Chris Madsen, wildlife biologist, NWIFC, 360-528-4366 or cmadsen@nwifc.org; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

From Environment News Service:

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community will inventory, manage, protect, and enhance wildlife and habitat resources on the 118 acres of tidelands, nearshore, and old growth forests of Kukutali Preserve on the Swinomish Reservation in Washington state.

A key element will include the creation of a 50-year management plan for the Kukutali Preserve by the Tribe and Washington State Parks as co-owners and managers of the Preserve. The restoration project is designed to protect the threatened Skagit Chinook salmon by providing protection to critical rearing habitat.

In their brief, Earthjustice and CELP argue that the Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) cannot allow more water to be withdrawn from the troubled Skagit River and its tributaries for new junior water uses because such new uses would further impair stream-flows. Impaired stream-flows damage salmon, other wildlife and communities that depend on the water.

The tribal community’s appeal, filed in 2008, challenges Ecology’s 2006 revision to the in-stream flow rule for the Skagit River and its tributaries.

…

“Along with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, we will not stand by to see critical tributaries of the Skagit reduced to trickles simply because Ecology is unwilling to uphold the law and protect the instream flow reservations that preserve the river and its wildlife,” said Suzanne Skinner of CELP. “The Skagit must be conserved for future generations and we will work to protect the precious water that salmon and people need to survive.”

The conservationists’ brief challenges Ecology’s claim that the “public interest” exemption creates a loophole to ignore protecting basic in-stream flows whenever Ecology finds it convenient or generally desirable to do so. Rather, the public interest doctrine is meant to be used in limited emergencies such as fire suppression or health emergencies. That limited, temporary, emergency use was Ecology’s long-standing position until very recently when it started to stretch the emergency exception into a big, permanent loophole.

Read the press release.

Sediment is a concern in this watershed because the rivers pass through a network of forest roads and culverts that can fail and cause landslides. The glacier-fed rivers already have a naturally high amount of sediment, but silt from glacier melt is suspected to increase unnaturally because of human-caused climate change.

The tribe wants to know how the quantity and timing of sediment affects salmon spawning. The Lower Sauk River was identified by the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan as having a poor rate of egg survival because of high amounts of sediment. In the Suiattle River, chinook salmon spawn in the mouths of tributary creeks, where the water is clearer.

The tribe and USGS are sampling the river, measuring temperature, flow, suspended sediment and turbidity at several locations, taking physical water samples as well as using an automatic sampler and continuous turbidity sensors. The Puget Sound Partnership provided funding for the majority of the project.

Physical suspended sediment samples provide the best data by measuring sediment throughout the water column. Automatic sampling is a cost-effective way to keep track of what’s happening in the river between the time-consuming and labor-intensive physical measurements.

“A lot of modeling has been done, but this is the first time sampling has been done this thoroughly,” said Scott Morris, watershed manager for the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe. “The sediment data we collect will provide critical information for future watershed models that incorporate climate change scenarios with sediment delivery to the Skagit River delta and Puget Sound.”

The mineral content of the sediment will be analyzed so researchers will know whether it’s natural accumulation from glacier melt, or if a forest road has failed.

“If there’s a lot of road sediment, we’ll know we have work to do,” Morris said. “We’ll have the numbers, not just assumptions. We can work it into the recovery plan.”

For more information, contact: Scott Morris, watershed manager, Sauk-Suiattle Tribe at 360-436-0347 or smorris@sauk-suiattle.com; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC at 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

An ongoing effort to improve salmon habitat in the lower Nooksack floodplain received another round of federal funding, the state Department of Ecology announced recently.

Phase 3 of the Smuggler’s Slough restoration project obtained an $804,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for acquisition of 101 acres of wetlands and salt marsh along the lower reach of the slough off Lummi Bay, south of Ferndale.

To complete the acquisition of conservation rights on the properties, and to make habitat improvements, Lummi Nation will contribute $350,000 and the Salmon Recovery Funding Board will add another $125,000, Ecology spokesman Curt Hart said.

In previous phases, Ecology in partnership with the tribe acquired 406 acres farther upstream on Smuggler’s Slough. The slough historically was a salmon passage connecting Bellingham and Lummi bays, but it was converted in the 1930s into a drainage ditch as much of the estuarine habitat in the lower Nooksack floodplain was converted into farmland, a 2009 report by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission said.

At the annual Treaty Days commemoration in the Swinomish Smokehouse January 21, one leader talked of how, as a child, he saw his parents get arrested for fishing without a state license, even though Article V of the treaty was their license to fish. Another talked of being harassed recently for hunting elk in traditional hunting areas, another for harvesting cedar.

And so, the battle to protect treaty rights continues. Doing so takes tenacity and it takes education so the individual knows how to defend the treaty in courts and in the halls of government of the dominant society, they said.

“One hundred and fifty seven years ago, the treaty was signed. We gave up a lot,” said Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon. “(The U.S.) wanted us to live on reservations, they wanted us to learn to farm. The assimilation effort was on. But because our ancestors had the hearts of warriors, we have our language and our way of life today.”

The Treaty of Point Elliott was, in a sense, a bill of sale: In exchange for a large swath of land – bordered roughly by Canada to the north, Seattle to the south, the Salish Sea to the west and the Cascades to the east – the U.S. government promised cash, reservations, health care and schools. The 82 Coast Salish leaders who signed the treaty on January 22, 1855 also reserved the rights of their people to fish, harvest and hunt in their “usual and accustomed grounds.”

The Seattle Times:

Like so many dairy farmers, the Werkhovens felt the pinch in 2008 when milk prices plunged, hay prices rose and there was the ever-present issue of finding appropriate ways to dispose of waste. Right and left, dairies were going under — even those like the Werkhoven Dairy, which has operated for decades.

“I’m just glad my dad wasn’t around to see it,” Andy Werkhoven said. Sam Werkhoven, who started the dairy in 1959 with 25 cows, died several years ago.

When Daryl Williams of the Tulalip Tribes, strolled into their pasture one day with an idea on how to turn manure to money, Andy Werkhoven was ready to listen.

The Tulalips were interested because the Werkhoven Dairy is at the confluence of the Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers, the historic fishing area for the tribe.

Williams’ idea was forming a nonprofit group, Qualco Energy, and buying an anaerobic digester to turn manure to methane, which in turn, powers a generator that puts electricity on the grid.

The Skagit River is home to all five species of Pacific salmon.

“The Swinomish Tribe is committed to protecting salmon and instream flows in the Skagit River basin, which is within our usual and accustomed fishing areas,” said Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby.

Earlier this year, the state Department of Ecology determined that groundwater had been over-allocated in the Carpenter/Fisher subbasin of the Skagit, and was close to exhausted in the Nookachamps subbasin, according to tributary reservations established in 2006 . As a result, Skagit County can’t issue permits for new wells to be dug on properties in those areas.

“The public sees all this water flowing in a very big river,” said Jeannie Summerhays, director for Ecology’s northwest regional office. “But some of these upper tributaries have a real water shortage.”

Skagit County and the state Department of Ecology began a legal battle over water rights when the county took the state to court in 2003 to challenge the instream flow rule. The Swinomish Tribe got involved in the litigation in response to the county’s legal action.

“In 1996, Skagit County signed a memorandum of agreement about water rights with tribes and other stakeholders,” said Larry Wasserman, environmental services director for the Swinomish Tribe. “It’s unfortunate that rather than living up to previous agreements and recognitions that they’ve chosen to go down this divisive path.”

The tribe’s only concern is protecting the salmon that are a cornerstone of the Swinomish culture and economy.

“We have no interest in limiting growth,” Chairman Cladoosby said. “We support expanding piped water to meet additional population demands while reducing impacts to instream flows.”

More information about the water issue in the Skagit River basin can be found on the Swinomish Tribe’s website.

From the Marysville Globe:

“Rob is a great listener,” said Libby Halpin Nelson, environmental policy analyst for the Treaty Rights Office of the Natural Resources Department of the Tulalip Tribes, who serves as a liaison to the U.S. Forest Service. “The Tribes were using these forest for their cedar already, but he helped foster better communication and partnership in the forests’ stewardship between the Forest Service and the Tribes, who have a lot in common interests. They both want to see these resources sustained.”

Tulalip Tribal Chair Mel Sheldon Jr. explained that what’s now the managed as the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is within traditional territories where the Tribes and their ancestors have been hunted, fished and gathered herbs, medicines and food, for ceremonial and spiritual purposes, for thousands of years. He praised Iwamoto for working to understand the Tribes’ treaty rights on those lands, and to assist in translating them into actions that will aid the Tribes in continuing their culture.

“We’ve been very honored to work with you,” Sheldon said. “You’ve respected our government, and even when faced with tough problems, you’ve always found solutions to them. I wish you weren’t retiring, because you’re leaving behind big shoes to fill, but you’ve also left us with some great memories.”

Among the achievements during Iwamoto’s tenure was the development of a Memorandum of Agreement, between the Tulalip Tribes and the U.S. Forest Service, to improve communications and work together to steward the resources and places of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest that are vital to the Tribes’ culture. This came after Iwamoto and his staff took the Tribes up on their invitation to meet the Tribes’ Natural and Cultural Resources staff in 2005, to hear their ideas and concerns regarding the Forest Service’s management of the National Forest lands.

Photo: Jason Gobin, Tulalip Tribes

The Tulalip Tribes and the U.S. Forest Service have partnered to enhance huckleberry fields for tribal gathering in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Wild mountain huckleberries are sacred to northwest tribes, but traditional gathering areas have suffered from generations of fire suppression and forest management activities favoring old growth forests that don’t support mountain huckleberry species.

For the past two years, Tulalip staff helped thin forest stands in the Darrington Ranger District to reduce competition from older trees. A controlled burn is planned to rejuvenate the huckleberry fields by reducing the tree canopy. Northwest tribes have a long history of using fire as both a cultural practice and a forest management tool.

“For thousands of years, tribes nurtured the landscapes they depended upon for their health and survival,” said Hank Gobin, director of the Tulalip Tribes Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve. “That included land-management practices to maintain a diversity of plant and animal populations, like burning for wildlife forage, and pruning or burning for huckleberry.”

Huckleberry plants in the North Cascades thrived after the mature forest was harvested in the 1980s, but fruit production has declined as conifers have re-established themselves. It may take several years after the controlled burn to see a measurable increase in fruit production.

Tulalip’s partnership with the Forest Service is an example of cooperative management intended to ensure sustainability and access to treaty-reserved resources on public lands. In western Washington, reservation lands alone do not provide enough food, traditional plants and other resources to sustain tribal culture.

“Contrary to what many may think, the northwest was not an untouched wilderness before white explorers and traders arrived here; instead, it was home to the tribes for the last 10,000 years,” said Ray Fryberg, director of the Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources Department. “Our ancestors figured out long ago a way to treat the lands with respect, with a kind of stewardship that sustained and enhanced the plants and animals they needed.”

For more information, contact: Francesca Hillery public affairs coordinator, Tulalip Tribes, 360-716-4013 or fhillery@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

What we know now is that this proposed development would be the largest to date at Cherry Point, and would substantially impact the ability of Lummi fishermen to exercise their treaty rights.

The Gateway Pacific pier, planned to be 3,000 feet long and 100 feet wide, would dwarf the existing piers currently operated by BP Cherry Point, Alcoa Intalco Works and ConocoPhillips.

The pier would be large enough to accept massive Cape-size ships – which are too big to even travel through the Panama Canal, can carry 250,000 dead weight tons, and may require as many as four tugboats to guide them into port.

This increased vessel traffic will present a particular hazard to tribal fishers in their comparatively small fishing boats and will interfere with fishing.

Other Lummi Nation concerns about the terminal include:

• Impacts to irreplaceable cultural resources and traditional cultural properties.
• Blocked access to treaty-protected tribal fishing grounds.
• Increased risk of vessel/tanker collision, resulting in potential oil spills.
• Degraded water quality associated with storm water runoff from the facility.
• Eliminated wetlands.
• Reduced instream flows needed for impaired Nooksack River salmon and resulting habitat degradation.
• Increased train traffic, blocking Slater Road, hurting the local economy.
• Global climate change and other air- and water-quality impacts associated with using coal as an energy source.

Our Lummi ancestors had a village at Cherry Point because of its unique deep-water resources. Today, this site is also one of the most commercially valuable ports on the West Coast.

As we have in the past, Lummi Nation will conduct its due diligence to ensure that if this project is developed, negative impacts will be avoided or minimized and any unavoidable impacts appropriately mitigated.

Our Lummi people would expect no less than a thorough investigation when an important aspect of our Lummi schelangen hangs in the balance.

From the story:

For many communities, the consequences also go beyond just health concerns.

“Traditional families are still very active in the smokehouse. They are still fishing for their primary source of living,” says Jamie Donatuto, an environmental specialist for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, in La Conner, Wash. “Fish are not just a source of nutrients, they have cultural and spiritual meaning for these people.”

Donatuto has been working with the Swinomish tribe for more than a decade on the issue. She recently conducted a survey and found that if tribal members had access to as much safe seafood as they wanted, they would consume more than 100 times the state’s estimate.

“In the Pacific Northwest, fish consumption is a way of life. It’s an important cultural hallmark of tribal nations that live here,” adds Elaine Faustman, a professor of environmental and occupational health studies at the University of Washington.

In fact, as she points out, it’s not uncommon to find kids “teething on salmon jerky.”

In response, the Swinomish Tribe has put together a fact sheet to clarify some points:

• Skagit County specifically agreed to stop issuing building permits if new wells would be harmful to salmon. Both the Department of Fish and Wildlife and Ecology have stated that new wells will be harmful to salmon.
• The Swinomish Tribe did not begin litigation over water issues; Skagit County did by suing Ecology in 2003.
• Skagit County specifically agreed to the closure of tributary subbasins once the reservations established in 2006 are exhausted.
• The Swinomish Tribe does not have any litigation over water rights currently pending against Skagit County. The Swinomish Tribe’s lawsuit against Ecology is not seeking to create new law, but is seeking to make Ecology implement and enforce existing laws.
• Skagit County’s efforts to deflect attention away from the County’s responsibility to stop issuing building permits in the Carpenter/Fisher subbasin and cast the Swinomish Tribe as interested in controlling land use is unfair and inaccurate. The Swinomish Tribe’s only purpose is to protect salmon and instream flows, not to control growth.
• Given the necessary funding, the City of Anacortes and Skagit PUD have both offered to provide piped water to meet additional demand. We have provided legal support when Skagit County and the Skagit PUD have tried to expand service to rural residents. Expanding piped water reduces impacts to instream flows and provides safe and clean water to property owners.
• The Swinomish Tribe will continue to do what is necessary to protect salmon and the instream flows upon which salmon depend.

Read the complete fact sheet here.

The state’s current rate of 6.5 grams a day was set in the mid-1980s, but officials believe Washington residents eat much more than that.

And members of fishing tribes in western Washington eat even more fish and shellfish than the average person.

The Associated Press reports:

Several tribes say the current state rate doesn’t reflect the important role fish and shellfish play in the diet and culture of tribal members.

“Our people used to say, `When the tide’s out, the table’s set,” said (Randy) Kinley, a policy analyst for the Lummi Nation, near Bellingham, Wash. “We want to be able to set our nets and catch fish to eat.”

Charles O’Hara, planning director for the Swinomish Tribe near La Conner, Wash., said most tribal ceremonies, funerals or important occasion focus around salmon and other seafood.

“If you look at the current rate of 6 grams, it’s pretty ridiculous,” he said. “To be setting standards on such an unrealistic number ignores reality.” The rate “should account for the people who eat the most,” he added.

Tribes, including the Lummi and Swinomish, are doing their own surveys to find out how much fish tribal members eat. The results will help ensure the state’s criteria protect the health of tribal members, they say.

Press release:

Representatives from numerous Washington Tribes, and Officials from the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources and other agencies wrapped up two days of initial discussions that the Tribes hope will lead to greater focus on the management of plants vital to Pacific Northwest tribal cultures.

“Contrary to what many may think the Northwest was not an untouched wilderness before white explorers and traders arrived here; instead, it was home to the Tribes for the last ten thousand years.  Our ancestors figured out long ago a way to treat the lands with respect, with a kind of stewardship that sustained and enhanced the plants and animals they needed,” said Ray Fryberg, Director of the Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources Department.

Northwest Tribes encouraged public land managers to work together with the Tribes to support a diverse and healthy landscape.  “With significant population growth still projected for the Northwest–and a rapidly changing climate–we need to act now to promote a more diverse and resilient environment, upon which all of us depend, not just the Tribes,” said Terry Williams, Commissioner of Fisheries for the Tulalip Tribes.

The Tribes communicated to public land managers that for many Western Washington Treaty tribes the reservation land base cannot, by itself, furnish foods, medicines, materials and certain physical landscapes to sustain tribal cultures.  Historically, these resources were gathered and traded by the Tribes over a very large area, from the high mountains to the coastal waters.  Tribal leaders expressed their hope that the Tribes and public land managers would work together to ensure sustainability and access to these treaty reserved resources—which are needed to perpetuate tribal culture for future generations.

These early discussions were part of a two day inter-Tribal and government dialogue on sustaining healthy populations of traditional plants on public lands, which was hosted at the Tulalip Tribe’s new Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve, a facility dedicated to revive, restore, protect, and interpret the history and traditional cultural values and spiritual beliefs of the Tulalip Tribes.

“For thousands of years, the Tribes’ nurtured the landscapes they were dependent upon for their health and survival.  That included land-management practices to maintain a diversity of plant and animal populations, like burning for wildlife forage, and pruning or burning for huckleberry.  Grasses and other plants were gathered and harvested according to our traditional harvesting methods that ensured the health of plant populations.  We must have the ability to hand down this traditional knowledge to our young if our culture is to survive, and in order to do that we need a healthy and productive environment,” said Hank Gobin, Director of the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve.

Many at the conference believed it was a good step towards more open communication between the Tribes and public land managers. “It was an important time to hold this workshop, bringing the many tribal people who are involved and interested in this topic together with the public land managers, who may not be fully aware of the importance of plant resources to regional tribes on lands they are managing,” said Libby Halpin Nelson, Conference Coordinator for the Tulalip Tribes Treaty Rights Office.  Following the initial discussion and planning which emerged from the conference, tribal conference officials will continue to encourage dialog and collaboration between the Tribes and public land managing agencies, in order to nurture the richness and wise management of the region’s public lands.

For more information, contact: Francesca Hillery Public Affairs, 360.716.4013, 425.350.8933,  fhillery@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov.

The Lummi Nation distributed sockeye salmon to tribal members last month for families to can and store for the winter.

“The tribe puts fish away as much as possible when we have an abundance, for ceremonies and all the functions that the tribe sponsors,” said Randy Kinley Sr., policy representative for the tribe. “It’s very important to take care of your people’s needs culturally.”

The fish was caught during the record 2010 Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery and has been in cold storage.

“The sockeye season was short this year and we wanted to make sure people have the opportunity to put salmon away for the winter,” Kinley said.

Watch the video below:

View more pictures on Flickr.

The interactive site features the Lummi Nation:

Seafood consumption rates are used to determine water quality safety standards, but federal and state agencies rely on national studies. Members of fishing tribes in western Washington eat a lot more fish than the average person.

State water quality standards are based on a seafood consumption rate of 6.5 grams of fish a day. Other fish consumption studies of northwest Indian tribes and Asian and Pacific Islanders reported consumption rates ranging from 100 to nearly 500 grams of fish per day.

“Estimates for seafood consumption from national surveys do not apply to either the Lummi people or other Indian tribes in the Puget Sound area,” said Merle Jefferson, director of Lummi Natural Resources. “We need to know how much seafood our people eat, so we can set regulations that reduce the pollution in the waters where we harvest our food.”

The Lummi Nation plans to use Lummi-specific data to protect the health of its members. This summer, natural resources staff members began conducting a diet survey of male tribal members with fishing and shellfishing licenses, including fishermen who harvest for ceremonial and subsistence purposes.

In addition to guiding Lummi’s water quality standards, the results of the survey will help ensure that the state’s toxic substance criteria protect the health of tribal members.

Washington state also is preparing to adjust its water quality standards to protect people who consume more fish than the general population nationwide.

The study was funded by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registration, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with additional support provided by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

For more information contact: Jeremy Freimund, Lummi Nation Water Resources Manager, 360-384-2212 or jeremyf@lummi-nsn.gov; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC information officer, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

From the Daily Herald:

When finished, [the pipeline] will allow the Tulalips to develop more commercial land, serve their growing population and even conserve important waterways. The positive economic benefits are expected to ripple far beyond the reservation.

“We’re thinking of the future,” tribal Chairman Mel Sheldon said.

…

A decade ago, the tribes filed a $37 million legal claim against Everett, contending that the city’s diversion dam built years earlier on the Sultan River had destroyed a salmon run. There were other hurts too.

The good-faith efforts of the city on this project have done much to heal old wounds, Sheldon said.

“They saw the historical inequities and realized in order to go forward they had to review those and find solutions,” he said.

The entire pipeline won’t be completed for at least a few years.

Read the full article.

The tribe expects the Brenner fish hatchery to be completed by the end of the year. The tribe has been rearing the fall juvenile chinook from brood years 2008, 2009 and 2010 at its Harvey Creek Hatchery.

Fall chinook, which mostly rear and spawn in the South Fork Stillaguamish, are genetically distinct from summer chinook, which primarily use the North Fork. A hatchery program has been in place in the North Fork for more than 20 years, with about 1,500 summer chinook returning each year.

Stillaguamish fall chinook by comparison have declined to fewer than 100 fish — so few that there aren’t enough adult chinook in the South Fork to capture and use for broodstock.

For three years, tribal natural resources staff have been seining for juvenile fall chinook, which they raise in small compartments, called “fish condos,” until they are large enough to move to a larger space.

In August, fisheries biologist Carlin McAuley from the federal Manchester Research Station visited the Harvey Creek hatchery to ultrasound the 2008 fish to see if any of them had matured enough to spawn. Three fish, likely males, had matured. “We will learn about how long it takes them to fully ripen up and how long they will last before dying,” Killebrew said.

“With these first captive brood fish, we are learning how to raise, monitor and hold wild chinook salmon from infancy to old age and death,” he added. “We have never tried this before with the Stillaguamish Tribe’s hatchery program and it will help us ramp up a full-scale captive brood program to try and keep South Fork fall-timed chinook from going extinct.”

Watch a video about the program below:

For more information, contact: Kip Killebrew, Stillaguamish Tribe, kkillebrew@stillaguamish.com, or 360-435-8770; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC, kneumeyer@nwifc.org or 360-424-8226.

Non-functioning creosote debris in marine waters is considered a contaminant. The Swinomish Tribe plans to remove about 100 creosote pilings near the mouth of Padilla Bay.

The Swinomish Tribe is cleaning up a former lime storage area by removing about 280 cubic yards of contaminated soil and 100 creosote wood pilings.

The contaminated site is adjacent to the Swinomish Channel near the mouth of Padilla Bay. When the channel was created in the 1930s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumped dredge spoils on the Swinomish Reservation, converting an intertidal area of mudflats and marshes into uplands.

The area was leased by a non-tribal member from 1964 to 1989 when it was used to store lime and other products for agricultural use. The storage building was demolished in 2003, but a concrete slab, debris and a burn pile remain.

Contamination at the site includes bioaccumulative toxins that could end up in marine waters through surface water runoff into the Swinomish Channel.

The tribe intends to restore open space on the site, which is near the Swinomish casino, gas station, RV park, and a hotel under construction.

“Our economic development area is blighted by the debris at the lime storage site,” said tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby. “We need to remove the debris and contaminated soil to make the area safer for everyone. It’s a step toward undoing decades of environmental degradation.”

The tribe is doing the work with the help of a Brownfields cleanup grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Brownfields are abandoned or underused industrial and commercial sites where development is complicated by environmental contamination. EPA’s grants help minimize the environmental threat and enable the sites to be put to productive use. The tribe began its Brownfields cleanup program in 2008.

Last year, the tribe cleaned up the area near a salmon habitat restoration project at the McGlinn Jetty and Causeway, removing more than 400 cubic yards of debris and soil weighing more than 230 tons.

For more information, visit the Swinomish Tribe’s website or contact the Swinomish Environmental Management program at 360-466-2631, 7299.

A guest at the Thousand Trails campground on the reservation took some photos and video, which were posted on the Seattle P-I blog.

As young boys, Cliff and his brother, Ed, shared a paper route. Cliff worked on the family farm milking cows, raising fryer chickens, and tending crops such as potatoes and raspberries. He also took jobs on other farms, tending pea vine harvesters, milking for dairies, and short stints pumping gas at the Mobil station and bucking hay in eastern Washington. He also played football, baseball and wrestled.

After high school, Cliff tried logging, both near Monroe and in the northern California redwoods. He returned to Washington to work for Boeing, becoming a lead printer. He spent weekends hiking and rock climbing and tuning motorcycles for a racing team. He took a position as industrial photographer with the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington, working on top secret projects until it became a conflict with his leadership work with the peace movement during the Vietnam war.

During the time he was at the Applied Physics Lab, Cliff enrolled at UW in geology. To save money, he lived at Lake Joy in a rustic cabin without running water or electricity and commuted to the university on his motorcycle. He later moved into a house in the University District with other students who became lifelong friends.

Cliff switched his major to fisheries, working with Dr. Richard Whitney doing baseline studies for the establishment of the North Cascades National Park. He conducted the first water quality and fisheries surveys in the North Cascades alpine lakes, hiking into remote areas during summers. He began a master’s program, leading the research team investigating the fisheries and environment of Grays Harbor Bay.

He began work with the Tulalip Tribes in 1976 as one of the first tribal biologists in the Boldt case area. He was manager of the Tulalip Tribes’ Bernie Kai-Kai Gobin Hatchery from its founding in 1982 until his retirement in 2002. He was made an honorary tribal member by the Tulalip Tribes in 2001. After his retirement he continued to work part time for the tribe as an adviser.

Cliff is survived by his wife, Kit Paulsen, sister Sandy Bloor, and brothers Ed and Don Bengston, as well as many nieces and nephews.

A graveside service will be held at 10 a,m. Thursday, Aug. 18, at the Mission Beach Cemetery, Tulalip Bay.

Cards for Cliff’s wife and other family members may be sent to Tulalip Tribes, Natural Resources, c/o Helene Contraro, 6406 Marine Drive, Tulalip, WA 98271 or emailed to krawson@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov.

The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Cliff’s name to Hope Heart Institute.

From the festival website:

The Stillaguamish Festival of the River is a fun way to celebrate summer and the Pacific Northwest environment. Regional citizens and visitors share their experiences and learn from others about water quality, salmon habitat, and the watershed. And if you don’t know what a watershed is, we’ll teach you!

This year we feature a giant storytelling turtle tent, interpretive salmon habitat tours, arts and craft vendors, a scrumptious salmon steak barbecue prepared by the Stillaguamish Tribe, and a variety of live music.

From the story:

TULALIP — For six years, Inez Bill has been teaching tribal youth how to harvest and process plants in traditional tribal ways.

Through teaching children the old ways of honoring, harvesting and using plants for food and medicine, the plants in turn will nourish the spirits and bodies of the Tulalip people for generations down the road, tribal leaders say.

“We consider the medicinal plants as gifts from the spirit,” said Bill, coordinator for the tribes’ Rediscovery Program.

Now the tribes have plans in the works not only to generate more places to harvest those plants but also to provide a place for the public to learn about and appreciate the reservation’s natural heritage.

They are in the beginning stages of creating a Natural History Preserve, a 42-acre area with native plants, gardens, pathways, public viewing areas along Quilceda Creek and Ebey Slough, and tribal sculptures.

The entrance will be from the new, $19 million Hibulb Cultural Center at 6410 23rd Ave. NE, the centerpiece of which is a tribal museum scheduled for an opening ceremony Aug. 19.

“We see the Natural History Preserve as an extension of the museum,” Bill said.

The Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve is located at 6410 23rd Ave. NE, west of I-5 and Marysville. It will be open to the public Tuesday through Sunday. Admission will be $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and $6 for students, military or veterans. Children under 5 and Tulalip tribal members are free.

It opens to the public Aug. 20, following a special opening for the tribe on Aug. 19.

Young women from next year's host tribe, Squaxin Island, dance during the last day of the 2011 Tribal Canoe Journey.

Paddle to Swinomish concluded Sunday with songs from Swinomish, the host tribe, and Squaxin Island, which will host next year when canoes will land in downtown Olympia.

This year’s Canoe Journey marked the fourth year of a water quality study, as reported by Coast Salish Gathering News and printed in Indian Country Today Media Network:

Canoe families from Western Washington and British Columbia participated in the fourth year of a unique study of water quality in the Salish Sea during their paddle to Swinomish.

Partnering with the U.S. Geological Survey, the canoes were outfitted with measuring equipment small enough to be held in one hand and strong enough to be towed hundreds of miles behind the canoes. The tools, called YSI multiparameter water quality sondes, send signals to Google Maps with near real-time information about water conditions.

Canoe families who participated in the study during the Canoe Journey were from the Squaxin Island Tribe, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and Sauk-Suiattle Tribe from Western Washington and the Squamish First Nation and Musgamagw Tribe of British Columbia.

The 2011 summer’s cool start was reflected in initial results from South Salish Sea, where temperatures of surface waters averaged 12.3º C (54.1º F). In 2009, temperatures of surface water averaged 18.6º C (65.5º F). In 2008 and 2010, the average water temperature in the same area was 14.4º C (58º F).

“Our canoes work best for this project because they don’t use motors, they can cover a large area and they don’t churn up the water,” said Northwest Indian Fish Commission Chairman Billy Frank Jr. “This is just the right kind of vehicle to gather this kind of information.”

Samples taken by motorized boats can be tainted by exhaust, fuel remnants and propeller turbulence.

While traveling their ancestral highway, canoe families simultaneously measure many conditions, including surface-water temperature, conductivity, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and turbidity, producing multiple water-property profiles every 10 seconds across the Salish Sea.

Scientists travel in canoes with pullers and skippers, so they can work together to collect observational data. In these interactions, indigenous knowledge is integrated with modern science to improve everyone’s understanding of the Salish Sea’s natural history. The perspectives are ones that science alone cannot offer.

The exchanges made between scientists and Coast Salish culture bearers, with their traditional knowledge from their communities, increases the overall understanding of conservation and stewardship in the Salish Sea.

View photos of Paddle to Swinomish on NWIFC’s Flickr feed.

Gov. Gregoire paddles in the Salmon Dancer alongside Chairman Brian Cladoosby, left, and his father Mike Cladoosby.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire arrived on the shores of the Swinomish reservation today on the canoe Salmon Dancer with Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby. Salmon Dancer was one of more than 100 canoes participating in the Tribal Canoe Journey.

View more photos of the landing on NWIFC’s Flickr feed.

Read more about the Canoe Journey and see photos of the landing last week at Port Gamble in the New York Times:

For the 23rd summer in a row, a growing number of American Indians from tribes scattered across coastal regions of Washington State and British Columbia have climbed into traditionally designed cedar canoes and paddled as many as 40 miles a day, sometimes more, over two or three weeks, camping at a series of reservations until they converge at the home of a host tribe. There, several thousand people welcome them for a week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration.

For more information, visit the Paddle to Swinomish website.

With many salmon runs on the decline, tribal fishermen are finding it harder than ever to make ends meet all year long. Even when salmon returns are plentiful, commercial fishermen who make a lot of money during part of the year might have no income at all after the season ends.

The Lummi Fishers Project is helping tribal members develop skills and business plans that allow them to remain in the fishing industry and still earn a living.

“We’re not training them out of the industry,” said Elden Hillaire, chairman of the Lummi Nation Fisheries Commission. “Our fishermen are always going to be fishermen.”

With the help of a $3.4 million U.S. Department of Labor grant, Lummi Fishers works individually with commercial fishermen to match them with training and careers that are linked to their existing skills.

For example, some tribal members are training at Skagit Valley College’s Marine Manufacturing and Technology Center to get certified in all phases of boat building.

“A lot of our guys are interested in boat building,” said Kathy Pierre, project director for Lummi Fishers. “That’s the skill set they already have, but they just might not be certified. Gaining the certification opens up a whole set of doors to other jobs.”

Others have been trained to participate in the commercial squid, sardine and herring industries in Alaska, California and Oregon. They’ve acquired new skills such as hanging different nets, working with hydraulics and repairing boats.

An ideal example is a diver who also is a welder by trade, Pierre said. He is training in underwater welding, which will make him employable all year long.

The project also benefits tribal members who are no longer fishing.

“A lot of people stopped fishing because the industry collapsed and they were unable to maintain their gear,” Pierre said. “I fished all my life until eight years ago. Some people have struggled from then to now, so this program is helping them get back on their feet, plan a career and put together an education plan to reach their goal.”

Lummi Nation received the Department of Labor grant last year to help tribal fishermen affected by the decline of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery, which was declared a commercial fishing disaster in 2008.

For more information, contact: Kathy Pierre, Lummi Fishers project director, 360-384-1489 x 2215 or kathyp@lummi-nsn.gov; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC information officer, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

According to the official press release:

Beginning July 25th, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community will host The Tribal Canoe Journey (TCJ). Swinomish will welcome over 100 family canoes, mostly from the Northwest, but also from as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand to the shores of its Reservation. The Tribe will formally grant the visiting canoes permission to come ashore where they will be fed, find a comfortable place to rest and throughout the week, have a chance to share songs, dances and tales of their travels.

In 1989 the Pacific Northwest Tribes revived a tradition of bringing together their people to celebrate the connection to salmon, water and each other. Initially the TCJ only involved a handful of canoes that participated in the Washington State Centennial. Since then, TCJ has expanded to include over a hundred tribes and First Nations predominantly from the United States and Canada. Over time this event has come to be known as “The Canoe Journey.” It occurs annually each summer on the Salish Sea. Hosting of the annual event rotates among the Northwest tribes and Canadian First Nations. Canoes leave from their homelands and travel to the host tribe. TCJ can last several weeks depending on where the canoes have started; some canoes leave as early during the first week in July and paddle on the open waters for up to three weeks.

Those who participated in the first paddle to Seattle in 1989, like Emmett Oliver, realized that this journey could provide a resurgence of the traditional ways of the canoe culture. These first paddlers decided to form an Inter-tribal Canoe Society and hold the event every year. Over the last twenty-two years, TCJ has helped to bring back Northwest indigenous languages; foster the canoe family song and other songs; and provide an avenue for healing. It has served to aid in addressing and healing the problems that plague indigenous people, such as alcohol and substance abuse and suicide. Suicide has been on the rise in indigenous communities- not just in the Northwest but in the homelands of the First Nations in Canada. The TCJ not only provides a strong sense of pride and helps re-instill wellness amongst indigenous communities, but also helps build trust and cross cultural understanding with non-native communities who often live amongst or adjacent to indigenous people.

During TCJ, families and friends from afar reunite as the canoes travel to the host tribe. The canoe families paddle for an average of eight hours each day, taking breaks on support boats or beaches as necessary. After a full day of paddling, the canoe families stop overnight at designated tribal locations or specified towns to camp, eat, rest, and share songs and dances during the evening. When the tide is right and the conditions are safest the canoes head out again until finally they reach the host site.

Every tribe that hosts TCJ believes that it is an honor and a once in a lifetime opportunity to share the family canoe culture of the Salish tribes with each other and the thousands of people who over the years have attended this annual event. Since its revival, TCJ has drawn canoe cultures from other parts of the United States and even internationally. This year canoe families from Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, and even as far away as New Zealand are anticipated to land and join in the weeklong celebration and potlatch (traditional “give away”).

The reservation of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community is located across the Swinomish Channel from the town of La Conner, WA, a small town nestled in the surrounding farmlands of Skagit County and located to the west of Interstate 5 and south of State Highway 20.

Paddle to Swinomish 2011
Canoe Journey Headquarters
11404 Moorage Way
La Conner, WA 98257

For additional information, visit www.paddletoswinomish.org and www.swinomish.org.

From the North Kitsap Herald:

The Suquamish and the Duwamish were the host tribes for this event. Canoes were to come from Washington and Canada to Suquamish, the official host of the final leg of the Quileutes’ two-week voyage to Seattle. The flotilla of Native canoes would then make a seven-mile journey from Suquamish to Golden Gardens Park on Shilshole Bay on Friday, July 21, 1989, where the Duwamish would host them to come ashore.

The Heiltsuk delegation from Canada and the Hoh from the Pacific Coast of Washington joined up with the Lummi as they continued their journey south, gathering strength with the Nooksack, Upper Skagit, Swinomish, Samish, Tulalip, to give support to their Native sisters and brothers of Washington state. The canoes from other tribes included the Lower Elwha Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Skokomish, Puyallup, Nisqually, and United Indians of All Tribes.

The state said, in 1985, dugout canoes were almost a lost art in the Pacific Northwest, found mostly in museums. The idea was to have the tribes carve their own canoes, assemble at a rendezvous, paddle across Puget Sound to Seattle on a bright summer day, camp in a park, and spend two days canoe racing on the sound and enjoying time together celebrating cherished features of Northwest Coast culture.

Read the full speech.

The Daily Herald:

The Tulalip Tribes forestry department manages about 8,000 acres of woods on the 22,000-acre reservation. The work follows a blueprint that Tulalip leaders adopted in a 1978 Forest Management Plan.

“Many years ago, tribal leaders saw the value of retaining the interior core of the reservation in a forestry setting, helping to preserve cultural values and opportunities into the future,” said Glen Gobin, vice chairman of the Tulalip Tribes board of directors.

The tribes hope to reap financial rewards and estimate $3 million in annual revenue within 25 years. Local companies benefit, too. One is Melton’s, Precision Thinning, a two-man operation from Sedro-Woolley that did the recent thinning. Local paper and pulp mills also get more work.

Much of the area of the current Tulalip Reservation was logged about a century ago and later caught fire, Gobin said. After that, red alders and other hardwood trees replaced the old forest dominated by three main conifers: western hemlocks, Douglas firs and western red cedars.

A true old growth forest would take centuries to mature naturally. Scientists have been trying to figure out how to accelerate the process.

In nature, fire, lightning strikes, disease and windstorms might have created openings and variations in the density of trees. Forestry programs have been trying to achieve similar effects through thinning and varying the kinds of trees planted.

…

Unlike most timber operations, the Tulalips’ work has a strong cultural component. That includes the seasonal gathering of plants for food, medicine, baskets and clothing.

Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year said the state has failed in Samish Bay, and directed agencies to fix the problem by next September. “We’re not going to flush, literally flush 4,000 acres down the drain of prime shellfish growing area in the state,” she told managers at an April meeting.

In response, state and local officials last month released a plan for more inspections and enforcement on all fronts, including septic tanks, livestock operations, small hobby farms, dairies and others, as well as more education and help for landowners. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this summer plans over flights to determine likely pollution sources, such as muddy fields where rain is more likely to wash mud manure into waters.

The problems of Samish Bay highlight the greater challenges facing Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay and other distressed watersheds, where cleanup is complicated by pollution from many varied and diffused sources, called nonpoint pollution, including farmland or stormwater runoff, agricultural activities, urban development, failing septic tanks, toxics and even pet waste.

“If we can’t fix it in Samish, we’re in trouble,” said Bill Dewey, who owns a clam farm in the bay and is a spokesman for Taylor Shellfish, which also has a farm there. “This is as classic as it gets for nonpoint pollution. (The governor) has put a stake in the ground here and said this is going to be an example.”

Officials say the fecal contamination comes from many sources, including farm livestock waste, wildlife, pets and humans. The bacteria level is especially high when heavy rains cause additional runoff into the Samish River, which flows into the bay. Shellfish can accumulate bacteria or other harmful pathogens; eating contaminated shellfish can make people sick.

Last year, Samish Bay shellfish areas were closed 14 times for a total of 63 days. This year’s six closures, mostly after rain events, have pinched Blau Oyster Co., which has 10 full-time employees.

“It’s hard to keep a crew busy. It interferes with the cash flow when we’re not producing,” 70-year-old Paul Blau said one morning at the family’s bayside oyster shucking facility, tucked in a residential neighborhood on a picturesque sliver of land that juts into Puget Sound like a crooked finger. The air smells of saltwater, seaweed and mud. The tides are receding, revealing some of the family’s 200 acres of tidelands. Inside the facility, several workers wearing rubber gloves and bibs coax oyster meat from the hard shells of Pacific oysters that were harvested earlier that morning. Along one side of the plant, several barrels of live oysters are packed with ice, waiting to be shipped to British Columbia.

Steven Blau, 42, said dairy farms get a bad rap but there’s enough blame to go around. “It’s a combination of everything,” he said, noting septic tanks and human impact. “It’s not just one thing.”

There’s an effort underway to trace sources of the fecal contamination. But one focus of inspections will be landowners with animals, from commercial livestock operations to small hobby farms with a variety of animals such as pigs, goats or alpacas.

“Animals generate manure. If that’s properly managed, everything is fine,” said Tom Eaton, the EPA’s Washington operations director. “If they’re allowed access to streams and creeks or the ground is not grassland but a muddy field, it’s a lot more likely that it will get washed into the stream.”

Eaton said EPA inspectors will look for animals with direct access to streams or properties that don’t have sufficient buffers near streams.

Some think authorities have been too lax. “The greater problem is lack of adequate enforcement and regulation,” said Larry Wasserman, environmental policy manager for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “Voluntary approaches aren’t going to solve these problems.”

Read the full story.

The Swinomish Tribe issued the following statement:

“Robert Joe was a great man. He was my teacher, my elder and my uncle,” said Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby. “The results of his work can be seen throughout our entire community and his leadership was felt across Indian Country and the United States. While we mourn his loss, we also celebrate the life of this great man.”

Wa-Walton served on the Swinomish Indian Senate for 26 years, from 1976 until 2000, and was the elected Chairman for 18 years, from 1982 until 1997. During that time, Wa-Walton became known as a collaborative, compassionate and creative leader who was a passionate defender of tribal sovereignty. His leadership stretched throughout the Skagit Valley and the Salish Sea, as well as the nation to Washington, D.C. He made this place we all call home a better place to live. His passing is our loss and his legacy will be remembered for generations to come.

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community grew under the leadership of Wa-Walton as he dedicated his life to the prosperity of his people. During his years on the Swinomish Indian Senate, there were many successes, such as the building in 1985 of the Swinomish Bingo Hall, his being the Special Chairman of the American Indian Goodwill Games in 1989, the signing of the Centennial Accord Agreement with then-Gov. Booth Gardner in 1990, the development of the Swinomish Smokehouse — the first such building built on Puget Sound in 100 years in 1991 — installation of the new sewer and water systems to benefit both tribal members and non-native residents in 1993, opening of the Swinomish Casino & Cabaret in 1997, leading the National Self-Governance effort for tribes to directly compact for funds to provide federal services in 1996 and the receipt of the High Honor Award from Harvard University for intergovernmental cooperation related to joint land use planning in 2000.

The values of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community are reflected in Wa-Walton’s leadership as he brought compassion, deep concern, never-ending faith and hope to his community. This leadership made possible the tremendous gains experienced in protecting the community, its lands and resources, and improving the conditions for all members of the tribe.

Wa-Walton was a member of the Swinomish Smokehouse Organization and St. Paul’s Catholic Church where he served as deacon for many years with his dear friend, Rev. Patrick Twohy. He was known for a beautiful singing voice that he shared enthusiastically. His strong spirit brought comfort to the community and his prayers will be remembered by all.

“There is not a person on this Reservation who was not touched by Wa-Walton. To be with him was to know that you were loved,” Cladoosby said. “He threw his arms around generations of Swinomish children and generously shared the lessons of the elders who taught him. The Swinomish Tribe would not be what it is today without his steady leadership through difficult times.”

The Canoe Journey started in 1989 to revive a traditional form of travel on the ancestral highways of the coastal Pacific Northwest. Every year, more than 100 indigenous canoes travel from their territories to a host nation, with stops at indigenous territories along the way, for celebration and cultural sharing.

In this year’s Journey, the first canoes get underway in early July and will meet at the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, near La Conner, Wash., July 25-31.

…

Cultural influence: Indigenous languages are spoken on the journey, particularly at the canoe landings when skippers ask hosts for permission for pullers to come ashore, and at evening ceremonies when dances and songs are shared.

…

Environmental influence: The Canoe Journey is proving to be an effective tool for measuring the health of the Salish Sea, an expansive inland sea stretching from the Strait of Georgia to the north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound to the south.

…

Economic influence: The Canoe Journey brings thousands of visitors to host nations, impacting local economies and giving host nations an opportunity to show some economic muscle. Hosting is preceded by new construction to accommodate visitors.

…

Political influence: The Canoe Journey has built bridges between cultures. A committee of Native and non-Native people formed to help raise money for the Lummi Nation’s Canoe Journey hosting in 2007. Lummi’s hosting included its largest public potlatch in 70 years.

Read the full article.

This spring, Stillaguamish Natural Resources staff found hundreds of chum in Blue Slough, along with dozens of chinook, coho and steelhead.

The side channel had been cut off from the river by railroad tracks in the 1930s. Restoring the habitat was proposed in the 1970s, and the tribe began the work in 2005. Logjams and fish-friendly culverts were installed, creating 3,000 feet of side channel habitat and finally reconnecting the slough to the North Fork Stillaguamish River last fall.

“This was the ultimate example of a ‘lessons learned’ project,” said Pat Stevenson, environmental manager for the tribe.

Not only did the project take years to get off the ground, but there were a few surprises during the work, including changes to the natural armoring of the stream bed, a flood that lowered the channel and an increase in groundwater caused by channel excavation.

Prior to the work, Blue Slough connected two large ponds on private property, but was cut off from the river.

“The channel was all ground water,” Stevenson said. “It didn’t have that river smell.” Salmon use an acute sense of smell to navigate back to their natal streams to spawn.

Now, the slough is connected to the river at both ends, where water can flow continuously, providing winter and summer rearing habitat for juvenile chinook salmon Lack of rearing habitat is a top cause for the severe decline of chinook in the Stillaguamish watershed.

For more information, contact: Pat Stevenson, environmental manager, Stillaguamish Tribe, 360-631-0946 or pstevenson@stillaguamish.com; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

Manila clams are harvested for the Upper Skagit Tribe's Blessing of the Fleet

The tribe acquired 80 acres of beds with money from a 2007 settlement between treaty tribes and non-tribal commercial shellfish growers. The settlement compensates tribes for lost opportunities to gather shellfish at traditional areas, enabling them to acquire and enhance tidelands elsewhere.

“We want to develop these beaches to provide resources for tribal members long after the settlement money is gone,” said Scott Schuyler, Upper Skagit’s natural resources director. “Our goal is to have a self-sustaining operation within the next five to 10 years.”

So far, tribal natural resources staff has planted 20 acres with Pacific oysters and manila clams. The oysters are grown two ways: on long lines and in flip bags. Long lines are the more traditional way of growing oysters commercially. Oysters grow in large clusters on seeded “mother” shells strung between posts in the tidelands. Flip bags are a newer technology that produces a higher-value oyster. Seeds are placed in bags that tumble with the tides, breaking off the rough edges of the shell. The result is a smoother shell, deeper cup and more consistent shape of the oyster.

“We’re experimenting with the flip bags and hope to branch out to grow other species, like geoducks,” Schuyler said. “I’m proud of how much progress we’ve made with the site.”

Oysters and clams from the tribe’s beds were served at the Upper Skagit Blessing of the Fleet this spring. Future plans include developing a site near Larrabee State Park near the border between Skagit and Whatcom counties.

Shellfish harvest in Samish Bay frequently is closed because of potential fecal coliform pollution from stormwater runoff and nearby farms.

“Shellfish closures caused by water pollution violate our treaty right to gather shellfish,” Schuyler said. “These continual closures are an issue that needs to be seriously addressed at all levels of government.”

For more information, contact: Scott Schuyler, natural resources director, Upper Skagit Tribe, 360-854-7009 or sschuyler@upperskagit.com; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

The Lummi Nation held its biggest community cleanup to date in April.

Lummi tribal members filled 24 dumpsters full with solid waste from reservation lands. Nearly 1,000 tires were removed and recycled. About 270 tons of solid waste were removed, which was nearly twice the 148 tons removed during a similar community cleanup of the reservation in 2009. More than 9 tons of metal were recycled, including appliances.

Staff members from the Lummi Housing Authority (LHA) were on hand to help unload trucks at the two collection sites, make house calls, and clean up illegal dump sites on the reservation.

“We went to 97 homes,” said Christina Solomon, maintenance manager for LHA. “A lot of our residents are low-income and don’t have vehicles to get rid of trash that won’t fit in their garbage cans.”

The Lummi Natural Resources Department obtained a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and partnered with the LHA to conduct the five-day cleanup. The LHA provided the labor; the Natural Resources Department used the EPA grant to pay for the garbage to be hauled off and disposed at a regional transfer station, and for other materials to be recycled.

Garbage accumulates in undeveloped areas of the reservation as it does in many areas of rural America. People from the reservation community and throughout neighboring Whatcom County who can’t afford to dispose of large items like televisions, appliances, and tires dump their trash on the Lummi reservation, creating illegal dump sites that degrade fish and wildlife habitat.

Community cleanups can help deter that activity, Solomon said. She sent crews to remove the garbage from four of the larger illegal dumps. “In principle, once these dump sites are cleaned up, you won’t see as much on the side of the road, because people will anticipate the next cleanup,” she said.

“It makes everybody feel better about where they live when it’s cleaned up,” she said. “The hope is, you keep cleaning up, cleaning up and it’s kind of contagious.”

Other communities interested in the tribe’s cleanup program should contact Lummi Environmental Program Director Leroy Deardorff at 360-384-2272.

Skagit County’s Samish Bay shellfish beds deserve better protection, say federal, state and county officials

Skagit County’s Samish watershed will come under closer scrutiny by federal, state and county environmental inspectors as they pursue cleaner water and safer shellfish in Puget Sound’s Samish Bay. The boost in protection includes coordinated inspections in the Samish Watershed and a $960,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to Skagit County to locate, identify and remedy sources of fecal contamination.

High bacteria counts in the Bay have downgraded over 4,000 acres of shellfish beds. Scientists suspect the bacteria come from many sources, including livestock, wildlife, pets and humans.

These high bacteria counts are largely due to rainfall causing additional rural runoff into the Samish River which flows into Samish Bay. These types of conditions led the Washington State Department of Health to close Samish Bay shellfish beds a total of 63 days in 2010.

“Every bacterial source, regardless of where it is in the watershed, can hurt water quality,” said Tom Eaton, Director of EPA’s Washington Operations Office. “We need to focus on where we can make a difference: livestock, pets and human-generated pollution. We are working closely with the state, Skagit County, Skagit Conservation District and the tribes to fix this problem in Samish Bay.”

EPA’s contributions include compliance inspections; aerial over flights; reviewing county monitoring reports and field inspection notes; looking for animals with direct access to streams as well as direct discharges of manure or manure laden water to streams; identifying commercial or recreational facilities with inadequate buffers or fields with no vegetation. EPA will be relying on Skagit County to assess on-site sewage treatment systems which could also be part of the problem.

These actions are part of EPA’s ongoing efforts and investments to help cleanup and restore Puget Sound by 2020. From 2008-2010, EPA has awarded more than $90 million to state, tribal and federal organizations for the restoration and protection of Puget Sound.

Swinomish fisheries technician Dora Finkbonner dyes harvested clams blue, so buyers will know they are for bait, and are not safe to eat.

This spring, Swinomish tribal members harvested clams for the first time near Monroe Landing on Whidbey Island. While not safe for human consumption, the shellfish can be used for crab bait. Any traces of bacteria ingested by the crab would be destroyed when it is cooked.

The bait fishery allowed tribal members to continue to exercise their treaty right to gather shellfish, even though water pollution has taken away the ability to eat one of their traditional foods.

At the end of each day of the bait fishery, tribal diggers brought their harvest to shellfish biologist Julie Barber and fisheries technician Dora Finkbonner, who dunked the bags of butter clams and cockles in blue dye, like Easter eggs. The blue dye is required by the state Department of Health to let buyers know that the clams are not for eating. The buyer tags also are marked, “not for human consumption – bait use only.” Tribal diggers either sold the bait or planned to use it themselves.

Northwest tribes have a long history of living off the land and making the most of the region’s natural resources.

“We’ve lost so much of our traditional gathering areas to development and habitat degradation,” said Swinomish fisheries manager Lorraine Loomis. “I wanted to provide a harvest opportunity for fishermen who don’t have boats.”

Fecal coliform pollution and stormwater runoff are an increasing problem in the tribe’s usual and accustomed shellfish gathering areas. Shellfish beds often are closed to harvest following heavy rains. Despite federal funding to a Skagit County project to clean up Samish Bay, 4,000 acres of shellfish beds were downgraded recently, prompting Gov. Chris Gregoire to call the cleanup a “failure.”

View more photos at NWIFC’s Flickr feed.

For more information, contact: Julie Barber, Swinomish shellfish biologist, 360-466-7315 or jbarber@skagitcoop.org; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC information officer, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

More than 500 members of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and local residents gathered for the annual blessing of the tribe’s fishing fleet Thursday, kicking off the season with a seafood feast and offering.

Tribal members place the first four salmon caught every season, along with prawns and crab in baskets lined with cedar branches, and give them back to the sea as an offering. Members of the tribe’s extended Edwards family led a procession to a bank along the Swinomish Channel as four men carried the baskets of seafood.

“This is what it takes for the spirit to hear you,” said one tribal elder as she blessed the fishermen.

Biologists estimate that the herd is continuing to grow, with surveys showing roughly 800 to 850 elk in the North Cascades area. Twenty years ago, the Nooksack elk population was about 1,700 elk. By 2003, the herd had declined to about 300 elk, largely because of degraded and disconnected habitat.

In addition to numerous restoration projects to improve elk forage, state and tribal co-managers boosted the Nooksack herd in 2003 and 2005 by relocating about 100 cow elk from the Mount St. Helens region.

One of the strongest signs that recovery efforts were working came in 2007, when tribal and state wildlife co-managers determined that the Nooksack herd was stable enough to support a small hunt of 30 elk.

Limited hunts have taken place each year since then. This year, non-tribal hunters and Point Elliott Treaty tribal hunters will have the opportunity to share the harvest of 40 bull elk. The Point Elliott Treaty tribes are Lummi, Nooksack, Muckleshoot, Sauk-Suiattle, Stillaguamish, Suquamish, Swinomish, Tulalip and Upper Skagit.

Tribal and state wildlife managers had agreed to stop hunting the herd in the 1990s, because of the population decline.

For more information, contact: Chris Madsen, wildlife biologist, NWIFC, 360-528-4366 or cmadsen@nwifc.org; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

The Stillaguamish Tribe’s Natural Resources Department deployed the buoy with the help of an Island Transporter barge in late March. A large concrete block was lowered into the water to anchor the buoy. Divers from the tribe’s Natural Resources Department ensured that the anchor was placed properly and did not impact any eelgrass beds.

The yellow buoy is an oceanographic hydrolab that will transmit real-time data about temperature, turbidity, salinity, chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen.

“We know these factors affect food resources in the estuary for outmigrating chinook smolts and migration conditions for returning adults,” said Don Klopfer, biologist for the tribe.

Stillaguamish chinook are among the most threatened salmon populations in Puget Sound. When state and tribal co-managers plan fishing seasons, Stillaguamish chinook are one of the runs they strive to protect.

“One of our biggest challenges is determining how much harvest to allow without compromising the recovery of critical stocks,” said Shawn Yanity, Stillaguamish tribal chairman. “Information we learn from this buoy in Port Susan will be combined with existing Puget Sound and North Pacific oceanographic data to further improve our forecasting model.”

The buoy also will help document changes in saltwater acidity, which is a symptom of climate change, and monitor the effectiveness of marine habitat improvement projects.

For more information, contact: Don Klopfer, Stillaguamish Tribe, 360-547-2687 or dklopfer@stillaguamish.com; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

View photos on NWIFC’s Flickr feed.

The Lummi Nation has launched a number of renewable energy projects to reduce its environmental impact and to contribute to its goal of energy self-sufficiency. These projects include conducting a wind energy development feasibility assessment, lighting a walking trail with solar LEDs, installing a geothermal heat pump system for a new administrative building, and developing a strategic energy plan to coordinate future efforts.

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A three-year effort to end fecal coliform pollution on the Samish River that threatens tidal shellfish beds has been declared “a failure” by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Her stern criticism of the Clean Samish Initiative came during an April 6 meeting of state agency heads involved in a monthly assessment of the effectiveness of government programs.

The Samish initiative seeks to reduce the amount of fecal coliform in the river through education, more frequent water quality monitoring and on-site farm and septic inspections.

Fecal coliform can get into the river from failing septic systems and animals defecating in or near the water. Typically, the highest levels of fecal coliform in the river are detected after heavy rainfalls.

To date the initiative has spent nearly $1 million in federal, state and local money. But Gregoire said there was little tangible success to report.

“We need to accept the fact that we’ve failed and take immediate steps to correct the fact that we’re losing 4,000 acres (of shellfish beds in the Samish Bay),” she said.

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“We think that we need regulations to protect the environment,” said Larry Wasserman, environmental services director for the Swinomish Tribe. “You see what’s happening on the Samish Bay. That’s a program where we have the current county critical areas ordinance in place, and the shellfish beds remain polluted. … A voluntary program is not going to meet the tribe’s goal of recovering fisheries.”

Wasserman thinks the legislation will not help situations in critical watersheds.

“It will hurt in this regard: If there’s an illusion of a solution, then there will be less incentive to actually deal with the problem in an effective way,” he said.