From the story:

Efforts to restore the legendary salmon run are ahead of schedule, Elofson told a group of about 20 at the Elwha Klallam Heritage Training Center on Thursday night.

“There’s only about 5,000 salmon coming back [now], and they expect between 300,000 and 400,000 salmon coming once the river is restored,” Elofson said.

The 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam are being taken down as part of a $325 million federal project to restore the river’s ecosystem and salmon runs.

It is the largest dam removal project in the U.S. to date, Elofson said.

Last summer, about 600 coho salmon were released into tributaries between the two dams — the Little River and Indian Creek — to shield them from high sediment loads coming down the main stem of the river.

“It worked out very well,” Elofson said.

“About half of those came back over the lower dam and returned, but half of them stayed up there.”

The Suquamish Tribe's shellfish coordinator Luke Kelly pulls out the whale's baleen plates to dry on the deck of the tribe's barge.

The Suquamish Tribe recently pulled up the bones of a gray whale from Agate Pass, with hopes of rebuilding the skeleton for educational purposes.

The tribe acquired the remains of the juvenile whale in July 2011 after the mammal beached itself and died near Silverdale. After biologists gathered tissue samples, the tribe wrapped the whale in net material and towed it to Agate Pass to let it naturally decompose.

While the soft tissue had completely decomposed, many of the bones were found to be broken or too brittle to use, including the skull, which was partially crushed by the weight of the rest of the bones.

“It’s too bad we’re not able to rebuild the entire skeleton, but there are parts that we could still use in educational environments or the tribal museum,” said Vivaine Barry, the tribe’s shellfish management biologist. “The baleen plates look like they’re in good condition, as do two of the jawbones, which are about six feet in length.”

The fibrous baleen plates, made of keratin, filter food from the water and mud that rushes into the whale’s mouth as it feeds near the ocean floor. Barry added that the whale’s tail vertebrae and some ribs also came up in good condition.

Historically, tribes would trade parts of the whale with each other, since not all tribes had access to them within their fishing areas. Tribal members would use every part of the animal, including blubber for cooking and bones for tools.

Gray whales typically migrate between Baja California and Alaska and can range from 16 feet to 45 feet in length. Once listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, gray whale populations along the West Coast have rebounded to near historic levels. The average gray whale lifespan is 20-40 years.

More photos of the retrieval can be found at go.nwifc.org/whalebones.

From the story:

(NOAA biologist John) McMillan and biologists with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe have found almost 100 other egg sacks like this one in the Elwha and her tributaries.

These eggs were laid by coho from the tribal hatchery near the mouth of the river, but they are descended from native Elwha coho salmon. This winter hundreds of adult hatchery coho were transported above the first dam. [Here’s a link to the video of the transport.]

Mike McHenry, a biologist with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, says even though the parents of these eggs are from the hatchery, the offspring will grow up wild.

“For all practical purposes they will be living in natural habitats and adapting and being subjected to natural selection and doing their thing,” he says. “It’s game on. We’re into recolonization now.”

These coho eggs will hatch in early spring. The young will hang out in the river for about 18 months and then head to the ocean. By the time they come back, the dams will be gone.

Since August, natural resources staff members have been seining dozens of locations within the restored 349-acre area, as well as 330 acres of tidelands nearby that escaped development.

Skokomish Tribe natural resources staff pull in a beach seine within the Skokomish Tidelands. The tribe is seining monthly as a way to monitor what marine life is taking advantage of the restored habitat.

The project area includes 219 acres of tidelands (formerly Nalley Island) that was restored in 2010 and 130 acres that was restored in 2007, mainly through culvert and dike removal.

The tribe is looking for juvenile chinook, chum and coho salmon. The beach seining efforts have also included finding pacific herring, surf smelt, sculpins, pipefish, flounders, gunnels, anchovies and shrimp.

“The undeveloped tidelands are about the closest thing to a natural salt marsh in the Skokomish estuary,” said Matt Kowalski, the tribe’s steelhead biologist. “This area creates a great opportunity to compare what is living here versus what is coming back to the newly restored areas.”

In the late 1930s, a large portion of the Skokomish estuary was converted from a pristine estuary to the Nalley Farm. Dikes and ditches were used to drain the former tidelands, which had been rich with marine life. In 2007 and 2010, the tribe started restoring the tidelands to their natural state.

“The project’s goal to restore riverine and tidal hydrology within the treatment areas is expected to allow natural physical and biological process to restore the salt marshes wetlands,” said Alex Gouley, the tribe’s habitat manager.

The tribe hopes to start a third phase of restoration in 2012, which will include removing remaining smaller culverts and dikes by hand.­

For more information, contact: Alex Gouley, Skokomish Tribe habitat manager, at (360) 877-5213 or agouley@skokomish.org; Matt Kowalski, Skokomish Tribe steelhead biologist, at (360) 877-5213 or mkowalski@skokomish.org; Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dike and a private dike built on each side of the Dungeness River have protected the homes and property behind them for decades.  Now, the dikes are leading to flooding problems for landowners.

Ward Road property owners Mel Groff and Rod Normandin discuss how the Dungeness River has affected their properties in the past year.

Concerned residents approached the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe for help to prevent future flooding from destroying their homes. Tribal natural resources staff explained the powerful hydrology of the river, including how the large trees the residents have seen anchoring into the streambed will help stabilize the riverbank.

“We tried contacting local, county, state and federal officials to help us with this, but no one was responding, so we went to the tribe,” said resident Mel Groff. “What’s going to happen when the river floods again and does even more damage? We’re going to get flooded out of our homes.”

The tribe has a vested interest in this situation, because the federal government has a trust responsibility to protect natural resources, such as fish habitat, said Scott Chitwood, the tribe’s natural resources director.

“Poor dike planning has harmed fish and wildlife habitat and put natural resources at risk for years,” Chitwood said. “Now property owners are being affected.”

In 1964, the Army Corps built 2.3 miles of dike on the east bank of the lower river to block floodwaters from flowing across farmland and through the Dungeness community before entering Dungeness Bay.

Without the historic outlet to the east, floodwaters could only spread west. In response, a private property owner on the west side of the river constructed a 4,000-foot dike on the west bank in 1983.

Meanwhile, residential development was occurring on Ward Road, just upstream of the dikes. Flooding along the road, which had always been minor, became progressively worse.

In December 2010, Ward Road and adjacent properties received their worst flooding, though river flows were nowhere near record high levels.

The Ward Road property owners believe that the flooding was caused by excessive trees, rocks and debris that flowed downstream. The neighbors have watched the riverbank continue to erode and move closer to the road.
The dikes have prevented the river from depositing its sediment into the once-expansive Dungeness River floodplain. Now the only places left for river sediment to accumulate is in shallow Dungeness Bay, which is filling in, and the river channel, which is building up. With the sediment buildup and downstream dikes constricting the river, flood waters spill out of the river channel, causing increased flooding of the Ward Road properties.

Unfortunately, because the dikes were built by a federal agency and a private owner, the tribe can’t do anything to prevent the flooding. However, the Corps is currently considering a proposal, endorsed by the tribe, Clallam County and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, to move a segment of its dike away from the river and reconnect the stream with part of its former floodplain.

“There are various potential flood hazard reduction projects commonly performed on Washington rivers,” said Randy Johnson, the tribe’s restoration planner. “But restoring the Dungeness River’s lost floodplain by setting back the dikes appears to be the best solution for meeting the needs of Dungeness salmon and resident.”

For more information, contact: Scott Chitwood, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe natural resources director, at (360) 681-4616 or schitwood@jamestowntribe.org; Randy Johnson, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe restoration planner, at (360) 681-4631 or rjohnson@jamestowntribe.org; Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

From the article:

(Barnard Construction) had to quit dam removal work temporarily Nov. 1, the concern being that any further lowering of the two dams’ reservoirs would harm fish through the release of sediment.

That hiatus was expected to last until the first of next year.

But an interagency team of biologists monitoring the return of fish to the Elwha River determined that the late fall runs of chum salmon had trickled to an end, Barb Maynes, Olympic National Park spokeswoman, said last week.

By Nov. 1, the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam had been lowered by 48 feet and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon dam by 32 feet. Water from the reservoirs has been spilling over the deconstructed dams, changing the hydrology of the reservoirs as well as the lower river. Only the last five miles of the river were free flowing before dam removal began.

An aerial view of the Lake Aldwell delta in October 2011, following the start of the removal of the Elwha Dam. (Photo: Kim Sager-Fradkin, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe)

“Since the Elwha Dam is about 40 percent gone, the reservoir behind it, Lake Aldwell, isn’t really a reservoir anymore,” said Mike McHenry, the tribe’s habitat program manager. “It’s starting to look like a river channel. The delta at the south end of the reservoir is more exposed and sediment is being transported downriver.”

In addition, construction crews have removed remnants of nearly 100 year old pilings from Lake Aldwell. Also removed was a logboom that prevented boats from going over the dam. The wood was allowed to flow downriver with the expectation that it will contribute to salmon habitat in the lower river.

“Following the big rains we had in late November, the river was flowing at 10,000 cubic feet per second at one point,” McHenry said. “A lot of dynamic stuff is happening with the high flows.”

Near the mouth of the river, the tribe has noticed a small increase of fine sediments building in the estuaries.

“The fine sediment plume from the mouth of the river into the Strait is much more pronounced than prior to removal activities.  Its configuration varies during the course of the day,” said Matt Beirne, the tribe’s environmental coordinator. “We haven’t seen significant sediment deposition in the estuary just yet, but we have seen elevated turbidity levels from the finer fraction of sediment.

“Although the removal of the dams appears to be ahead of schedule, we don’t expect to see significant  sediment  deposition within the estuary until we experience greater mobilizing flows through the system.”

For nearly 100 years, fish have been blocked from the upper Elwha River watershed by the two dams, which were built without fish ladders. More than 20 million cubic yards of sediment have built up behind the dams, most of which will be allowed to flow downriver and alter the riverbed.

The dams are owned by the federal government; the Olympic National Park is spearheading the removal effort. The project to remove the structures and restore the Elwha River ecosystem, estimated at $350 million, is the largest dam removal project to date in the United States. The project is expected to be finished by 2014.

Suquamish project biologist Anja Huff and USFW biological scientist Steve Damm take water samples at Grovers Creek Hatchery.

The tribe is working with Baldwin, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research zoologist, and Steve Damm, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biological scientist, to figure out if toxins in stormwater runoff are killing adult coho salmon. Vehicle exhaust, brake pads, oil and gasoline are among the main contributors to polluted stormwater.

Scientists have observed adult coho dying within 24 hours of returning to urban streams. In most cases, death occurs before the fish can spawn. Known as pre-spawn mortality, it is commonly seen in streams near large urban areas such as Seattle.

“In urban streams, we are finding 60 to 90 percent of coho salmon dying before they spawn,” Baldwin said. “We want to figure out first what contaminants, if any at all, are causing the mortalities, then figure out how much of it actually kills them.”

At the hatchery, the coho are exposed to the chemicals for 24 hours and then monitored for changes in their behavior. Liver, gill and bile samples are then taken for analysis. The contaminated water is filtered then disposed of at Kitsap County’s wastewater treatment plant in Kingston.

For comparison, another group of coho is placed in a tank of clean fresh water for 24 hours. Like those in the polluted tank, the coho are watched closely and the same tissue samples taken.

Biologists chose Kitsap County as the site for the project because it is an area where development is rapidly turning healthy rural streams into polluted urban creeks because of increasing population and development.

For more photos, go to go.nwifc.org/cohoexperiment

From the college’s website:

With the new lab, NWIC students have the opportunity to use instruments and learn techniques routinely employed by environmental scientists, and by government and private organizations, said NWIC science instructor Joyce McClain. With the experience they will gain, graduates will be able to fill the immediate need for tribal environmental technicians.

The classes will also benefit Tribal Natural Resources and Fisheries employees and tribal fisherman wanting to build on their skills, said Gina Corpuz, instructional manager at the Port Gamble S’Klallam site.

Corpuz said the degree is an important part of the curriculum for the site because Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal members are the original stewards of Gamble Bay.

“Everything that impacts their water, forests and land, changes the quality of life for their tribal community and all forms of life dependent on clean air and water,” she said. “NWIC students who choose Native Environmental Science as their program of study are also choosing to be part of the solution to the global environmental crisis.”

From the story:

Recent rains are bringing forth a surge of chum and coho salmon into streams across the Kitsap Peninsula.

With salmon on the move, this weekend might be a good time for local residents and out-of-town visitors to enjoy the natural wonders of salmon, being careful not to disturb their migration, experts say.

“This will definitely be a good weekend to look,” said Jon Oleyar, a biologist for the Suquamish Tribe who has the unusual job of walking streams to count fish on the east side of Kitsap County.

“The water is running off in a big way right now,” Oleyar said Tuesday. “By this weekend, every stream should have at least something in it.”

From the story:

 PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Standing on the banks of the Elwha River on a crisp November afternoon last week, Mel Elofson eased a slippery pink coho salmon into the cold, green water and watched it swim away.

“It’s a historic day,” he said. “We haven’t had salmon in these reaches for almost 100 years.”

Elofson, who works for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s fisheries department, was part of a team that transported 55 coho salmon into the middle section of the of the Elwha River, re-introducing coho to the area for the first time since the 108-foot Elwha Dam was completed in 1913.

Lower Elwha Klallam hatchery manager Larry Ward releases a tagged coho salmon into the Elwha River, between the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams.

The tribe, with volunteers from state and federal agencies, transferred 50 coho salmon recently from its new hatchery, House of Salmon, to a stretch of river between the Elwha and the Glines Canyon dams, nearly the Highway 101 bridge.

“We are putting these fish in an area that hasn’t had salmon for nearly 100 years,” Ward said. “We plan to track their movements using radio tags but also expect them to start seeding the area.”

The tribe plans to release 600 fish into the river this fall. All the fish will be tagged with spaghetti tags, so they can be identified if harvested. Nearly one-third of the fish also will be outfitted with blue plastic radio tags.  The tags will help the tribe track the fish as they seek spawning grounds in nearby tributaries.

The offspring of these salmon are expected to head to the ocean in spring 2013. When dam deconstruction wraps up in 2014, they will be returning to the river as adults. They will be the first salmon to come back after the dams are removed.

Built without fish ladders, the dams have been in place since the early 1900s and prevented fish from moving past the lower 5 miles of the river. During dam removal, work in the river will be put on hold during fish windows, when fish return to the river to spawn. Deconstruction of the dams for 2011 is finished for the year.

The dams are owned by the federal government; the Olympic National Park is spearheading the removal effort. The project to remove the structures and restore the Elwha River ecosystem, estimated at $350 million, is the largest dam removal project to date in the United States.

First Spawning Season at New Hatchery

As of late October, 600 adult coho salmon found their way to the new hatchery, with more expected through December, Ward said. The fish coming back to the new hatchery are a mix of hatchery and natural salmon. All the fish that return to the new hatchery will be moved to the river to spawn in the wild or will be spawned at the hatchery.

No fish have returned to the old hatchery, Ward said, most likely because the tribe isn’t pushing out water from the old facility to attract fish to return there. The new hatchery is pushing out water toward the river to attract fish to come to the facility.

More photos can be viewed at: go.nwifc.org/cohotransfer

From the Kitsap Sun:

Chris Weller: Retiring after 26 years with the Point No Point Treaty Council, Weller has been at the center of many salmon-restoration efforts in Hood Canal. They include the Summer Chum Conservation Initiative, which is credited for reversing a downward trend for threatened summer chum. Weller has been one of the few biologists in the region able to bridge the gaps between harvest, hatchery and habitat needs of salmon, Lawlis said.

From the article:

Meanwhile, chum salmon are just beginning to move into streams on the Kitsap Peninsula, where their transition from saltwater is normally timed by rains and higher streamflows, according to Jon Oleyar, who monitors fish in the streams for the Suquamish Tribe.

Curley and Blackjack creeks in South Kitsap, both known for their early runs, have chum in them now, he said.

Chico Creek, home to the largest chum run on the Kitsap Peninsula, began to get some fish over the weekend as rains caused the stream to rise.

“Overall, the creek is low, even with the rains we had,” Oleyar said. “The creeks have water in them but not as much as the fish would like when they head upstream.”

Because their biological clock is ticking, the chum will begin entering most streams soon even with little or no rain, Oleyar said. Coho salmon also are working their way upstream at the moment, he said.

Tribal biologists expected up to 14,000 net pen produced coho to return this year. At this point, probably a few thousand have shown up and they expect more to arrive with the first heavy rains. If that’s the case, we are in for another couple of weeks hunting down schools of coho, flailing away from the beach or a boat, and with a bit of luck, bringing home some decent size salmon.

 

The town and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe share the nearby waterway, Port Gamble Bay. The waterway has been used both economically and culturally by Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal members for generations. A top priority for the tribe the past few years has been protecting the bay from further pollution and development.

Until recently, OPG was offering the land to Kitsap County in exchange for development rights in the historic town. Many were opposed to this proposal, including the tribe, which had concerns about pollution impacting the natural resources of the bay, of which the tribe relies upon for economical and cultural purposes.

Stories about the partnership:

North Kitsap Herald

Kitsap Sun

From the Seattle Times:

Jeromy Sullivan, chairman of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, said the deal could help ensure protection of valuable shellfish beds in Port Gamble Bay.

“We have an obligation to our ancestors, our elders and our youth to ensure that Port Gamble Bay will be restored and protected for the future.”

“Many watersheds on the Olympic Peninsula have been affected by historic logging practices in the last century, as well as forest fires, both of which removed streamside vegetation and simplified fish habitat,” said Mike McHenry, the tribe’s habitat biologist.  “As a result, we’ve lost wood in the river channels, so we’re putting it back while the forest slowly regrows.”

Large woody debris is an important part of salmon good salmon habitat.

Stephen Johnson, from Helifor, watches as a log is lowered by helicopter into East Twin Creek.

The helicopter placed trees as large as 50 feet long and 30 inches in diameter, and weighing up to 10,000 pounds.

Some of the trees had large rootwads, which act like an anchor in the creek. The rootwad helps slow down the water to create shallow pools where fish rest and feed. They also help create gravel beds suitable for salmon to spawn and create redds, or salmon egg nests.

The Twin River watershed is home to coho and chum salmon, cutthroat trout and coastal steelhead.

The tribe has been doing habitat restoration in the Twin River watershed since 2002. Efforts included working with private and public land managers to restore old logging road systems that were poorly constructed and were causing landslides that disrupted the fish habitat in the river, said McHenry.

Partners with the project include Washington Department of Natural Resources and private property owners.

Tribal singers welcome attendees to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's dam removal celebration dinner Sept. 17.

The thunderous beat of drums in the tribal gym sounded louder than usual: the beat harder, the men’s voices deeper, the women’s voices louder, the smiles bigger during the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s dam removal celebration Sept. 17.

For nearly 100 years the tribe waited to celebrate the moment – the demolition of the Elwha River’s two fish-blocking dams, which have violated the tribe’s treaty rights the moment they were constructed in the early 20th Century. The dams blocked all but the lower five miles of the river, decimating salmon populations.

Prior to dam removal, a week of celebration included storytelling, drumming, a fundraising gala for the tribe’s education program, interviews with elders and a two-day conference on river restoration efforts with scientists from all over the world.

“We’re numb. We’re excited. We’re enthused,” said tribal chairwoman Frances Charles on the eve of the Elwha dam demolition. “There’s no words for how we’re going to be feeling when we see that machine rock n’ roll and take that brick out of the dam. Our elders are going to be so joyful with what is taking place out there. They’re saying they just can’t believe we’re able to witness what is going to be taking place tomorrow.”

“I feel sorry that my ancestors and grandparents aren’t here to see the dams removed,” said elder Adeline Smith. “That’s the only sorrow I have. I wish they were here to see it.”

“My grandma and grandpa lived on the river,” said tribal member Byron Bennett, wearing a black shirt with the words, “It’s About Dam Time 9-17-11.” “Grandpa was one of the original signees of the reservation. He grew up on the river and was a proponent for dam removal.”

As the excavator tore into the Elwha dam Sept. 17, Bennett was said he was thinking of his dad and grandfather.

“The river is going to be given a second chance to restore itself,” Bennett said. “With this project and Mother Nature running her course, we will turn the river back. We are essentially turning the clock back 99 years on this project.”

For many of the younger generation, all they have known is the effort to remove the dam.

Tribal councilman Anthony Charles grew up fishing with his family in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the river. He is making sure his 11- and 13-year-old children get the same experience.

“I think the youth get the importance of dam removal. They may not understand but they get it,” he said. “For me, it’s all that our elders have been talking about it and it hasn’t happened fast enough.”

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nwifc/sets/72157627705384254/

Blog of Science Symposium – http://blogs.nwifc.org/elwha/

Media Recap of Dam Removal Ceremony:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0918-dam-20110918,0,5450869.story

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/specialreports/elwha/?cmpid=2654

http://peninsuladailynews.com/article/20110918/NEWS/309189975/-8216-prayers-answered-national-figures-join-peninsula-leaders-at

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/sep/17/as-dams-come-down-researchers-stand-by-to/

http://www.king5.com/news/Celebration-as-demolition-of-Elwha-Dam-begins-130043288.html

http://www.kirotv.com/video/29221798/index.html

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/130016438.html

http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2011/09/19/rockybarker/franks_impromptu_comments_elwha_recognize_treaty_fights#ixzz1YbTj1tEX

The Aldwell and Mills reservoirs have been lowered 20 feet this summer in advance of the upcoming removal of the 108-foot-tall Elwha and 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon dams.

New river channels are forming in the deltas of the reservoirs behind the Elwha River dams, as seen here in the south end of the Aldwell reservoir.

“The deltas of the Aldwell and Mills reservoirs are exposed and new river channels are forming,” said Mike McHenry, the tribe’s fisheries habitat manager. “Reservoir shorelines that have been underwater for decades are finally being exposed, revealing old sandbars and stumps from logging.”

A top priority of the reservoir restoration project is to prevent invasive plant species from entering the national park, McHenry said. More than 150 exotic species have been identified within the Lower Elwha watershed. As the dams are removed, the tribe and the National Park Service will remove invasive species, such as Scot’s Broom, St. John’s Wort and canary grass, found on the reservoirs’ shorelines.

Within the two reservoirs, restoration crews will seed 261 acres and plant native vegetation on 440 acres including dogwood, cottonwood, willow, alder and Douglas fir.

The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams are owned by the federal government; the Olympic National Park is spearheading the removal effort. The project to remove the structures and restore the Elwha River ecosystem, estimated at $350 million, is the largest dam removal project to date in the United States.

Built without fish ladders, the dams have been in place since the early 1900s and prevented fish from moving past the lower 5 miles of the river. During the next three years, the dams will be removed initially in 7.5-foot sections, then by controlled blasting. Deconstruction starts September 2011.

From the Kitsap Sun:

The land transfer involves the 500-acre Nalley Ranch at the mouth of the Skokomish River; 500 acres of wooded land, including Lake Cushman Park, on the shore of Lake Cushman; and 3 acres with 470 feet of waterfront on Hood Canal.

Tacoma Power placed $11 million into a tribal account, as called for in the settlement, which also allows the tribe a share of the revenues from power production.

Friday’s signing ceremony occurred at Lake Cushman Park, which tribal officials consider an important cultural site.

“Here we are today being able to call ourselves partners in this watershed,” said Joseph Pavel, vice chairman of the Skokomish Tribe, in a prepared statement. “It’s very significant.”

The purpose of the study is three-fold – to prioritize nearshore habitat restoration projects; to determine what species are living where throughout Puget Sound waters; and to learn more about habitat conditions in the nearshore environment.

Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe habitat biologist Hans Daubenberger prepares to lower the SONAR device into Port Gamble Bay.

Weekly since May, the tribe has been beach seining, tow-netting and using the underwater SONAR device to gather information about the size and population of fish found in the top 15 feet of the water column. That includes species such as chinook, coho, steelhead, cutthroat and herring. Puget Sound chinook and steelhead are listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Beach seining and tow netting help get a snapshot of what’s out there, but those tools miss the wide open areas that the SONAR can cover,” said Hans Daubenberger, the tribe’s habitat biologist. “It gathers tons of that information – such as the depth the fish are swimming – without hurting the fish.”
The “torpedo” is towed behind a boat through sampling areas and beams sound waves that capture images of fish that swim past. The SONAR information will be correlated with data from beach seining and tow-netting to create a comprehensive database of about fish distribution, abundance and health conditions throughout Hood Canal and Admiralty Inlet.

Funding for the project comes from the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund and Puget Sound Partnership.

For the past century, sediment has built up behind the 108-foot-tall Elwha and 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon dams. As the dams are deconstructed the next few years, much of that sediment will come down the river.

“We know a lot of sediment will be deposited within the streambed of the lower river but we don’t know how much will be deposited in the estuary and how it will change,” said Matt Beirne, the tribe’s environmental coordinator.

Estuaries are important for salmon because they provide a place for salmon to hide from predators and to feed and grow before heading to sea.

The tribe has set up 15 sediment monitoring locations throughout the 50-acre estuary. Using a specialized measuring device called a Surface Elevation Table (SET), the tribe will determine at regular intervals how much sediment is building up throughout the estuary.

Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe natural resources staff use the SET to measure sediment in the estuaries at the mouth of the Elwha River.

The SET uses fiberglass pins to measure the change in height of the deposited sediment. This technique, developed by USGS researchers, has been applied to estuaries throughout the U.S. and internationally.

The tribe also has deployed water quality sensors to collect data on water clarity, salinity and temperature in the estuary. This will show how the sediment-laden water will be distributed in the estuary on tidal, seasonal, and annual cycles.

The tribe also will study how increased turbidity and sedimentation in the estuary may affect juvenile salmonids as the dam removal project progresses.

The dams are owned by the federal government and the Olympic National Park is spearheading the removal effort. The total cost of the project is estimated at $325 million.

“We saw this as a great opportunity for the tribe,” said Rob Purser, Suquamish’s fisheries director. “Historically, tribes would trade parts of the whale with each other, since not all tribes had access to them within their fishing areas. Tribal members would use every part of the animal, including fat for cooking and bones for tools. Today, the younger generation seems attracted to whales, so there is a lot of interest in this mammal.”

Suquamish fisheries staff Ben Purser, Jay Zischke and Ron Harrell prepare the whale for towing from Silverdale.

The whale beached itself on private tidelands on Erlands Point near Silverdale on July 27. The property owner said it was alive when it came shore that morning but died shortly thereafter.  The cause of death is unknown.

Biologists from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cascadia Research and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gathered samples from the emaciated young male, determining it to be about 3-5 years old. NOAA then asked the tribe if it would be interested in taking possession of the whale and using its skeleton for educational purposes.

Staff from the tribe’s fisheries department wrapped the whale in nets Aug. 3 and slowly towed it from the private beach to a location near the Port Madison Indian Reservation.

The whale was left in the water where it will decompose over the next three to six months with the help of crab and other marine animals; the tribes will then assemble the bones for display.

Fast Facts:
Gray Whales are typically found in Pacific Ocean and migrate between Baja California and Alaska.

The mammals can range from 16 feet to 45 feet in length.

The mammals eat by turning on its side, scooping up mud from the ocean floor and filtering out the sediment, leaving behind small sea animals such as crab and krill.

It is also called a “baleen whale” because of the plates in its upper jaw that are used to filter out the mud when feeding.

Pictures can be found at: http://go.nwifc.org/graywhale

Video of the landing:

Fisheries manager Rob Purser describes how the tribe plans to do it:

 The whale carcass, which has become buoyant over the past few days, will be wrapped in mesh and towed by boat to an out-of-the-way location in North Kitsap, said Rob Purser, fisheries manager for the tribe. The whale will be suspended in the water and will decompose naturally over three to six months.

After the bones are cleaned and dried, the skeleton will be articulated for public display, Purser said. Decisions have not been made about a final location, he said, but the whale will become part of the tribe’s educational programs and studies of the natural environment.

“Our aim is to establish a year-round counting station using the weir and DIDSON to evaluate salmon populations before and after dam removal,” said Keith Denton, a consultant to the tribe on the project.

Keith Denton demonstrates how to adjust the SONAR instrument in the Elwha River in case of a high water event.

For nearly 100 years, fish have been blocked from the upper Elwha River watershed by two dams, the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam, which were built without fish ladders.  Puget Sound chinook and steelhead are listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Developed at the University of Washington for the U.S. Navy to find mines on ship hulls, DIDSON was quickly applied to fisheries management. DIDSON also has been used to track juvenile salmon on the Columbia River and adult spawners in Alaska.

The DIDSON beams sound waves across the river, capturing images of fish that swim past. The weir is like a fence in the water, which enables the upriver bound fish to be collected for information such as species and size.

The weir is removed during periods of high water flow but the DIDSON can be used during almost all flow conditions, Denton said.

“Setting this system up prepares us for long-term monitoring of the river when the dams come down and we will see what’s going up into the upper watershed,” he said.

From the article:

 The reservation will also be protected by a levee that has been raised, widened and fortified with rocks as large as four feet across because the sediment flowing downstream will raise the level of the freed Elwha. The tribe wants all of this, but after a century of living with a tamed river and adapting as development increased on the peninsula, there is also concern.

“What worries me is that the river’s going to be unpredictable after they take the dams out,” said Ron Boulstrom, 46, a lifelong resident of the reservation and a commercial fisherman. “Four more years and I’ll have my house paid off, and I’m making a nice new garage. Hopefully the river won’t take me out.”

Then again, according to tribal lore, the tribe’s creation site was flooded by the dams. And there are the Chinook, also called king salmon, remembered in stories told from generation to generation, but now too depleted to fish.

“Back in the day, we had this whole place, the hills, the mountains,” Mr. Boulstrom said. “I’d like to catch another king out of the Elwha in my lifetime.”

From the article, Ben Parker, of the Squaxin Island Tribe:

 Ben Parker is a young member of the Squaxin Island Tribe who worked with Grossman to collect the water quality data. He’s 23, with broad shoulders and has been on canoe journeys for four years in a row, but his fellow paddlers still give him funny looks.

“They ask me why in the hell I’m dragging a bucket under the back of the canoe,” he says referring to the data-gathering equipment.

Parker says melding science with the traditional canoe journey is valuable.

“I think there are certain ways that we’ve always seen how the planet and how the land here works,” he says. “It offers a new perspective, which is good because there’s lots of ways we can look how to tackle these kinds of problems dealing with pollution and that kind of thing.”

 

Video:

The Swinomish Tribe is hosting this year. Some First Nations from British Columbia have been pulling since end of June and others have started to make their way toward Swinomish ever since. This week, canoes from the Coast and Strait of Juan de Fuca will stop at Lower Elwha, Jamestown, Port Townsend, Little Boston and Suquamish before heading north next weekend for the final push to Swinomish. More information can be found at http://www.paddletoswinomish.org/.

An American dipper on the Olympic Peninsula.

“We chose to look at otters and American dippers because they are so closely tied to the river environment, depending especially on marine-derived nutrients brought upriver by salmon,” said Kim Sager-Fradkin, the tribe’s wildlife biologist. “But because salmon have not made it past the first five miles of the Elwha River in 100 years, we are interested in collecting baseline data on how these species use their environment in the absence of salmon.”

Since 1911, fish have been blocked from the upper Elwha River watershed by the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam, which were built without fish ladders. They are scheduled for demolition starting this September.

“We know that otters and dippers use the Elwha River below, between and above the dams, but we don’t know a lot about their population size, movement patterns, or how their diets have been affected by the lack of salmon above the dams,” Sager-Fradkin said. “We are interested in exploring the differences in marine-derived nutrients in the diets of otters and dippers that occur both below and above the dams.”

The tribe is capturing dippers in mist-nets strung across small river channels in order to collect blood, feather and toenail samples to see how nutrients have been incorporated into their diets.  Otters are caught in box-traps and scat and tissue samples are taken for genetic and diet analysis. They are also implanted with a radio-transmitting device so that tribal biologists can track their movements.

“Getting this information now is important so we can monitor changes after the system is restored,” Sager-Fradkin said. “When salmon are able to swim upriver again, we expect to see marine nutrients reintroduced into the system and back into these animals’ diets.”

This study was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and with additional support from the Smithsonian Institution’s Migratory Bird Center, USGS-Olympic Field Station and Olympic National Park.

###

For more information, contact Kim Sager-Fradkin, Lower Elwha Klallam wildlife biologist, at (360) 457-4012 ext. 20 or kim.sager@elwha.nsn.us; or  Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

Many agencies and groups, including the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, assisted moving nearly 100 fish from the middle of the river to an area upstream into better habitat, out of the way of the river’s two fish-blocking dams, both of which will start to be deconstructed this fall.

From the story:

The protective action is considered important, because removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams is likely to dislodge an estimated 24 million cubic yards of sediment that has collected behind the dams since they were built, according to estimates by the Bureau of Reclamation. Most of that sediment will come from a delta at the south end of Lake Mills. Bull trout caught in the sediment-laden river probably will not do well, researchers say.

“Using the best available science, we’ve taken steps to protect the bull trout population and given them immediate access to high-quality, pristine habitats in the upper river through this relocation project,” said Sam Brenkman, fisheries biologist for Olympic National Park.

 

A new monitoring effort is taking place at the Wildcat Creek and Lost Creek tributaries, where the tribe is counting out-migrating smolts in the spring, plus extensive adult coho salmon spawning surveys in the fall.

“We’re eager to get an idea of the juvenile coho salmon production coming out of Wildcat and Lost Creeks,” said Jon Oleyar, a Suquamish Tribe fisheries biologist. “The habitat up here is probably some of the best in the region.”

Jon Oleyar, Suquamish Tribe fisheries biologist, prepares a bucket of smolt-trapped fish for measuring before releasing them.

WDFW conducted a similar coho out-migrant study almost 30 years ago, which the tribe can use to compare productivity of these two streams. The habitat in both tributaries has remained relatively intact during this 30-year period.

“I wouldn’t expect there to be much difference because there hasn’t been much development in this area,” Oleyar said. “The number of coho leaving the Chico Creek watershed is a direct result of the habitat they have available to them. Protecting that habitat is the best way to ensure coho keep coming down.”

Wildcat Creek and its source, Wildcat Lake, provide excellent rearing habitat for juvenile salmon spawned immediately above and below Wildcat Lake.  The lake is a critical nursery for these juvenile salmon for up to two years until they are ready to head downstream to Chico Bay and eventually to the Pacific Ocean.

“We’ve been seeing some larger coho smolts coming through the trap recently which are thought to be coming from the lake,” Oleyar said. “This is an encouraging sign concerning the health of Wildcat Lake.”

He has been concerned about fish passage from the lake through a failing Kitsap County culvert, which remains a concern for both juvenile and adult passage each year it is not replaced.

As of mid-June, about 4,400 total coho smolts had been trapped, counted and released from traps in the two tributaries to Chico Creek. It’s the first time the tribe has trapped out-migrating smolts in the watershed.

An important component of the study is sampling redds that are created each spring by naturally spawning steelhead.

The tribe has counted nearly 200 salmon egg nests, also called redds, so far this season in the 30-mile-long Skokomish River. Eggs will be pumped from 40 of the healthiest redds between mid-May to mid-June to support the project.

NOAA's Rob Endicott and Skokomish Tribe's Matt Kowalski and Anthony Battista pump eggs out of a salmon nest for a steelhead salmon supplementation project.

“We’ve reached our egg collection goals every year of 30,000 eggs, and we’ve successfully raised healthy smolts that are released after two years of rearing at the state’s McKernan Hatchery,” Kowalski said. “We’re also keeping a small portion of smolts and raising them to adulthood at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Manchester facility before releasing them in the river, helping increase their chances of spawning.
“We’re preparing also this spring for the return of the first steelhead that were collected as eggs in 2007,” he added. “We’re starting to see more fish in the lower river than we have in the past few years.”

Steelhead are elusive ­— the tribe maybe will see about 20 live fish a year when surveying the river. But based on the number of redds counted, the tribe can estimate that about 300-400 are returning annually to the South Fork of the river and its tributaries.

“The number of redds determines success of the project,” Kowalski said. “Early indications from this year show an increase in redds but we won’t know if this trend will continue until after more surveying is completed.”

The South Fork of the Skokomish River is just one of the many rivers that are part of this Hood Canal-wide project. The Duckabush and Dewatto rivers are also supplemented with steelhead; Tahuya, Big Beef, Hamma Hamma, Dosewallips and Little Quilcene rivers are not, as comparison rivers.
Other partners in the study are Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Puget Sound Partnership, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Point No Point Treaty Council, Long Live The Kings, Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, Hood Canal Coordinating Council and Tacoma Power.

For more information, contact: Matt Kowalski, Skokomish Tribe steelhead biologist, at (360) 877-5213 or mkowalski@skokomish.org; or Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission information officer, at (360) 297-6546 or troyal@nwifc.org.

As part of monitoring the restored Jimmycomelately Creek, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is testing the DO levels within the streambed’s gravel, where salmon make their egg nests, also called redds.

The tribe is taking water samples from 21 locations within the creek. To get a sample, the tribe engineered a special tube and pump system. A small aquarium air stone is attached to one end of a 68-inch long plastic tube. The stone is buried 7 inches below the streambed surface, mimicking the typical depth of a salmon redd. The remaining 59 inches of tubing floats in the water. When gathering a sample, a special pump is attached to the exposed end, drawing the water up from within the gravel. 

Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe staff Lohna O'Rourke and Lori Delorm pump water from Jimmycomelately Creek to test for dissolved oxygen levels within the streambed.

Preliminary results show that DO levels are acceptable in the upper stream where the streambed has not been altered. In the lower reach, near where the creek empties into Sequim Bay, results are mixed. Some areas are show sufficient DO levels while others are less than what is needed for egg incubation.

Dissolved oxygen measuring at 8 milligrams per liter or more is considered satisfactory; Samples measuring 3 milligrams per liter or less are considered lethal.

“It’s too early to tell if the inconsistent levels in the lower creek are because the creek is still recovering from past farm practices, restoration efforts or other factors,” said Lori DeLorm, a Jamestown S’Klallam natural resources technician. “With a few more years of data collection, we will get an idea of which sites are meeting the oxygen demands for incubating eggs and emerging fry.”

About 25 acres at the mouth of the creek were restored in 2005 after a century of development altered the habitat. Salmon prefer to lay their eggs in clean, sediment-free gravel, where water is cool and the creek velocity is slow. Hood Canal summer chum salmon, listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act, as well as coho and steelhead are among salmon species found in the creek.

The work, which began in August 2010, is funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Two students from International Community School in Kirkland, WA,  Jessica Jin and Anastasiya Kirichuk, earned first place in the National History Day’s Group Website category, with their project “Freeing the Elwha: Debating the Future of America’s Watersheds.”

At the state level, in the Washington History Day contest, two students from Pleasant Valley Middle School in Vancouver, WA, Jessi Shelton and Mercedes McLeod, won first place in the Group Documentary category for their video, ”The Treaty of Neah Bay 1855: Created by Diplomacy, Destroyed by Debate”. A story about their girls project can be found here.

Herring prefer to lay their eggs in thick green beds of kelp. Today little kelp and few herring remain in Port Gamble Bay and no one is really sure why.

In an effort to restore the kelp, tribal elders are working with the natural resources staff to find the old bull kelp bed locations and replant them, starting this spring with a 30-foot by 30-foot section just north of Point Julia. At a shallow 15 feet, divers anchored 40 natural-fiber ropes to the bay floor, seeded with hatchery-raised juvenile kelp.

Puget Sound Restoration Fund ecologist Brian Allen and hatchery and research technician Nate Wight lift a rope that has been seeded with juvenile kelp. (Puget Sound Restoration Fund)

“Kelp is not only important to the tribe culturally but also for the species that depend on it for habitat, such as herring and salmon,” said Paul McCollum, the tribe’s natural resources director. Bull kelp is among the world’s fastest growing seaweeds. It is found in rocky nearshore areas, providing areas of refuge for fish and birds. It also acts as erosion control on beaches against tidal currents.

Historically the tribes used the bulb of the bull kelp to hold fish oil for trading. Fishing line was made from the plant’s long stem, called a stipe.

While kelp beds have increased along the Washington coast and Strait of Juan de Fuca, they have disappeared from much of central and southern Puget Sound. Reasons for the decline are uncertain, but likely include shoreline development, climate change and declining water quality.

“Without an established bed, the plant may become vulnerable to predation by invertebrates such as crabs,” said Betsy Peabody, executive director of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, a partner in the project. “Part of our restoration strategy is to kickstart reproduction in order to boost the population.”

The project was funded by The Russell Family Foundation. Additional partners in this project included the Suquamish Tribe, Washington Pilots Association, Taylor Shellfish and Olympic Property Group.

From the story, Rachael Hagaman, who reinstituted the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s first salmon ceremony in 1990 and her thoughts on the river restoration:

“It’s awesome, it’s good news,” she said Tuesday, of the river starting to find its channel again. “Our ancestors cried a lot when the dams went in. Their voice was not heard, it was not allowed to be heard. The elders said every river had its people, the river deltas, the watersheds, that is what sustained them.”

Restoration is about more than the river, she noted, it also heals people. “It’s a big picture thing,” she noted.

 

“The river is fast, steep and strong. It’s a hard river to crawl up while snorkeling and surveying, much less swim, especially if you’re a tiny juvenile salmon,” said the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s habitat manager. “The old management practices that led to a straight and steep river have really impacted the fish and where they can live.”

Rot, eight other snorkelers, and four data recorders, spent a recent Thursday evening on a three-quarter mile stretch of the river near Railroad Bridge Park in Sequim. The group was looking for fish especially around the logjams the tribe had built in 2007 and 2008 to create salmon habitat in a stretch of river nearly devoid of it.

The Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe conducted a fish survey at night of the Dungeness River recently with the help of others, including Dave Shreffler of Shreffler Environmental. Shreffler gets ready to dive back into the river.

The snorkelers counted fish by species and estimated their lengths. Every 75 feet or so, they’d pop up out of the water and call out counts and observations to a data recorder on the bank. Findings included bull trout, steelhead, cutthroat, coho and chinook. All salmon species except sockeye live in the Dungeness.

“We found fish where we expected to find them – mostly in quieter pools of water that had been created by our jams or other natural wood, and very few fish in the faster water,” Rot said.

The tribe plans to work with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to continue monitoring the river on a regular basis.

Rot hopes that gathering information like this can be eventually translated into public outreach tools for landowners that live near the river.

“People see the beauty and power of the river, but they have no idea of what it is going on under the surface,” Rot said.

Partners in the effort included Shreffler Environmental, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Olympic National Park and Tetratech Inc.

Nearly 160,000 Elwha River steelhead juveniles were successfully transferred with the help of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fish transfer trucks.

“We have better rearing conditions for fish at the new facility, including having greater control over water temperatures while salmon eggs are incubated. Plus, there are more raceways and rearing ponds,” said Larry Ward, the tribe’s hatchery manager.

The new hatchery is closer to the Elwha River and it will have access to three times more water than at the old location. While both facilities can handle the same amount of fish, Ward said, the new hatchery allows for healthier rearing conditions.

Lower Elwha Klallam Hatchery manager Larry Ward guides a transfer pipe into one of the tribe's new hatchery ponds. Approximately 160,000 juvenile steelhead were transferred from the old hatchery to the new facility.

The existing program already includes chum, coho and steelhead; Ward expects to start a pink broodstock program within the next few years. The old hatchery will be decommissioned over time, as older fish return to that facility and the tribe transitions to full use of the new facility.

Steelhead from the hatchery are part of the tribe’s broodstock program to help  ensure that Elwha River steelhead aren’t wiped out during  deconstruction of the Elwha River dams, which starts this September. Elwha River steelhead are part of the Puget Sound steelhead population listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The river’s two dams, the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam, were built without fish ladders and have been in place since the early 1900s. Currently only the lower 5 miles of the river is available to salmon.

Since the early 1990s, the tribe has been preparing the river valley and floodplains for expected increased water flow and sediment following dam removal. Efforts have included constructing engineered logjams, removing dikes, replacing undersized culverts and bridges, and planting native vegetation in floodplain areas.

A set of photos from the ceremony can be viewed at the North Kitsap Herald. as well as the story.

A description of the new story poles, from the Kitsap Sun:

The story poles, in black and rust paint and natural cedar, show the 600-foot-long Old Man House built by Chief Seattle’s father in the mid-1770s. Above that is Chief Seattle as a boy, standing in front of sails. It depicts his sighting in 1792, at about the age of 6, of Capt. George Vancouver’s ships that were exploring Puget Sound. The left story pole shows Chief Seattle as a warrior, for his tactics in heading off raids by other Indian groups, and as an older man who gave a famous speech in 1855. He died on June 7, 1866, at Old Man House in Suquamish and was buried in the Suquamish Tribal Cemetery. The cross-topped marble headstone that remains today was placed on the grave in 1890.

The concrete work of the renovation gives it a permanence, said Leonard Forsman, the tribal chairman. A new path also makes it accessible to the disabled.

 

From the Associated Press, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe river restoration director Robert Elofson:

The fish are particularly important to members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, whose ancestors have occupied the Elwha Valley for generations and whose members recall stories of 100-pound Chinook salmon so plentiful you could walk across the river on their backs.

“We have never been happy that the salmon runs in the river were cut off,” said Robert Elofson, Elwha River restoration director for the tribe, which along with environmental groups fought in the 1980s to tear down the dams. The tribe’s land now includes about 1,000 acres on and near the Elwha River. “It’s hard to have any pride when your main river of your tribe has been blocked and the salmon runs almost totally destroyed.”

From the Seattle Times, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe elder Adeline Smith:

But the shutdown is a step some wondered if they would ever witness. Adeline Smith, 93, one of the oldest members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, said she remembered rescuing baby salmon stranded in pools when operation of the dams would ramp the river levels up and down.

“We felt sorry for them,” she said of the gasping smolts.

 

Once the net was pulled close to the beach, Paul Dorn, the Suquamish Tribe’s salmon recovery coordinator, helped the youngsters pull out the plethora of shiner perch, surf smelt, herring, sculpin and even some small salmon, all flopping about once taken out of the water.

“Look at the size of that one,” Dorn said of a 105-millimeter shiner perch.

The seining is a method of taking the pulse of the local ecosystem, said Zac Halls, a volunteer helping Dorn. “It’s a way to gain an accurate inventory of the nearshore environment.”

“The more we seine, the better picture we get,” Dorn added.

Keith Denton, consultant to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, demonstrates moving a SONAR station that is located in the Elwha River. It is being used to count fish that migrate in the river.

“Counting fish is like counting trees – except they’re invisible and they move.”

The Elwha piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gYtHUYWyHs

The entire episode: http://www.nwin.tv/NWIN44.html

The Skokomish Tribe and staff from the city of Tacoma release rainbow trout into Lake Kokanee to commemorate upcoming restoration work on the North Fork of the Skokomish River. (Skokomish Tribe)

The work is part of the effort to restore the health of the river and to rebuild and restore fish populations that have been impacted by the operation of the city of Tacoma’s Cushman Hydroelectric Project.

“Getting to this point has been a journey that we have fought long and hard for,” said Joseph Pavel, the tribe’s natural resources director. “We look forward to working with Tacoma and seeing the fish population benefit from restoration efforts.”

The fish passage facility will allow coho, steelhead, spring chinook and sockeye adult salmon to be released into Lake Cushman and the upper North Fork of the river, upstream from the city’s two fish-blocking dams.

This upstream passage plan is one of more than 20 plans that the city must design and operate or implement as part of a January 2009 settlement agreement between Tacoma, the tribe, and federal and state resource agencies. The plans will be designed to protect, restore and monitor habitat, restore salmon and steelhead populations, enhance wildlife, provide recreational opportunities, and protect water quality, endangered species and historical properties in and around the North Fork of the river.

The tribe also recently learned that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denied requests from Skokomish Valley landowners for a rehearing of FERC’s order incorporating settlement agreement conditions into the license, allowing the city of Tacoma to move forward with its plans to restore the Cushman area.

The dams were built on the river more than 80 years ago, providing electricity to the city of Tacoma but blocking salmon from the upper watershed. The dams reduced the North Fork Skokomish River flow to a trickle and altered the biology and geology of the river system, while also affecting the tribe’s culture and treaty-reserved fishing rights.

From the story:

In 2009, our Natural Resources Department was awarded a grant through the Environmental Protection Agency to assess potential Brownfields sites on and surrounding the reservation. This project is being led by Jessica Coyle, our EPA Response Program manager.

You may not be familiar with the term “Brownfields,” but as the name suggests, it’s a potentially dirty site; one that was likely once home to commercial or industrial facilities, but is now abandoned. These sites require environmental assessment and probable cleanup before being redeveloped. This process is called “land recycling” and allows for the preservation of already pristine areas by cleaning up and then reusing properties that were previously developed.