Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

The Upper Skagit Tribe is analyzing scale samples to determine the age of steelhead returning to the Skagit River.

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 …

The inaugural First Stewards symposium, to be held July 17-20 in Washington, D.C. is a national event that examines the impact of climate change on indigenous coastal cultures and explores solutions based on millennia of traditional ecological knowledge.

Hundreds of native leaders, witnesses and climate scientists will join policy-makers and non-government organizations for groundbreaking dialogue in what is planned to be an annual meeting at the …

Logs and rootwads were airlifted to the Skokomish River estuary by a dual-rotor cargo helicopter as part of the Skokomish Tribe’s large-scale effort to restore salmon habitat.

Woody debris had been missing from the Skokomish tidelands for the past 80 years after 200 acres of tidelands were diked and developed to create Nalley Island in the 1930s. Upstream activities such as logging, land conversion and dam …

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is helping to fund a program that is restoring spring chinook in the upper White River watershed.

“For over 18 years we’ve been working with the state to release juvenile spring chinook produced at the Minter Creek hatchery into acclimation ponds in the upper White River,” said Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe.

But because of budget cuts, …

Point Elliott Treaty tribes are using a safer, less-expensive method of collaring and tracking elk in the Nooksack herd.

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 …

An empty plastic kerosene can with Japanese writing on it washed onto Point Grenville in March, possibly some of the first debris to reach the Olympic Coast following Japan’s catastrophic tsunami in 2011.

Tribal, local, state and federal agencies are preparing for the possibility that tons more debris may wash ashore. However, little wreckage has reached Hawaii, so tribal scientists are hopeful that not much will …

A quarter million juvenile coho salmon took a quarter-mile ride through a 4-inch pipe when the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe recently transferred the young fish from shore to the tribe’s floating net pens in Port Gamble Bay.

The fish came from the Washington Department Fish and Wildlife’s George Adams Hatchery near Shelton. Arriving in a tanker truck, the fish first were transferred into a 2,300-gallon fiberglass …

Including traditional foods – like huckleberries, nettles, camas and salmon – into tribal members’ everyday diets is the goal of the Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty program. The two year project is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is supported by Northwest Indian College’s Traditional Plants and Foods Program.

“This effort is about eating healthy and remembering who we are and where we come from,” said …

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 …