Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

EarthFix (KCTS) has a two-part series about the latest effort on the habitat restoration and fish studies taking place during the Elwha River Restoration project. Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe habitat program manager Mike McHenry is quoted in both stories.

Mike McHenry, a fisheries habitat biologist with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, strides across a newly revealed mudflat above the lower dam. It’s a place very few

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Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe elder Adeline Smith died March 19, 2013. She was 95. She was known for helping preserve the Tse-whit-zen village site and the Klallam Language, and played a part in the removal of the Elwha River dams.

From the Peninsula Daily News:

PORT ANGELES — Adeline Smith, the Lower Elwha Klallam tribal elder who played key roles in preserving the site of

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The premiere of the documentary, Back to the River, was held at the Seattle Aquarium Feb. 2. The movie details the story of the treaty rights struggle from the pre-Boldt era to tribal and state co-management. The movie includes the voices and personal accounts of tribal fishers, leaders and others active in the treaty fishing rights struggle. More photos of the event can be found …

Standing on the Altair Bridge in Olympic National Park, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe wildlife staff peer into the rushing Elwha River below, trying to find signs of river otters in the riffles.

Suddenly, a couple of smooth brown heads break the surface, one playfully pouncing on the other before they dive back under. A few seconds later, four heads pop up while making …

The dramatic sediment plume forming at the mouth of the Elwha River the past year has tribal and federal scuba divers looking for changes to the marine habitat.

The plume is the result of thousands of cubic yards of sediment that have been unleashed from behind the river’s Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, which have been undergoing deconstruction since September 2011.

Divers from the Lower Elwha …

Olympic National Park reported this week that its biologists have seen adult chinook salmon swimming two miles upstream from the park’s boundary in the Elwha River, above the old Elwha Dam site.

This comes two months after steelhead were seen swimming just above the old dam site by Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologists.

“Observation of these Chinook in Olympic

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A 1,200-foot stretch of Ediz Hook, a popular beach destination in Port Angeles, is undergoing habitat restoration this summer to benefit wildlife and people.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) are restoring the popular “A-frame” site on the spit, a former log dump area that was used until the 1970s. It will be cleared of fill and existing structures …

EarthFix, through Seattle public radio station KUOW, reported on the latest changes in the Elwha River, including observing juvenile salmon emerging from egg nests in the river’s upper watershed. Two Lower Elwha Klallam natural resources technicians, Virgil Bennett and Gabe Youngman, are featured, who check the fish traps and keep track of the smolts in the watershed.

From the transcript:

Virgil Bennett and Gabe Youngman

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The restoration of the landscapes after removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams and their associated reservoirs is more than just planting a few trees, shrubs and grasses.
Since 2000, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Olympic National Park have been collecting millions of seeds from native plants in the river valley. From those seeds, crews expect to plant more than 400,000 plants throughout nearly …

While there is no timeline determined yet, the Peninsula Daily News reported that the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe will be decommissioning its old fish hatchery.  The tribe has already started fisheries programs at the new facility, including outplanting chinook to help boost spawning in the river.

The tribe finished building its new hatchery in 2011 as part of the Elwha River restoration project, which includes the …