NWIFC Magazine: Celebrating and Studying Elwha Dam Removal
The new NWIFC Magazine is now online and features the celebration of the removal of the Elwha Dams. You can download the magazine (and over ten years of archives) here. From…
Lummi Nation distributes sockeye to families
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.
Idaho Statesman: Elwha ceremony recalls how treaty fight changed Northwest
Rocky Barker has a great post over at the Idaho Stateman about the history behind the restoration of the Elwha River and how the struggle for treaty rights played into that:
The most touching moments of the celebration marking the beginning of the end of the Elwha dams were tribal. They were the smiling faces on the children of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe who danced, drummed and sang in brand new outfits handcrafted for the occasion.
They were in the voices of the elder women who sang along with the Klallam love song. Who couldn’t smile during elder Ben Charles blessing, interrupted by husky belly laughs?
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Freeing The Elwha: Lower Elwha Tribe Celebrates Dam Removal
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.
Live blogging the Elwha River Science Symposium
Stillaguamish Tribe raising captive broodstock to save South Fork chinook
The Stillaguamish Tribe’s captive juvenile fall chinook soon will have a new home. The tribe has converted an old trout farm into a hatchery facility at Brenner Creek on the South Fork Stillaguamish River.
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. (more…)
Audio: Billy Frank Jr. at American Fisheries Society annual meeting
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Earlier this week Billy Frank Jr. spoke at the annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Seattle. He spoke on the failure of salmon recovery and risk to treaty rights in a talk titled “Native American Leadership in management of Pacific salmon.”
You can listen to his speech below.
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The Last Dikes Coming Down Along Nisqually Estuary
NISQUALLY – This summer the Nisqually Indian Tribe is removing more than a mile of dike along the Nisqually River, allowing it to migrate naturally for the first time in a century.
Removal of the 6,670 feet of dike is the last major dike removal project in the Nisqually estuary and caps more than decade of estuary restoration. Since 1999, the Nisqually Tribe and the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge have removed over 10,000 feet of dikes and restored more than 800 acres of estuary.
Because this is the last dike coming down from along the river, the mouth of the Nisqually may choose to move at some point. “Historically, the river was able to move across its wide flood plain here at the mouth,” said Florian Leischner, salmon restoration biologist for the tribe. “But, for the past century, it’s been held in one path by the dikes.”
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