Will a wall of warm water prevent salmon from migrating into the Puyallup River watershed this year? High temperatures and low river flows are combining for what might be a remarkably bad salmon return. To better understand the conditions, the Puyallup Tribe has more than doubled the number of temperature monitors in the watershed to […]
Tribal fishing in Tulalip Bay closed in July because a thermal barrier kept many salmon from entering the bay, and low flows prevented others from swimming upriver. Tulalip Tribes closed fishing in the bay July 22, and the state restricted the sport chinook fishery in the “bubble” at the mouth of the bay to catch-and-release […]
SHELTON – A combination of dam removal and aggressive habitat restoration has meant record runs of juvenile coho salmon in Goldsborough Creek for 2015. This year’s run of 113,000 juveniles counted by the Squaxin Island Tribe continues a strong trend of increasing the number of juvenile coho leaving the Goldsborough watershed. The previous record was […]
Restoring Sitka spruce and native vegetation to the upper Quinault River valley floodplain is another piece of the complex puzzle the Quinault Indian Nation (QIN) is assembling to rehabilitate the Quinault River and the sockeye or blueback salmon that depend on a healthy river system. In the first phase of river restoration, QIN installed 13 […]
Using wires, computer chips, batteries, PVC piping, duct tape and glue, a group of students at Chief Kitsap Academy gathered data about water quality in their backyard this spring. Working with the University of Washington, a group of nine high school students in Karen Matsumoto’s marine biology class constructed small computers with temperature probes to […]
From elementary school through young adulthood, Lummi Nation youth are learning about the natural resources that sustain their culture. Lummi Nation School students from kindergarten through sixth grade are planting ocean spray shrubs beside the Wex’lium community longhouse. Known in the tribal language as tsingenilhch, the ironwood is fire-resistant when cut into the sticks used […]
After a winter of record low snowfall and Gov. Jay Inslee’s May declaration of a statewide drought, treaty tribes in western Washington are concerned about high water temperatures, low flows and pre-spawn mortality in returning salmon. “This drought will have catastrophic, far-reaching effects for many years to come,” said Scott Schuyler, natural resources director for […]
The Suquamish Tribe’s Doe Kag Wats estuary is the site of a large woody debris removal experiment this summer. ”Our hypothesis is that by removing the excess amount of the milled and treated logs that have washed into the estuary, the native marsh vegetation will be restored, as well as insect species, many of which […]
A group of teenage “citizen scientists” have been helping the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe this spring by studying an urban creek that hasn’t been looked at in nearly 30 years. Students in the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center’s (NOPSC) natural resources class helped install a smolt trap on Tumwater Creek in early May. Students and […]
Coho in the Deschutes River are in trouble. In fact, every three years, no coho at all return to the river. The results of a study recently completed by the Squaxin Island Tribe point to a deadly combination of a lack of trees making their way into the river and high concentrations of sediment. Each […]
