Endangered Species

Major Success in Lower Elwha Klallam Steelhead Broodstock Program

LOWER ELWHA – The setup looks complicated. Two tables covered with data sheets, laptops, glass slides, a digital scale and instruments for taking blood samples are set up next to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s hatchery ponds. Steelhead are being pulled from the ponds and weighed, measured, sampled and spawned. Each of nearly a dozen people have a specific job in this organized chaos to help spawn nearly 150 four-year-old steelhead. (more…)

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Despite low chinook run, co-managers boost escapement

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NISQUALLY – Good harvest management by tribal and state salmon co-managers has led to more chinook reaching the spawning grounds on the Nisqually River this year despite fewer returning chinook.

“Overall fewer chinook returned Puget Sound-wide, but because we managed our fisheries the right way, we were able to reach our escapement goal,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the Nisqually Tribe. Escapement is the number of salmon that are allowed to reach the spawning grounds.

Nisqually River chinook are part of a larger Puget Sound population of chinook that are listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act. (more…)

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Salmon Are Killed By More Than Just Fishing

OLYMPIA (April 5, 2005) – Did you take a shower this morning? Eat a bowl of cereal? Drive to work? If you did any of those things, you killed wild salmon.

You see, millions of other folks did the same thing. Together, these and other everyday activities take a toll on salmon and the habitat they need to survive.

No one is telling you to stop showering, eating, driving to work or any of the other things you do each day. So why do some people keep saying that the tribes should stop fishing?

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