Champions for Change: Johnstone honored by White House
Ed Johnstone, Quinault Indian Nation fisheries and ocean policy spokesperson, was recognized at a White House ceremony as part of the Champions for Change program April 11. Johnstone was lauded…
Ocean Acidification Explained
During the First Stewards climate change symposium last year, Dr. Simone Alin made a well-received presentation describing the process of ocean acidification. Alin is an oceanographer and marine chemist at NOAA's Pacific…
PBS NewsHour highlights impact of climate change on tribes
Ahead of this week’s First Stewards symposium, PBS NewsHour has run a piece about the effects of climate change on the Quileute Tribe.
For centuries, the Quileute tribe has relied on the area’s ocean and rivers. Native fishermen and hunters once escaped dangerous weather along territory that stretched across the Olympic Peninsula. But that’s no longer an option. (more…)
This series of pictures from the University of Washington and Larry Workman shows the disappearance of Anderson Glacier which feeds the Quinault River.
Coastal Tribes Convene to Tackle Climate Change
On Washington’s rugged Pacific coast, the Quinault Indian Nation has depended on salmon for thousands of years. But the glaciers that feed the Quinault and Queets Rivers and sustain these salmon populations are in retreat because of climate change, threatening the very survival of the salmon.
In Alaska, native villages are pulling up stakes and moving to new ground as the permafrost beneath them melts and erodes due to warming global temperatures.
In the U.S. Pacific Islands rainfall and stream levels are decreasing while storm intensity, sea level, and atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are on the rise. Communities are threatened by the resulting decline in underwater aquifers and increases in land-based pollution, coral bleaching, fire risk, hillside and shoreline erosion, and altered fish abundance and distribution. (more…)
Coastal tribes are already seeing changes to the natural resources they rely on due to climate change. It will be critical to bring their millennia of knowledge together with western science to help indigenous people to adapt.
Climate change: Washington coastal tribes hosting symposium blending indigenous knowledge with western science
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 Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
The Hoh, Makah and Quileute tribes and the Quinault Indian Nation created the symposium because indigenous coastal people are among the most affected by climate change. (more…)