Natural Resources

Tribal students learn natural resource management skills

Gaspar Ramos, 16, strides confidently to the edge of the Quillayute River and drops a hydrolab datasonde that measures water quality parameters into the water. The Makah tribal member has worked with the water quality equipment enough to look like he has been doing it for years.

Gaspar Ramos, 16, watches the meter on the datasonde, a water quality measurement tool that gives information about factors such as temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen, while Jonah Black, 19, records the results on the Dickey River near LaPush. The two students receive high school science credit doing work through the North Olympic Skills Center Natural Resources program in cooperation with Quileute Natural Resources and the Quileute Tribal School.
Gaspar Ramos, 16, watches the meter on the datasonde, a water quality measurement tool that gives information about factors such as temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen, while Jonah Black, 19, records the results on the Dickey River near LaPush. The two students receive high school science credit doing work through the North Olympic Skills Center Natural Resources program in cooperation with Quileute Natural Resources and the Quileute Tribal School.

Ramos might one day have a job just like it if the introduction by the Quileute Natural Resources and the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center Natural Resources program creates an interest in pursuing education needed for natural resources work. The Skills Center offers project-based field science classes and work on real-world projects in local ecosystems. The Quileute Tribe provides the jobs for the two tribal students to shadow as well as do project work. (more…)

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Tribes’ beaver research featured in Seattle Times

The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC)  has found evidence that beavers living in the tidal marsh are creating prime salmon habitat. The SRSC is the natural resources arm of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes.

The Seattle Times reports:

Today, only about 6 percent of the tidal scrub shrub habitat is left in the Skagit River Delta, and that’s better than a lot of places where it’s gone altogether. (more…)

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Squaxin Natural Resources blog on smolt trapping

Over at the Squaxin Island Tribe natural resource’s blog, they just added some new content on their smolt trapping efforts.
From the post:

The Squaxin Island Natural Resources (SINR) is currently collecting data to estimate the number of coho salmon smolts outmigrating from Mill, Cranberry, Goldsborough, Schumacher and Sherwood Creeks. These five creeks empty in to Deep South Puget Sound, with in the Squaxin Island Tribes usual and accustom areas.

(more…)

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Squaxin Island Tribe transfers over 1 million coho to netpens

From the Squaxin Island Tribe’s natural resources blog:

This week the Squaxin Island Tribe Natural Resources (SINR) and Washington State Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) started hauling the first batch of juvenile coho to the South Sound Net Pens (SSNP) located in Peale Passage. SSNP is a co-managed facility by the SINR and WDFW that has released an average of 1.5 million coho smolt yearly to benefit Sport and commercial fisheries through out the Puget Sound.

(more…)

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The Olympian “thumbs down” on racist graffiti

From Sunday’s paper:

For years there have been people in this community who have held on to their hate-filled beliefs that tribal fishers should not be allowed to harvest fish from the Nisqually. Courts have ruled otherwise, noting that treaties from the mid 1800s clearly give American Indians rights to fish and harvest other natural resources “in common” with settlers.
(more…)

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