The Puyallup Herald features research by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians on salmon productivity in the Puyallup watershed: Scientists with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians are looking at the impact…
ALLYN – A pair of smolt traps is helping the Squaxin Island Tribe get a better picture of natural salmon production in the Sherwood Creek watershed.
“The Sherwood watershed is one of the most complicated systems in the tribe’s treaty-reserved fishing area,” said Joe Peters, fisheries management biologist for the Squaxin Island Tribe. Tribal biologists are unsure about how many coho are rearing annually in Shumacher Creek, a tributary to Sherwood Creek, which flows into Mason Lake. Sherwood Creek flows out of Mason Lake.
One smolt trap – a safe and effective devices for catching and counting juvenile salmon as they migrate to sea – is installed at the mouth of Schumacher Creek in the upper watershed just above Mason Lake. Another is operating near the mouth of Sherwood Creek close to where it enters Puget Sound.
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From Joe Turner at the News Tribune:
Reader points out to me that the no fish hatcheries will close is misleading too. The budget says (on Page 397): “During the 2007-09 biennium, the department shall not make a permanent closure of any hatchery facility currently in operation.” So, reader wonders, “if that means that since Voights Creek hatchery hasn’t been in “operation” since it was damaged in the floods that this leaves a door open for it to be permanently closed.”
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The Seattle Times led its outdoor sports column on March 2 with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's carcass project. From The Times: Almost 100 years ago the Elwha River on…
The Skagit Valley Herald (story not available online) reported last week on the SRF Board funding in Skagit County, which included several Skagit River System Cooperative and Upper Skagit Tribe project:
Local habitat efforts get state’s second-largest share of grant
A grant agency saw the value of protecting salmon in Skagit County. Organizations here have received $6.3 million from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board to restore salmon habitat.
Projects in Skagit County are getting the second-largest grant total in the state behind King County’s $7.1 million.The board awarded more than $60 million in salmon recovery grants statewide.
Greg Hood of SRSC is among a group of scientists receiving a grant to devise a computer model of the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise.
The Skagit Valley Herald:
Rising ocean levels could change change approaches to restoration of salt marshes and the Skagit River estuary that the threatened Chinook and other salmon species need to thrive.
Three Western Washington scientists — Greg Hood, John Rybczyk and Tarang Khangaonkar — will build a computer model to predict what could happen to the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise. Scientists say the model will help them make decisions about where to best to restore salmon habitat restoration and what might happen if dikes are removed.
LA CONNER (August 1, 2003) – The latest salmon recovery project from the Swinomish Tribe and the Skagit System Cooperative (SSC) isn’t just critical for fish: it’s a positive step, across daunting barriers, toward cooperative environmental work in the Skagit basin.
SSC, the natural resources consortium of the Swinomish, Upper Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, is collaborating with local farmer Gail Thulen on a comprehensive habitat restoration plan for 300 acres of Swinomish tribal land ‘ which Thulen leases to grow wheat, peas and potatoes.
BLYN (Feb. 14, 2003) — In the mid-1990s, fisheries biologists throughout the Pacific Northwest turned their attention on a small hatchery in the lower Dungeness River, where a new approach to restoring a dwindling chinook population was in the works. If successful, it was thought the project could improve hatchery techniques, and most importantly bring back a salmon species from the brink of extinction.
In 2003, attention once again has turned to the Hurd Creek hatchery near Sequim. Not because of the facility’s success with recovering wild salmon, but because the hatchery itself is close to extinction. Gov. Gary Locke’s proposed budget for the next two years calls for three state Department of Fish and Wildlife hatcheries to be closed, including the Hurd Creek facility.