The Skokomish Tribe participated in a groundbreaking ceremony at Lake Kokanee this spring to celebrate the beginning of the construction of a new upstream fish passage facility and a new dam powerhouse on the North Fork of the Skokomish River. (more…)
For the second year, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians was able to open a limited ceremonial and subsistence fishery for elders on spring chinook. The two day fishery was open…
The Bellingham Herald covered the Lummi Nation’s First Salmon Ceremony:
About 600 Lummi Indian Tribe members and guests gathered Thursday, May 14, at Lummi Nation School to celebrate the arrival of the first salmon – a celebration marked by both hope and fear for the future of the fish that defines tribal identity.
“When I was a young boy, I heard my grandfather say, when he was eating a salmon, ‘This is good medicine,'” said Merle Jefferson, the tribe’s natural resources director.
The First Salmon Ceremony is a key cultural observance for the Lummi and other Coast Salish tribes. For generations, the tribes have conducted these ceremonies to honor the salmon and assure their return. (more…)
LUMMI NATION – The Lummi Nation has entered into a partnership with Whatcom County and the Whatcom Land Trust to re-align a portion of a county road that runs past the tribe’s Skookum Creek Hatchery. This section of the road segment serves primarily as access to the hatchery and to a system of logging roads.
Moving the road off the bank of the South Fork of the Nooksack River will allow the tribe to restore habitat to its natural condition, by replanting native vegetation in the riparian area and building logjams for instream cover and complexity. The project ranked first for restoration benefit in a habitat assessment of the upper South Fork conducted by the tribe’s Natural Resources department in 2007. (more…)
The Aberdeen Daily World has an article about the closure of the Chehalis River system to chinook fishing. The closure of the sport fishery for spring and summer Chinook salmon…
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.