Stillaguamish

PORT SUSAN (June 21, 2005) – A $56,000 grant will allow the Stillaguamish Tribe to remove hundreds of abandoned crab pots and an unknown number of gillnets from Port Susan, eliminating risks to boaters, scuba divers and numerous aquatic species.

“Derelict fishing gear poses real dangers for people using Port Susan, like fishermen,” said Jen Sevigny, a wildlife biologist coordinating the project for the Stillaguamish Tribe. “Abandoned crab pots also kill significant amounts of Dungeness crab, which in turns hurts the salmon that feed on young crab.”

The tribe has worked for more than two years to remove that danger. Begun in 2003, a tribal initiative has been identifying and removing derelict gear in the Port Susan area.

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ARLINGTON (March 29, 2005) – Watch for falling objects: though salmon aren’t dropping from the sky, on March 29, a new way to help Washington’s fish runs will be.

The Stillaguamish Tribe’s Natural Resources Department, in a novel approach to get desperately needed wood back into the Stillaguamish River, will use a helicopter to drop 16-foot long untreated telephone poles into the mouth of the river at Port Susan. The logs, fitted with plywood vanes and 250-lb.””bullet”” tips, will implant themselves six to eight feet deep in mudflats, effectively creating a natural logjam.

“They look like giant lawn darts,” said Shawn Yanity, chairman of the Stillaguamish Tribe, “but they could bring serious habitat improvement to the entire area.”

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ARLINGTON (June 10, 2004) — Parts of the Stillaguamish River system are too warm for salmon, a new study by the Washington Department of Ecology shows – but the Stillaguamish Tribe is working hard to combat this threat to fish runs.

“We’ve known for a long time that loss of trees and plants along the river could be causing temperatures to rise,” said Shawn Yanity, fisheries director for the Stillaguamish Tribe. “This research shows that our work replanting native vegetation is even more important than we initially thought.”

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ARLINGTON (June 10, 2004) — There are few sights more majestic than a massive elk in the wild, a fact to which hunters, hikers and local residents of all stripes can testify.

If you’re a farmer, though, that majesty might be undermined by the sight of a big bull eating the corn you worked hard to plant, or the feed you’ve set out for livestock.

The Stillaguamish Tribe has a mutually beneficial solution, though, one that will get elk away from farms and back into the wilderness where they can roam free.

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Tribe, local organizations collaborate on a cost-effective channel restoration

STANWOOD (Sept. 2, 2003) – A one-of-a-kind cooperative project backed by the Stillaguamish Tribe and the Stillaguamish Flood Control District is protecting wild salmon, and has already saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

By installing a flow-control device in the Old Stillaguamish Channel, a remnant channel that was once the main channel of the Stillaguamish River, the tribe and the district will prevent a two-mile “dead zone” for fish from developing during summer months. The project was five years in the making and made its first test run on Thursday.

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ARLINGTON (Aug. 9, 2003) -- A few beaver, four prisoners, and Indian tribal staff walk into a private forest. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? Yet the work…

ARLINGTON (Aug. 22, 2002) - For nearly 100 years, a defunct dam across Jim Creek has served as a barrier to the passage of salmon and other fish. That stops…

ARLINGTON (Nov. 21, 2001) -- The journey for a salmon on its way to spawn is difficult enough given natural barriers. When human intervention into the natural environment creates stream…