The Kitsap Sun posted a story about the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe questioning the proposed North Kitsap Legacy Partnership, as supported by Kitsap County and Olympic Property Group. The project would entail creating 7,000 acres of land for conservation and a trail network in North Kitsap; Olympic Property Group would be able to develop 1,000 acres in and near the Port Gamble town site for…

It’s raining hard today, the first heavy rain we’ve seen in awhile, and it makes me feel good. The air is clean, the fish are moving up the rivers and the dust of summer is being washed away. The end of summer is a good time to look back at what we’ve accomplished recently in restoring and protecting salmon and their habitat here in western Washington.…

KUOW interviewed Lummi fisherman and tribal council member Cliff Cultee for a story about fishing for Fraser River sockeye:

Cultee: “My grandfather and uncles, they all had their own purse seiners, like 58–foot boats. The routine was, after school, we’d get up, go to the web locker in Bellingham, we’d put the nets together with all the uncles and grandfather and crews, do all the nets

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Treaty tribes in western Washington are having a bountiful Fraser River sockeye fishery this season, with at least three times the number of fish returning as expected. More than 30 million sockeye are estimated to return to the Fraser River in British Columbia this year – the highest run size recorded since 1913.

View photos of the fishery in the San Juan Islands on NWIFC’s Flickr…

Swinomish elder and longtime tribal senator Chester Cayou passed away Friday. A prayer service will be held tonight at 7 p.m. in the Swinomish gymnasium. The funeral is Tuesday at 10 a.m. in the same location: 17275 Reservation Road, La Conner, Wash.

The San Juan Journal:

Mr. Cayou, who was of Lummi, Mitchell Bay and Saanich ancestry, died Friday at his Swinomish home. He was in

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The National Park Service recently awarded the contract to remove the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha  River to Barnard Construction Company of Bozeman, MT. From the Seattle Times:

The goal is to restore the Elwha River ecosystem, especially its fabled salmon fisheries, choked off by two dams for nearly a century. The takedown of the dams will take about three years to

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KPLU’s Liam Moriarty has a conversation with Micah McCarty, Makah tribal councilman, about the People of the Cape as part of the Reflections on the Water, Conversations about the Salish Sea series.
Read or listen to it here.

The Seattle Times:

The biggest sockeye run in nearly a century — 25 million fish — is headed back to British Columbia’s Fraser River and its tributaries. It’s a bonanza for American and Canadian fishermen, who are more used to squabbling over how to divide up a declining resource.

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In 40 years of dropping nets into Washington waters, Ray Forsman has never experienced fishing like

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Last year, several members of the Tulalip Tribes fisheries enforcement department completed an intensive Coast Guard certification course in boat handling.

The training paid off this week when a 30-foot tribal fishing boat sank.

From a blog by their trainer, Capt. Richard J. Rodriguez:

This morning I shared a cup of coffee with the survivors and two friends (Zenith Maritime graduates;)  Lt. Robert Myers and Bernie

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From Mother Earth Journal:

The Pacific lamprey is the most ancient of the native fish in the Pacific Northwest. This eel-like fish, which evolved more than 500 million years ago plays an integral part in the cultures of the Columbia River tribes.

But their numbers are spiraling downward.

Now, a University of British Columbia professor and member of one of the Columbia River’s treaty fishing

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