Johnson Creek Culvert Replacement #2! |
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Fisheries technicians catching salmon and other fish/organisms to
remove from project site to salvage.
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Another culvert replacement funded by the Fish Barrier Removal Board (FBRB) hit the ground this month at the Tributary to Johnson Creek, which flows into the Hoko River. The Hoko is home to the largest runs of chinook, coho, and steelhead in the western Strait of Juan de Fuca. Over 95% of the watershed lies in undeveloped State and private timberlands, providing high quality habitat for spawning adult and rearing juvenile salmon.
The culvert is undersized, perched over 3 feet above the stream, and is beginning to fail, eroding the roadway above. For these reasons, it was identified as a complete barrier to fish passage. To reconnect access to the upstream habitat, the 7.2-foot diameter metal pipe is being replaced with a 30-foot arch culvert. This will open 2-miles of forested spawning and rearing habitat and 1.6-acres of forested wetlands.
In early July, fisheries technicians arrived on scene to remove any fish from the project extent, and construction crews began clearing vegetation from the road fill above the culvert. This culvert is just a half-mile above the site of a much larger culvert barrier removal project completed by NOSC in 2019. And so it goes, working our way upstream to connect as much habitat as we can for salmon! Go team!
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We are now accepting applications for one WA Conservation Corps Individual Placement Education and Outreach Associate position! If you are a Washington resident between the ages of 18-25 and want to gain valuable experience working to improve wild salmon stocks on the North Olympic Peninsula, this is a great opportunity to join us for 11 months! Visit our website for more details about the positions and how to apply.
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It's time to join or renew your membership! |
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It's membership season at NOSC! Please join the North Olympic Salmon Coalition as a member today and help support the adaptation of our Real Learning, Real Work curriculum to meet the emerging need for online schooling. Your membership will also help ensure the continued development of future projects aimed at improving salmon habitat and boosting populations. These projects benefit both the community and the myriad of species that depend on salmon, like Southern Resident orcas!
“The Salmon Coalition's work to restore salmon habitat resonates with my deepest environmental values and my connection to our Northwest landscape of rivers, streams, and forests. The Coalition's Real Learning/Real Work education program gives me hope for the future.” – Jim Pearson, President of the Board of Directors
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Monthly Spotlight - Reed Aubin |
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The Salmon Coalition is grateful to work with and learn from so many inspiring and dedicated people. To celebrate the contributions of this community, NOSC selects someone each month to highlight and give thanks. This year marks our 30th Anniversary and we will be highlighting different community members, staff, and partners that have helped make the Salmon Coalition what it is today.
This month we interviewed Reed Aubin, who previously worked at NOSC as the Program Manager for Education, Outreach, and Volunteers. Reed brought passion and enthusiasm to the Salmon Coalition's education programs and aligned them with our restoration work with the Real Learning Real Work program. As a Port Townsend local, Reed shares his memories and perspective of Wild Olympic Salmon, NOSC's predecessors.
Learn more from Reed below
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Tell us a little bit about yourself and your relationship to NOSC. |
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I grew up on the Quimper Peninsula, fished a bit in Alaska as a summer job, volunteered a bit with NOSC after college, moved away for 10 years or so, and returned in 2013. I worked for NOSC from 2013 to 2015 as Program Manager for Education, Outreach, and Volunteers, which was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. I worked on great projects with great colleagues, community partners, volunteers, and students. I got incredible training in restoration and ecosystems during my time at NOSC. I’m an educator at heart and I took an opportunity to return to the classroom to teach Spanish, 5 years ago, first in Chimacum, and now at Port Townsend High School. I live in Irondale with my partner Sarah and we are expecting a little alevin any day now. Full disclosure - actually, I might have to interrupt this interview if the baby comes. |
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What are your earliest memories of Wild Olympic Salmon (WOS)? |
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My earliest memory of WOS was running in the rainy dark forest, along trails illuminated by candles, toward the warm glow of a large Chautauqua tent, and ducking among the adults’ legs. This was at one of the early Salmon Festivals in the park behind the Tri Area Community Center. I also have a distinct memory of attending a prize ceremony at the Jefferson County Library, in which I received a runner-up prize for my collection of watershed trading cards. I was not able to complete the whole set, and I did not win the silver pendant. I received a chum charm - a white ceramic salmon, however, which was a huge disappointment to me as a 9 year old. But it has grown on me over the years and I still have it.
I also remember puzzling over Tom Foley’s illustration of the “aquifer” on one of the cards. Why was that included? It wasn’t an animal or plant, and frankly, seemed boring to me, when compared to orcas, or even kelp. I guess that was an early moment of hydrological head-scratching, that bore fruit later on. I was taking a landscape design course and started to really learn more about aquifers, and my mind was blown. The Oglalla Aquifer, which lies under most of the Midwestern U.S., is being mined for industrial agriculture and a resource-intensive way of life.
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How did this influence your interests and what did it lead to professionally, educationally, and personally? |
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I think that childhood experiences of nature-oriented culture like this had a subconscious effect on my whole outlook on life. I’ve been drawn time and time again to the natural world, in various contexts, in my anthropology studies, through sustainable agroforestry work in Central America, hiking trips, or my current obsession with growing and eating ancestral crops with the High School Spanish students. Even when I’m not working directly in a nature-oriented job, I end up incorporating content and principles from the natural world into what I’m teaching. So, fish, birds, benthic invertebrates, rivers, water quality, aquifers, these are all parts of how I perceive the world. |
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How do you see the legacy of WOS in NOSC today? |
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- Educate Restore Celebrate - this current slogan came from WOS - Education Restoration Celebration.
- Community based restoration. This was one of the original insights of WOS, and it was picked up by the state -- there are so many reasons that community is the right approach for this kind of work.
- There is still the strength of volunteers.
- Now, there is stronger institutional support for the complex task of restoration -- land trusts, the tribes… but it’s still happening at the local level.
- A renewed commitment to education projects - Real Learning Real Work
- Different context - state sponsored community restoration
- Dragon Tracks - what a great socially distanced collaborative activity!
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As the previous Education Coordinator, how did you incorporate the legacy of WOS into your work? |
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At my first public gig for NOSC, some of WOS elders of the community sat me down and said, “Ok, when are we going to do the Salmon Festival again?” So we had a small get-together at the Chimacum Grange, roasted salmon around a giant fire, and formed a community committee to put on another salmon festival the following year. It was a festive event held at Chimacum school, in partnership with Kit Pennell’s environmental studies class in the Chimacum Schools Pi Program. I think it served to keep a spark of memory of the salmon festivals alive. And I do believe that a resurgence of a salmon festival or similar celebration will have a part to play in the future of restoration here on the peninsula.
The legacy of WOS is multifaceted. It was an uncommon combination of real restoration and real meaning-making in the community. WOS did a lot to help restore peoples’ imaginations, as well as significant ecological accomplishments. The idea that if we are going to restore our environment, we have to simultaneously restore our cultural and mental dispositions to take meaning from the place where we live. And that this means multigenerational fun, social meanings, as well as hands-on work.
I was just a kid when I was involved in WOS programs, and so my understanding is molded by that. Many WOS members live here and can tell the story more fully.
WOS also took steps to collaborate with local tribes, and this pattern of restoration, celebration, and education, I believe, were inspired by a native perspective, a culture that is embedded in the natural world, so these “cultural” aspects like education and celebration, are naturally part of what it means to have a relationship with fish. During the time of WOS, coastal tribes were experiencing a renaissance of culture, with the re-establishment of the canoe journeys, and lifting their culture up from how it has been oppressed by the colonial project. As I understand it, WOS helped to provide venues and opportunities for non-Indian folks to witness tribal culture, in a respectful context, honoring this work that the tribes were doing.
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Anything else you'd like to add? |
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In my time with NOSC, we were able to collaborate with tribes some for education projects, but it’s important to remember that NOSC, like other RFEGs, now has a consistent working relationship with tribes as part of core operations, on just about every project. NOSC collaborates technically with the habitat departments of the tribes. Tribal managers have sat on the NOSC board.
For us mostly white folks here in the USA with our legacy of Western culture, it is important to realize that developing our appreciation for tribal culture is only part of this relationship. There are political and economic realities. As a NOSC member, I know that NOSC works with tribes in a way that is based on treaty rights, and is oriented toward outcomes that are identified by the tribes themselves - protecting and restoring habitat for these fish who are so important to us all.
If you look at the Since Time Immemorial curriculum, a very well-crafted online resource that WA state tribes have put together to support schools in teaching about native issues, you can see that it does include some cultural elements, but the number one issue that tribal authorities want the rest of Washingtonians to understand is that of treaty rights and self-determination. The fact that NOSC works as a partner with our local tribes - The Makah, the S’Klallam tribes, and the others whose U&A regions overlap with our jurisdiction - is a simple affirmation of respect at this professional level.
For non-Indian people, the opportunity to work with tribes with treaty rights is a way to do work toward re-establishing the value of our word, as citizens of our nation. Because we have to face the fact that we have broken treaties, the supreme law of the land. We have broken our word. Working in a way that honors treaties is a way to slowly rebuild our own integrity as a society, as we newcomers to this continent might strive to become equal partners in living with the natural world.
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See more questions and answers in the video interview. |
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Watch Reed's Video Interview! |
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NEW DEADLINE for Community Pie Cookbook Submissions - August 16th |
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We will miss having our annual gathering this year! No need for disappointment, however, as you can help us keep this special tradition alive. Take a look at our website to see how you can be featured on a page in a NOSC community Pie Cookbook with your own pie recipe!
NEW Deadline: Aug. 16
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Support the salmon with AmazonSmile |
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AmazonSmile is an easy way for you to support NOSC when your purchase from Amazon. At no cost to you, AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of eligible purchases every time you shop. AmazonSmile is available at smile.amazon.com on your web browser and can be activated in the Amazon Shopping app for iOS and Android phones.
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To start using AmazonSmile on your phone app, follow the instructions below:
- Open the Amazon Shopping app on your device
- Go into the main menu of the Amazon Shopping app and tap into 'Settings'
- Tap 'AmazonSmile' and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process
Thanks for your support!
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Base funding for the RFEG program comes from a grant from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, a portion of state commercial and recreational fishing license fees, and excess egg and carcass sales administered by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife.
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Give Us Your Feedback
Questions or Comments? Let us know what you think!
outreach@nosc.org
360.379.8051
www.nosc.org
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