If you joined us for a volunteer planting event this winter, we’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you! Due to the scale of the Caldero project site, we devoted all this year’s planting events to that location. Thanks to your collective efforts, we were able to plant nearly 7,000 plants this season!

Over the past couple months, the site has been transformed from barren ground to an emerging riparian forest. As the plants mature, they’ll provide much needed shade to the river during the warm summer months. The input of fallen trees into the river will create amazing habitat for fish. Smaller debris, like leaves and twigs, will provide food for aquatic insects that are themselves important food for juvenile salmon. Of course, salmon are not the only beneficiaries, as riparian ecosystems are important habitat for several species of birds, amphibians, mammals and more!

Are you hoping to spend this Earth Day doing something that will having a lasting impact on our local environment? Come join us for a fun, community-filled day of mulching and planting on the wild & scenic Dungeness River.

This winter, over 200 volunteers and our Washington Conservation Corps crew dedicated their time to plant nearly 7,000 trees and shrubs at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s Caldero Side Channel Project. These trees and shrubs will grow to be a future forest that will support salmon and the many species of wildlife that depend upon these floodplain corridors.

So much of the work has been completed by our amazing community so far, but we still have more mulching to do and a few more plants to get in the ground!

Event Date/Time: April 22, 2023, 10-2 PM

The Caldero site was acquired by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in 2017 and is named after the former landowner. The Caldero Side Channel Project created nearly 1,000 feet of off-channel habitat for both spawning adult salmon and rearing juveniles.

Side channels such as the one at Caldero are critical refuges for salmon during flood events. This is particularly the case for juveniles, who can be easily overcome by swift flows. Off-channel habitat can also be important spawning areas for returning adults. In fact, since project completion in October, staff have seen adult Coho spawning in the new channel!

Please bring: warm, waterproof clothes and boots, water, and a lunch. If you are able to bring one, extra wheelbarrows would be helpful as well!

A few weeks ago the annually published "State of the Salmon" report was released. It details the importance of salmon in Washington state, which populations are endangered, which populations while still endangered are improving (three cheers for lower Columbia River coho, Hood Canal summer chum, and Snake River fall Chinook!), and what is being done about salmon restoration here in Washington. You can read the report here.

Photo by John Gussman. 

The planting season is underway, and the time has come for the Real Learning Real Work planting field trips! Real Learning Real Work is a middle school program where we give students the opportunity to assess habitat quality at a local waterway, define an engineering problem, and implement their restoration solution: a solution which includes planting native trees and shrubs! We are looking for volunteers to help us guide these students through their planting day.

The next event will be held on the Pysht River out near Clallam Bay April 11th.