Inspired by the playful spirit of summer, we have a fun game of 'Guess Where" for you. The following photos are of past restoration projects and sites. You may have seen these areas through our social media, website, or as a volunteer at the site. Take your best shot in figuring out these locations. Answers are at the end of the newsletter. Images provided by Sarah Doyle and Kevin Merrigan.

2. A beautiful view of the Olympic Mountains, but where might this be? Hint: This is a good site to spot many bird species, including the migratory purple martin.

3. One of our many restoration sites. Can you figure out the plant in the photo? Which site is this?

4. What river is this site a tributary of? Hint: Somewhere on the Western Peninsula. (What? This is not suppose to be easy.)

.5. Where is this location? Hint: We did a volunteer planting here in 2021.

Image by Torin Blaker.

The Salmon Coalition is also hiring for an 11-month AmeriCorps/Washington Conservation Corps Individual Placement (IP) position as our Education and Outreach Associate. This competitive position is open to all AmeriCorps members between the ages of 18-25 who meet the necessary qualifications and have a passion for learning more about salmon habitat restoration. The IP will collaborate with the staff of NOSC to help improve wild salmon stocks and educate the local community about our work through community outreach, online media, environmental education, volunteer coordination, habitat restoration and data collection.

Sometimes words may not be enough to show the effort our volunteers contribute to help with salmon habitat restoration. Here are some numbers you do not want to miss from August 2021 - now!

Spawner Surveys: Occurs yearly. Volunteers participate in salmon spawner surveys taking place on Chimacum Creek and its tributaries. Spawner surveys include summer chum surveys, from late August to early November, and coho spawner surveys, from November to January. Volunteers help collect scale samples from salmon carcasses as well as count the number of dead and alive salmon they encounter. The data gets sent to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and is valuable in determining the health of the creek and the salmon runs.

Plantings: The majority of volunteer opportunities with NOSC are plantings in the winter and early spring. This planting season we had nine plantings. This included five events at River's Edge Restoration Area, a large site between the Dungeness River and the Dungeness Valley Creamery, in which 5,323 plants were planted with the Clallam Conservation District and Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe to help restore the floodplain of the Dungeness River. We also had two plantings at the Kilisut Harbor Restoration Area on Indian Island, one at Lucky Deer (located near Discovery Bay at the site of the former Lucky Deer Trading Post that is now owned by the Jefferson Land Trust) and one planting at Snow Creek Estuary. All of this work could not have been done without the help of volunteers!

Education: Along with habitat restoration, education is a big part in what we do. We had two major educational programs that took place mostly during the spring of 2022. Real Learning Real Work (RLRW) and Salmon in the Schools (SITS).

Real Learning Real Work: RLRW teaches middle school students the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematic) skills necessary to envision and implement their own habitat restoration projects. This includes class lessons for students to learn about different native plant species in the PNW and how to decide the placement of plants based on the landscape. This year we had Blue Heron Middle School, Sequim Middle School, and Chimacum Middle School 7th graders participate in our RLRW program. They helped with habitat restoration work both at River's Edge and at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's property between Snow and Salmon Creek.

Salmon in the Schools: This program provides local elementary schools with the equipment necessary to raise native salmon in the classroom setting. Students get to witness firsthand the development of salmon from the egg stage until they are a couple of inches long and known as parr. In addition to aquarium equipment and fish, funding also allows for 3 class lessons and a fish release field trip to a local salmon-bearing stream when the fish have reached the parr stage. Lessons cover the salmon life cycle as well as topics such as what constitutes healthy habitat and human impacts on the fish. This year we partnered with Hamilton Elementary School in Port Angeles, Salish Coast Elementary in Port Townsend, and Chimacum Elementary in Chimacum.

Image by Torin Blaker.

It is that time of the year! For this membership drive we want to raise funds for a habitat restoration project at Kodama Farm and Food Forest, located in Chimacum's Beaver Valley. The East Fork of Chimacum Creek runs in a straight line, directly through the middle of the farm. Historically, Chimacum Creek Valley was heavily vegetated with riparian forests, swamps, wet prairies and beaver ponds. In the early 1900s, a majority of the floodplain forests were removed and the land was drained for agricultural use due to the rich soils that are prevalent through the valley bottom. These rich soils help to make this area a prime location for growing food! The straightening of the creek and removal of the forests, affected the quality and quantity of habitat for salmon that call this creek home, including coho, resident trout and endangered summer chum and steelhead.

Forest Health Assessment Workshop Thursday, Aug 11th

9:00am – 12:00pm

1. It's a field of riverbank lupine off May Road near the Dungeness River! One of our main restoration projects happening on the Dungeness River is removing invasive butterfly bush and knotweed. Once we remove these plants, we seed native riverbank lupine. If you are in a field of lupine like Nate is, you can definitely smell their sweet fragrance! Learn more the Dungeness Riparian Restoration here.

2. 3 Crabs Estuarine Restoration Site near the town of Dungeness! The view of this photo is looking away from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Besides the removal of the 3 Crabs Restaurant and creosote pilings, the project also involved a rerouting of Sequim-Dungeness Way and a construction of a new bridge to withstand future flooding events. The new bridge is the one seen in the photo. Learn more about 3 Crabs here.

3. A red-flowering currant at Kilisut Harbor Restoration Project. Our largest and most expensive restoration project. This project involved removing the earthen causeway between Indian and Marrowstone Islands. This earthen causeway had two small culverts, but it was essentially a dam that blocked juvenile salmon passage. With the construction of the bridge, it reopened the water passage between Kilisut Harbor and Oak Bay. This photo looks out to Oak Bay. Learn more about the Kilisut Harbor Restoration Project here.

4. Tributary to Johnson Creek Project. If you are driving on the Hoko-Ozette Road towards Ozette Lake, you will pass over a bridge that goes over a creek that's a tributary to Johnson Creek which then flows into the Hoko River. The culvert (not shown in the photo) was change into an arch culvert and plants were planted on the creek banks to stabilize the bank and provide shade to the creek for salmon. Nearby, NOSC did a project on Johnson Creek, which was the largest culvert removal that NOSC had been involved with! Learn more about the Johnson Creek Project here.

5. This site is Snow Creek Estuary that empties out to Discovery Bay. Last year in October, we joined the Jefferson County Conservation District and Jefferson County Land Trust to host a volunteer planting for Orca Recovery Day. US Representative Derek Kilmore even joined us! You can see this site when you turn off 101 onto WA 20 heading to Port Townsend. Make an immediately left onto Fairmount Road and you will see the site. Learn more about projects we have done on Discovery Bay here.