Environment Archives - Page 65 of 106

Drought blocking passages to sea for California coho salmon

The drought has obstructed the migratory journeys of many coho salmon on California’s North and Central Coast, putting them in immediate danger.

By Tony Barboza LATimes

February 9, 2014

DAVENPORT, Calif. — By now, water would typically be ripping down Scott Creek, and months ago it should have burst through a berm of sand to provide fish passage between freshwater and the ocean.

Instead, young coho salmon from this redwood and oak-shaded watershed near Santa Cruz last week were swirling around idly in a lagoon. There has been so little rain that sand has blocked the endangered fish from leaving for the ocean or swimming upstream to spawn.

Scott Creek is one of dozens of streams across California where parched conditions have put fish in immediate danger. With the drought, stream flows have been so low that even months into winter, sandbars have remained closed and waters so shallow that many salmon have had their migratory journeys obstructed.

On the banks of Big Creek, a tributary of Scott Creek a few miles from the coast near Santa Cruz, some 41,000 coho salmon just over a year old are being raised for release this spring at a conservation hatchery operated by the nonprofit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times / February 5, 2014)

To prevent further stress to salmon and steelhead, state wildlife officials have closed dozens of rivers and streams to fishing, including all coastal streams west of California 1. A storm that soaked parts of Northern California over the weekend should offer a short respite, but experts say streams like Scott Creek will need several inches of rain a week to stay open and connected to the ocean.

Nowhere is the situation more pressing than on California’s North and Central Coast, where a population of only a few thousand coho salmon were already teetering on the edge of extinction.

“This is the first animal that will feel the impacts of the drought,” said Jonathan Ambrose, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist who stood at the sand-blocked mouth of Scott Creek to offer his assessment Wednesday. “It’s going to take a lot of rain to bust this thing open. And if they can’t get in by the end of February or March, they’re gone.”

Historically, hundreds of thousands of Central California Coast coho salmon started and ended their lives in creeks that flow from coastal mountains and redwood forests to the coast from Humboldt County to Santa Cruz.

Of those that remain, most at risk are coho salmon from about a dozen streams on the southern end of the species’ range in North America. If not for a small hatchery near the town of Davenport keeping the population going and genetically viable, coho salmon would probably already be long gone south of the Golden Gate.

The Central Coast population of coho has plummeted from about 56,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 500 returning adults in 2009. Over the last several years it has hovered around a few thousand, according to estimates from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The population was listed as federally threatened in 1996 and reclassified as endangered in 2005. A 2012 federal plan estimated its recovery could take 50 to 100 years and cost about $1.5 billion.

“Coho are the fish that are really in trouble in the state right now,” said Stafford Lehr, chief of fisheries for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Right now, they’re cut off in many of the streams. They’re stuck in pools,” Lehr said. “As we move deeper into this drought, every life stage is going to suffer increased mortality.”

It’s not only Central Coast salmon that are in peril.

To the North, on Siskiyou County’s Scott River, more than 2,600 coho salmon returned this winter to spawn — the highest number since 2007 — but they encountered so little water they weren’t able to reach nine-tenths of tributaries to spawn, said Preston Harris, executive director of the Scott River Water Trust.

In the Sacramento River, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to release more than 190,000 hatchery-reared chinook salmon Monday to take advantage of recent rainfall. Commercial fishing groups, however, are urging wildlife officials to consider trucking chinook downstream.

“We’re in such extremely low-flow conditions that they might as well dig a ditch and bury these fish rather than trying to put them in a river,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

On the banks of Big Creek, a tributary of Scott Creek a few miles from the coast near Santa Cruz, some 41,000 coho salmon just over a year old are being raised to be released this spring at a conservation hatchery operated by the nonprofit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project.

For now, hatchery managers can only wait and hope for rains heavy and consistent enough to swell the creek’s waters and give the fish a route to the sea. Barring that, wildlife officials overseeing the hatchery are considering drastic measures, such as bulldozing a channel through the berm of sand or releasing the young fish directly into the ocean.

Salmon have existed more than a million years and have evolved with California’s climate. Scientists say they have survived dry spells much worse than this one.

What has changed in recent generations is the pressure California’s growing population has exerted on the water supply and their habitat. Farms, vineyards and cities now divert stream flows while roads, logging and urban development have degraded water quality.

Coho salmon also have a rigid life cycle that makes them more vulnerable during droughts. After three years, they must return from the ocean to the stream where they were born to spawn and die.

That urge was all too apparent when scientists observed this winter’s returning Central California Coast coho salmon. Hundreds of the roughly 1,000 adults that arrived were schooling in estuaries, waiting for rain to provide them passage upstream.

“Many of these fish may simply die in the estuary without reproducing if they can’t access spawning grounds,” said Charlotte Ambrose, salmon and steelhead recovery coordinator at the National Marine Fisheries Service. “While some rain has come, for coho this year it may be too little too late.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Oglala Sioux vow to stop Keystone XL on the ground if Obama won’t say no

Chief Phil Lane Jr. (left) participates in the Vancouver signing of the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred From Tar Sands Projects. Photo courtesy of Phil Lane Jr.

By Erin Flegg, Source: Vancouver Observer

In the latest in a series of announcements escalating resistance to oil and gas development in North America, the Oglala Sioux nation and its allies have committed to stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline on their territory if Obama approves the project.

In response to the US State Department’s environmental report that says Keystone wouldn’t increase the country’s carbon emissions Oglala Sioux president Bryan Brewer, along with organizations carbon emissions, Owe Aku and Protect the Sacred, released a statement declaring they will stand with the Lakota people to block the pipeline. The statement, seen by many as a significant step toward approval, sparked solidarity action across the US on Monday.

Moccasins on the Ground is a grassroots direct action training organization, and trainer Debra White Plum of the Lakota Sioux nation said the group has been working toward this moment, giving nations the skills they need to defend their land, for years now.

The training is available to anyone who invites the group onto their land, and it consists of four days of training in areas such as knowing your rights, blockading and self-defence, first aid and social media. White Plume said a large part of the impetus for offering the training is the size of the territory at risk. Tribes can be several hundred kilometres away from each other, often making quick help hard to come by.

“This way a community can do whatever they need to do when threatened and they’ll have the skills right here, and that’s really important out here where we live,” she said. “We want this non-violent, direct way that everybody engaging in across the country to be successful,” she said. “But if it’s not and if the final door is closed, then that’s why we’re doing the training.”

The organization has toured the United States and has received requests for training from several nations in Canada. She said the political process has left the people with little choice.

“Every door has been closed through this process. Court decisions have been made that favoured the corporations and there are a few cases here and there where the landowners are still asserting their rights under American law.” But if the government can’t be counted on to uphold its own laws, she said, there’s nothing to stop them violating indigenous treaty rights.

“As red nations people we have seen the federal government violate treaties clear to this day.”

The violation of the treaties—in the case of Keystone it’s primarily the Fort Laramie Treaty between the American government and the Oglala Sioux—is the key reason Phil Lane says it’s unfair to call direct action by indigenous people civil disobedience.

“It is not civil disobedience. This is simply acting out of an aboriginal legal order to stand up for what is right. It is standing up for an ancient aboriginal legal order that has never been extinguished.”

Just as the US and Canada and any other sovereign nation has the right to enter into legally binding treaties, so do First Nations. When a treaty such as the one between the Sioux and the American government is broken by one of the parties bound by it, Lane said a third legal party is required to resolve the situation. Because the governments of the United States and Canada are handling the administration of the treaties they themselves have broken, Lane said it’s impossible to expect justice from them.

What direct action resistance against Keystone looks like will ultimately be up to the Obama administration.

“What’s going to happen if he chooses to give in to the oil companies and their allies is he’s going to empower the rising of indigenous people everywhere on Mother Earth,” he said. “This will be another final violation people aren’t ready to take.”

Ottawa-based Idle No More organizer Clayton Thomas-Muller added that it’s crucial to remember that opposition to Keystone XL was initiated and pushed forward by indigenous people. And what’s more, that much of the progress made has been thanks to the indigenous peoples who have demanded recognition of their rights, namely consultation.

In December of 2011 at the annual White House Tribal Leaders Summit, indigenous leaders, including former president of the Rosebud Sioux nation Rodney Bordeaux, presented President Obama with Mother Earth Accord, a document stating indigenous opposition to Keystone XL. The document was endorsed by numerous nations from both sides of the border, NGOs, landowners and the NDP party. Thomas-Muller said it’s the only such document that was delivered into Obama’s hands directly.

“It was only through native rights-based framework being used by indigenous organizations and networks that provide that unparalleled access to the state department and White House,” he said.

He traveled to New York City on Monday night to speak at one of more than 300 actions across 44 states this week. He read a statement written by Debra White Plume and spoke on behalf of Idle No More in Canada.

So many people have been preparing for this moment, he said, and are now coming together for a final push.

“Moving forward, we have a very short timeline. Within the next couple of months we will see a variety of very direct messages like the one we heard from Bryan Brewer of Oglala Sioux nation.”

Something is killing starfish; scientists race to find out what

Seastar wasting syndromeA diseased seastar. (Nate Fletcher / Pacific Rocky Intertidal Monitoring Lab) — Seastar wasting syndrome
A diseased seastar. (Nate Fletcher / Pacific Rocky Intertidal Monitoring Lab)

Up and down the West Coast, starfish are dying.

By Deborah Netburn

February 4, 2014 LATimes

Casualties of a mysterious disease known as seastar wasting syndrome, they are dying in Alaska, deteriorating in San Diego and disappearing from long stretches in between.

Death from the disease is quick and icky. It begins with a small lesion on a starfish’s body that rapidly develops into an infection the animal cannot fight.

Over the course of the disease the starfish’s legs might drop off, or even separate from the body and start to crawl away, as you can see in the PBS news story below.

Pete Raimondi, a professor at UC Santa Cruz who has been tracking the seastar crisis, said a starfish’s leg moving away from its central disk is akin to a lizard’s tail continuing to wriggle even after it has snapped off the lizard’s body.

“Starfish don’t have a central nervous system, so it’s not like if you chopped off your arm,” he said. “The arms can still be mobile and operate on their own for a period of time – longer than you think.”

The seastar wasting epidemic was first observed last summer. Some wondered whether radiation that leaked into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan might be the cause.

“I think it is almost entirely impossible to be related to Fukushima,” Raimondi told the Los Angeles Times. “We haven’t ruled it out, but there are so many more likely things going on. And there is no evidence that radiation has gotten to California.”

A more likely culprit is a pathogen. Either a virus, parasite or bacteria infects the animal and compromises the immune system, which leads to a secondary bacterial infection that ultimately kills the animal.

Raimondi said it shouldn’t be long before scientists isolated the responsible pathogen. “We should know pretty soon,” he said.

Youth group From Klamath river plan trip to help fight world’s most destructive dam project

Source: Intercontinental Cry

Orleans, CA – Local youth are making plans to travel to Brazil to lend a hand in the fight against the world’s most destructive dam proposal, Belo Monte. The Belo Monte Dam Resistance Delegation includes indigenous tribes and river activists from Northern California who will travel to Brazil to work with indigenous people in the Xingu basin, the heart of the Amazon, making a strong bond through mutual efforts to preserve and protect inherited cultures and natural resources from short sighted projects like the Belo Monte Dam.

The Belo Monte project, would be the third largest hydroelectric dam ever built. This project would affect 40,000 people and inundate 640 square kilometers of rainforest. Belo Monte Dam is the first step in a larger plan to extract the Amazon’s vast resources through additional dam building.

Belo Monte is one of many dams proposed for the Amazon that would affect hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, including some of the world’s last un-contacted tribes, allowing further destructive mining and deforestation practices. The Amazon Basin, about the size of the continental U.S., is home to 60 percent of the world’s remaining rainforest, and holds one-fifth of the world’s fresh water.

In Northern California and Southern Oregon a diverse coalition of Native Americans and river activists have campaigned for the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. Currently, dozens of key Klamath Basin stakeholders, including dam owner PacifiCorp, have agreed to remove 4 Klamath River dams pending congressional action.

This project represents the largest dam removal in world history and is poised to restore one of North America’s largest salmon runs, allowing indigenous people to repair broken cultures and communities.

Our delegation will discuss the correlation between the struggles of indigenous people of the Amazon, and the lessons of indigenous struggles in North America, as well as the environmental hazards that dams have caused in the Klamath Basin. Native youth activists that have long fought for their culture will travel to the Amazon to learn about indigenous struggles in the Amazon Basin, engaging lifelong partners for the protection of the Amazon and its indigenous people.

According to Mahlija Florendo, a 16 year old Yurok Tribal member who will be going to the Amazon, “Our River is here to give us life, and we were created to keep the river beautiful and healthy. We need to keep every river alive because we cannot live without them. We cannot destroy life and if we don’t fight to keep them healthy, then we are killing ourselves, and any other life on the planet. The Amazon River is a huge bloodline for life of the Amazon indigenous as the Klamath is ours.”

Amazon Watch’s Brazil Program Coordinator, who knows the area, issues, and people, will accompany the delegation, providing guidance and on the ground support. Along with documenting the early stages of dam construction, the group plans to meet with several local tribes such as the Arara, Juruna, and the Xikrin, learning how they can best support efforts to preserve their homeland and way of life.

The Klamath group will connect Native Americans and grassroots activists from North America with tribes and organizations working in the Amazon to help them maintain their unique, rare and endemic cultures. They hope to return to the U.S. with information and firsthand knowledge to hold fundraising and advocacy events. These efforts will raise money for existing Belo Monte resistance groups and local tribes to travel and deliver their message to venues like the upcoming World Cup in Brazil in June and July 2014.

In the words of Zé Carlos Arara, a leader of the Arara people, “For us the river means many things. For everything we do, we depend on the river. For us to go out, to take our parents around, to get medical attention, we need the river for all these things. If a dam is constructed on the river, how will we pass through it? We don’t want to see the river closed off, our parents dying in inactivity. For us the river is useful and we don’t want it to wither away – that we not have a story to tell, that it become a legend for our children and grandchildren. We want them to see it with their own eyes.”

Pot vs Fish: Can We Grow Salmon-Friendly Weed?

A national park ranger helps other law enforcement agencies eradicate a marijuana growing operation discovered in the park. | credit: David Snyder for the NPS

By Liam Moriarty, Jefferson Public Radio

As marijuana has become more mainstream, the business of cultivating the plant has boomed. That’s true nowhere more than in coastal northern California. There, the so-called Emerald Triangle of Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties is believed to be the largest cannabis-growing region in the US.

But as the hills have sprouted thousands of new grow operations, haphazard cultivation is threatening the recovery of endangered West Coast salmon and steelhead populations.

The Eel River runs through the heart of the Emerald Triangle, draining California’s third-largest watershed. And it’s a key battleground in the struggle to save once-abundant Northwest coastal salmon runs.

Over the decades, poorly-regulated fishing, grazing and logging have all taken their toll on the fish that spawn in the river. Drought and ocean conditions likely related to climate change are making life hard, as well.

But Scott Greacen, who heads the conservation group Friends of the Eel River, says there’s a newer and growing threat to the salmon.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the marijuana industry at this point is the biggest single business in terms of its impact on the river,” he says.

After California voters approved medical marijuana in 1996, the Emerald Triangle’s culture of small-scale, homestead pot cultivation that dates back to the 1960s found itself increasingly overwhelmed. Many local growers, plus thousands of newcomers, geared up to take advantage of the profits to be made in the so-called Green Rush.

That’s led to an explosion in the number and size of pot farms dotting the hills. And that’s meant more water being pulled from the streams, and more sediment, pesticides and fertilizers draining back in.

Greacen says what he’s seen reminds him of an earlier era, when poorly-regulated logging caused extensive sediment damage to salmon-bearing streams.

“The dirt in the creek doesn’t care if it came off a logging truck or a grower truck. It’s dirt in the creek and that’s bad for fish,” he says.

Scott Bauer works on salmon recovery for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He says research has shown huge amounts of water are being diverted from streams and rivers across the region.

“It’s possible that in some watersheds, marijuana cultivation is consuming all the water available for fish,” he says.

But Kristin Nevedal, who heads the Emerald Growers Association, says as the rural region has become more suburbanized, the blame can’t be laid just on pot farmers.

“This is also water that’s going to livestock, it’s going to lawns, it’s going to veggie gardens, it’s going to showers,” she says.

Still, Nevedal concedes commercial marijuana cultivation is a big part of the problem. A contributing factor, she says, is that growing medical pot is allowed under state law, but there are no rules overseeing how it’s grown. Plus, growing is still a felony under federal law.

“So what we have with cannabis is this agricultural crop that’s produced for human consumption that’s likely the number one cash crop in the state that has zero regulations attached to it,” Nevedal says.

Fish and Wildlife’s Bauer agrees many of the environmental problems stem from that legal gray zone.

“The timber industry is heavily regulated. Farmers are regulated,” he says. “All these different industries that could have impacts are regulated. And this is the only one that isn’t.”

In an effort to fill that gap, Bauer says his office will issue permits to people who want to divert water for agricultural purposes, with no questions asked about their crop.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re growing avocados or oranges or grapes for that matter,” he says. “We don’t really care what it is. What I’m concerned about are impacts to salmon and steel head, coho in particular.”

So far, Bauer says this “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has coaxed only a handful of cannabis farmers to get permits to meet higher environmental standards.

Environmental consultant Hezekiah Allen says that shouldn’t be surprising.

“There’s just this tremendously complicated legal environment which makes it really hard for farmers who would like to come into compliance, who would like to use best practices on their farms to make progress,” he says.

The third-generation Humboldt County resident says the decades-long history of heavy-handed law enforcement efforts to eradicate pot from the Emerald Triangle has left a legacy of suspicion.

“The culture of prohibition has really damaged the farmers’ trust in the government and government agencies so there’s a lot of reconciliation work that needs to take place to rebuild trust in the minds of the people we’re that asking to comply,” he says.

Nonetheless, Allen says he’s confident most farmers want to do right by the land and the salmon. As part of a project with several community groups, including the Emerald Growers Association, he’s helped develop a manual of best practices for growers. It offers suggestions for using less water, for minimizing erosion and for keeping runoff out of streams.

A first run of 2,000 of the guides was distributed free around the region, and an expanded version is in the works. Allen is optimistic this kind of voluntary community effort will help.

“There’s probably no such thing as a perfect, zero impact farm,” he says. “But if we give people the information and the knowledge they need, they will make improvements.”

Allen says what’s really needed is a proper set of rules. But while the need to regulate this burgeoning industry is widely acknowledged, there’s little visible sign of movement in that direction in Sacramento.

For now, the future of northern California salmon runs seems to depend at least in part on the good intentions of cannabis growers in the Emerald Triangle.

This was first reported for Jefferson Public Radio.

Suzanne Patles at Mi’kmaq Warriors Society strategy session

By John Ahni Schertow, January 29, 2014. Source: Intercontinental Cry

Suzanne Patles of the Mi’kmaq Warriors Society spoke at a strategy session co-sponsored by First Nations Studies SFU, and the English Department, SFU at the downtown Harbour Centre campus Friday, January 24th, on unceded Coast Salish Territories.

Members of the Mi’kmaq Warriors Society, who have been arrested and incarcerated at Elsipogtog, New Brunswick, are on a speaking tour in January and February to raise awareness about their struggle against fracking, their ongoing assertion and exercise of nationhood, and the repression they face from police and courts.

“Our warriors are still being mistreated in the system, justice for our political prisoners of war.” Suzanne Patles

Keystone XL ‘black snake’ pipeline to face ‘epic’ opposition from Native American alliance

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Image: U.S. State Department

By Jorge Barrera, January 31, 2014. Source: APTN National News

A Native American alliance is forming to block construction of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline which still needs final approval from U.S. President Barack Obama after the State Department released an environmental report indicating the project wouldn’t have a significant impact Alberta tar sands production.

Members from the seven tribes of the Lakota Nation, along with tribal members and tribes in Idaho, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska and Oregon, have been preparing to stop construction of the 1,400 kilometre pipeline which is slated to run, on the U.S. side, from Morgan, Mon., to Steel City, Neb., and pump 830,000 barrels per day from Alberta’s tar sands. The pipeline would originate in Hardisty, Alta.

“It poses a threat to our sacred water and the product is coming from the tar sands and our tribes oppose the tar sands mining,” said Deborah White Plume, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which is part of the Lakota Nation in South Dakota. “All of our tribes have taken action to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.”

The U.S. State Department released its long awaited environmental report on TransCanada’s proposed pipeline Friday. The report found that the pipeline’s operation would not have a major impact on Alberta tar sands production which is also at the mercy of market forces.

“Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed project, is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States based on expected oil prices, oil sand supply costs, transport costs and supply-demand scenarios,” said the report.

The project will now go into a final phase which focuses on whether Keystone XL “serves the national interest.” Pipeline’s environmental, cultural and economic impacts will be weighed in this phase and at least eight agencies will have input on the outcome, including the Department Defence, Justice, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Energy, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A 30-day public comment period will also be initiated on Feb. 5.

The State Department is also in the midst of probing conflict-of-interest allegations levelled against contractors who both worked on the report and for TransCanada.

The Lakota Nation is preparing for the eventuality the pipeline receives approval. The nation has led the formation of a project called “Shielding the People” to stop the pipeline. The Lakota also launched a “moccasins on the ground” program to train people in Indigenous communities to oppose the pipeline.

There are also plans to set up spiritual camps along the pipeline’s route. But when and where those camps will spring up remains a closely guarded secret.

“It will band all Lakota to live together and you can’t cross a living area if it’s occupied,” said Greg Grey Cloud, of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. “If it does get approved we aim to stop it.”

Gary Dorr, from the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho, was in Rosebud Friday for a meeting to discuss opposition to Keystone.

The Nez Perce tribe has already used its treaty rights to block the transport of so-called megaloads of mining equipment headed to Alberta’s tar sands through its territory. The tribe launched blockades and won a court battle to stop the shipments from traversing its lands.

“It will be obvious, it will be concrete, and I think once it starts and they start building you will start to see the momentum and the force of the tribal people…it is an epic project, it will have an epic response from the tribal people,” said Dorr. “The tar sands is already affecting the people (for Fort Chipewyan in Alberta), climate change is already obvious. To facilitate that is not something the Native people of the U.S. are going to do. We are not going to sit idly by and let it happen.”

The pipeline has been called the ‘black snake’ in reference to prophecies that had previously been linked to construction of highways and railways. In recent ceremonies, however, discussions sifting through the prophecies noted that the black snake goes under ground.

“That would be a referral to the pipeline,” said Dorr.

Paula Antoine, who works for the Rosebud Tribe’s land office, said while the pipeline does not cross any Lakota reservation lands, it comes close, sometimes metres away. Antoine said the pipeline, however, cuts through their treaty territory, sacred sites and waterways.

“They aren’t recognizing our treaties, they are violating our treaty rights and our boundaries by going through there,” said Antoine. “Any ground disturbance around that proposed line will affect us.”

The battle lines have already been drawn in tribal council chambers. The Oglala Sioux Tribe passed a resolution Friday banning TransCanada and former AFN national chief Phil Fontaine, who has been hired by the energy firm to deal with First Nations opposition to its Energy East project in Canada, from entering its territory.

The resolution received unanimous consent,said White Plume.

The Lakota, Dakota and Nakota make up the Lakota Nation. The nation includes the tribes of Rosebud, Oglala and the Cheyenne Indian reservation, the Yankton Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock, Flandreau Sioux Tribe and the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.

Focusing on the National and International Levels

Source: Water4fish

TAHOLAH, WA – “Securing the rights of sovereign Tribal governments takes constant effort and perseverance at many levels,” said Fawn Sharp, President of the Quinault Indian Nation, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and Northwest Regional Vice President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). This past week, some of the focus was on the national and international levels, she said. Sharp completed a round of talks with the US Department of State in Washington DC early this week, exploring how American Indian governments and the US government can formalize an agreement on policies to be considered by the United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.

The World Conference on Indigenous Peoples will be a meeting of the 194 member governments of the United Nations considering how best to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—a document that affects the rights and interests of American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and hundreds of other indigenous peoples around the world.

“We have begun talks to formalize a framework between our governments so we can more effectively negotiate balanced solutions to problems such as climate change, damages caused by development to indigenous territories, and improving economies in tribal territories,” said President Sharp.

During the course of the week, Sharp consulted with Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, who was recently elected President of NCAI, and was joined in the talks by Colville Confederated Tribes Chairman Michael Finley who also serves as First Vice President of NCAI. He stressed his strong endorsement of President Sharp’s proposals to the Department of State, which urged development of an intergovernmental framework agreement that will ensure that the US government and Indian governments work closely and harmoniously as they engage UN member states at the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples in September.

President Sharp and other tribal leaders from across the country will continue talks with representatives of the Department of State in February.

President Sharp further noted, “We have been conducting talks with the Department of State since last August and expect we will come to a mutual agreement on an intergovernmental framework concerning the UN conference in February.”

The Quinault government has been leading discussions with the US government and several UN Member States regarding the World Conference and facilitating joint Indian government meetings to ensure the maximum participation of Indian peoples in plans for the World Conference.

Following is a link to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf

Tribes study chinook use of small coastal streams

Kari Neumeyer Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Jan 29^th 2014

The Tulalip Tribes and Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC) recently completed a six-year study of juvenile chinook salmon use of small coastal streams in the Whidbey basin.

“Small coastal streams are often overlooked as potential salmon habitat because many flow seasonally and do not provide spawning habitat,” said Todd Zackey, the marine and nearshore program manager for Tulalip who obtained grant funding for the research. Derek Marks, Timber/Fish/Wildlife manager for Tulalip, was an additional principal investigator on the research.

The researchers electrofished 63 streams in the Whidbey basin and found juvenile chinook using more than half of them. The migrant fry originated from the three nearby rivers: Skagit, Snohomish and Stillaguamish.

Todd Zackey electrofishes Hibulb Creek to determine whether there are juvenile chinook using the small coastal stream.

“Juvenile chinook salmon are not just present in these small streams, but they are actively rearing and growing,” said Eric Beamer, research director for SRSC, the natural resources extension of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes. “They appear to be using the streams as a nursery, much like they use natal and pocket estuaries.”

The results of the study suggest that better mapping is needed to improve the protection of small stream habitat.

“The streams are small enough that the habitat can easily be degraded through direct actions such as channel straightening, armoring, removal of riparian vegetation, and culverting,” Beamer said.

To protect and restore small streams, new culverts should not be built near stream mouths, and existing culverts should be removed or retrofitted to allow upstream passage.

“The next phase of research will determine key stream characteristics that can be used to develop a predictive model to identify the coastal streams used by juvenile salmon,” Zackey said. “If we are to protect this critical rearing habitat for threatened chinook, we need to continue our research and monitoring efforts.”

The study was funded by the tribal allocation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency National Estuary Program administered by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and a state Department of Ecology watershed grant funded by the EPA NEP. Additional collaborators include the Adopt A Stream Foundation and Whidbey Watershed Stewards.

Read the report.

For more information, contact: Eric Beamer, research director, Skagit River System Cooperative, 360-466-7228 or ebeamer@skagitcoop.org; Todd Zackey, marine and nearshore program manager, Tulalip Tribes, 360-716-4637 or tzackey@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov; Kari Neumeyer, information officer, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org.

Nature Conservancy Raises $33.3 Million for Conservation

Private donations transform work to restore natural systems in Washington and around the world

Source: The Nature Conservancy

Seattle — The Nature Conservancy’s three-year Forces of Nature campaignhas raised $33.3 million in private dollars for conservation in Washington and internationally. The campaign, the largest in the chapter’s history and one of the largest campaigns for conservation ever in Washington, was focused on conserving and restoring natural systems while enhancing the well-being of people.

“Our economy and quality of life are intertwined with our state’s clean water, abundant natural resources and astounding beauty,” said Mike Stevens, the Conservancy’s Washington director. “Through their generosity to this campaign, the people of Washington have shown they understand and value what we have and are willing to work to steward it.”

“We are grateful to our donors who have demonstrated their passion and commitment to conservation even during difficult economic times,” said Campaign Chair Elaine French, a volunteer and member of the state chapter’s board of trustees.

In all, the Conservancy raised nearly $18 million for acquisitions, $10 million for on-the-ground work, and more than $6 million for international programs.

Funds raised through the Forces of Nature Campaign are already bringing results.

Puget Sound: Partnership-driven, high-impact projects are blending flood protection, salmon habitat, stormwater reduction and agricultural preservation across more than 1,000 acres of floodplains along eight major rivers.
East Cascade Forests: Critical timberlands have been brought into public ownership and we are partnering to restore forests to reduce the risks of catastrophic megafires, while promoting ways to ensure the economic viability of forest-dependent communities.
Olympic Rainforest: We are working hand in hand with coastal communities to conserve and restore forests along our most important coast salmon rivers.
Marine Waters: A new program focuses on conserving Washington’s 28,000 square miles of marine waters and fisheries in Puget Sound and off the coast.
Emerald Edge: A new international program conserves habitat, restores forests and fisheries and builds sustainable economies across 70 million acres in the world’s largest temperate rainforest, stretching from the Washington coast through British Columbia and into Southeast Alaska.
International: Support from Washington allows Conservancy programs around the world to benefit nature and people, for example protecting elephant habitat in Africa through indigenous communities.

Forty-five donors gave gifts of $100,000 or more. The campaign was also supported by corporations and private foundations, including Boeing, Harriet Bullit’s Icicle Fund, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

“What makes this campaign so special is our work with people—farmers, fishermen, loggers, business owners, tribal communities—to develop projects that will have the biggest impact on people’s lives and on our future,” said Mary Ruckelshaus, chair of the chapter’s board of trustees. “Using innovative, science-based solutions, we are making life better for people and communities while protecting the natural resources on which we all depend.”