Survival International has received reports that Brazil’s military has launched a major ground operation against illegal logging around the land of the Awá, Earth’s most threatened tribe.
Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and Environment Ministry special agents have flooded the area, backed up with tanks, helicopters and close to a hundred other vehicles, to halt the illegal deforestation which has already destroyed more than 30% of one of the Awá’s indigenous territories.
Since the operation reportedly started at the end of June, 2013, at least eight saw mills have been closed and other machinery has been confiscated and destroyed.
Little Butterfly, an Awá girl. The Awá have pleaded for all illegal invaders to be evicted from their forest.
The operation comes at a critical time for the Awá, one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in the Brazilian Amazon, who are at risk of extinction if the destruction of their forest is not stopped as a matter of urgency.
But while the operation is making it more difficult for loggers to enter Awá territory and remove the valuable timber, the forces have not moved onto the Awá’s land itself – where illegal logging is taking place at an alarming rate and where quick action is crucial.
Amiri Awá told Survival, ‘The invaders must be made to leave our forest. We don’t want our forest to disappear. The loggers have already destroyed many areas.’
Tanks, helicopters and close to a hundred vehicles have been deployed to protect the forest.
Tens of thousands of people worldwide, including many celebrities, have joined Survival International’s campaign urging the Brazilian government to send forces into the Awá’s territories to evict the illegal invaders, stop the destruction of the Awá’s forest, prosecute the illegal loggers and prevent them from re-entering the area.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Brazil has taken a promising first step towards saving the world’s most threatened tribe, and it’s thanks to the many thousands of Awá supporters worldwide. This is proof that public opinion can effect change. However, the battle is not yet won: the authorities must not stop until all illegal invaders are gone.’
Representatives of tribal rights organization Survival International and lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber returned the katsina to Hopi.
The katsinam are of cultural and religious significance to the Hopi, who were vehemently opposed to the auction and asked the Paris auction house Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou to cancel the sale on the grounds that the objects are considered sacred to Hopi.
After the auction house ignored the Hopi’s request, attorney Pierre Servan-Schreiber of the firm Skadden Arps (Paris) filed legal papers on behalf of Survival International and the Hopi, asking for the sale of the katsinam to be halted until the lawfulness of the collection was established.
However the Paris Court rejected all attempts to stop the auction and the sale of dozens of sacred objects went ahead on April 12, 2013, in what Hopi tribal chairman LeRoy N. Shingoitewa called a ‘shameful saga’.
Mr. Shingoitewa added, ‘We are deeply saddened and disheartened by this ruling … It is sad to think that the French will allow the Hopi Tribe to suffer through the same cultural and religious thefts, denigrations and exploitations they experienced in the 1940s. Would there be outrage if Holocaust artifacts, Papal heirlooms or Quranic manuscripts were going up for sale … to the highest bidder? I think so.’
After the katsina handover, Hopi and the delegation exchanged gifts.
M. Servan-Schreiber then bought one katsina at the auction to return it to the Hopi. He said, ‘It is my way of telling the Hopi that we only lost a battle and not the war. I am convinced that in the future, those who believe that not everything should be up for sale will prevail. In the meantime, the Hopi will not have lost everything since two of these sacred objects* have been saved from being sold.’
Hollywood actor Robert Redford had also pleaded for the auction to be halted. He said, ‘To auction these would be, in my opinion, a sacrilege – a criminal gesture that contains grave moral repercussions.’
Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International, said, ‘The sale of Hopi katsinam would never have happened in the USA – thankfully US law recognizes the importance of these ceremonial objects. It is a great shame that French law falls so far behind. We’re delighted that at least two of the katsinam have been saved, and can be returned to their rightful owners.’
Linguist Carmel O’Shannessy, back left, with Gracie White Napaljarri, who is a Warlpiri speaker but children in her extended family speak both Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Photo: Noressa White via The New York Times
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times
There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia.
Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules.
The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language.
“Many of the first speakers of this language are still alive,” said Mary Laughren, a research fellow in linguistics at the University of Queensland in Australia, who was not involved in the studies. One reason Dr. O’Shannessy’s research is so significant, she said, “is that she has been able to record and document a ‘new’ language in the very early period of its existence.”
Everyone in Lajamanu also speaks “strong” Warlpiri, an aboriginal language unrelated to English and shared with about 4,000 people in several Australian villages. Many also speak Kriol, an English-based creole developed in the late 19th century and widely spoken in northern Australia among aboriginal people of many different native languages.
Lajamanu parents are happy to have their children learn English for use in the wider world, but eager to preserve Warlpiri as the language of their culture.
Lajamanu’s isolation may have something to do with the creation of a new way of speaking. The village is about 550 miles south of Darwin, and the nearest commercial center is Katherine, about 340 miles north. There are no completely paved roads.
An airplane, one of seven owned by Lajamanu Air, a community-managed airline, lands on the village’s dirt airstrip twice a week carrying mail from Katherine, and once a week a truck brings food and supplies sold in the village’s only store. A diesel generator and a solar energy plant supply electricity.
The village was established by the Australian government in 1948, without the consent of the people who would inhabit it. The native affairs branch of the federal government, concerned about overcrowding and drought in Yuendumu, forcibly removed 550 people from there to what would become Lajamanu. At least twice, the group walked all the way back to Yuendumu, only to be retransported when they arrived.
Contact with English is quite recent. “These people were hunters and gatherers, roaming over a territory,” said Dr. O’Shannessy. “But then along came white people, cattle stations, mines, and so on. People were kind of forced to stop hunting and gathering.”
By the 1970s, villagers had resigned themselves to their new home, and the Lajamanu Council had been set up as a self-governing community authority, the first in the Northern Territory. In the 2006 census, almost half the population was under 20, and the Australian government estimates that by 2026 the number of indigenous people 15 to 64 will increase to 650 from about 440 today.
Dr. O’Shannessy, who started investigating the language in 2002, spends three to eight weeks a year in Lajamanu. She speaks and understands both Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, but is not fluent.
People in Lajamanu often engage in what linguists call code-switching, mixing languages together or changing from one to another as they speak. And many words in Light Warlpiri are derived from English or Kriol.
But Light Warlpiri is not simply a combination of words from different languages. Peter Bakker, an associate professor of linguistics at Aarhus University in Denmark who has published widely on language development, says Light Warlpiri cannot be a pidgin, because a pidgin has no native speakers. Nor can it be a creole, because a creole is a new language that combines two separate tongues.
“These young people have developed something entirely new,” he said. “Light Warlpiri is clearly a mother tongue.”
Dr. O’Shannessy offers this example, spoken by a 4-year-old: Nganimpa-ng gen wi-m si-m worm mai aus-ria. (We also saw worms at my house.)
It is easy enough to see several nouns derived from English. But the -ria ending on “aus” (house) means “in” or “at,” and it comes from Warlpiri. The -m ending on the verb “si” (see) indicates that the event is either happening now or has already happened, a “present or past but not future” tense that does not exist in English or Warlpiri. This is a way of talking so different from either Walpiri or Kriol that it constitutes a new language.
The development of the language, Dr. O’Shannessy says, was a two-step process. It began with parents using baby talk with their children in a combination of the three languages. But then the children took that language as their native tongue by adding radical innovations to the syntax, especially in the use of verb structures, that are not present in any of the source languages.
Why a new language developed at this time and in this place is not entirely clear. It was not a case of people needing to communicate when they have no common language, a situation that can give rise to pidgin or creole.
Dr. Bakker says that new languages are discovered from time to time, but until now no one has been there at the beginning to see a language develop from children’s speech.
Dr. O’Shannessy suggests that subtle forces may be at work. “I think that identity plays a role,” she said. “After children created the new system, it has since become a marker of their identity as being young Warlpiri from the Lajamanu Community.”
The language is now so well established among young people that there is some question about the survival of strong Warlpiri. “How long the kids will keep multilingualism, I don’t know,” Dr. O’Shannessy said. “The elders would like to preserve Warlpiri, but I’m not sure it will be. Light Warlpiri seems quite robust.”
If you live near water in the American Southeast, you may have run across the green tree frog – or at least heard the species as it croaks (in a sound that kind of resembles rapid fire quacking). It’s a small frog that’s often found in pet stores. It’s the state amphibian of Louisiana and Georgia. And it’s one of many species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and even mammals that may be incapable of evolving fast enough to keep up with what global warming has in store.
That’s the upshot of a new study in the journal Ecology Letters, whose authors used a vast body of data on 540 separate species’ current climatic “niches,” and their evolutionary histories of adapting to different conditions, to determine whether they can evolve fast enough to keep up with the changing climate. More specifically, the study examined “climatic niche evolution,” or how fast organisms have adapted to changing temperature and precipitation conditions in their habitats over time.
Under normal circumstances, the answer is very slowly. On average, the study found that animals adapted to temperature changes at a rate of less than 1.8 degrees F per million years. By contrast, global warming is expected to raise temperatures on the order of 7.2 degrees F in the next 100 years.
“It seems like climate change is too fast, relative to how quickly the climatic niches of species typically evolve,” explains evolutionary biologist John Wiens of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who conducted the research along with a colleague at Yale University.
Take the green tree frog. According to data provided by Wiens, the annual mean temperature in the species’ range across the U.S. Southeast is about 66 degrees F. For its closely related “sister” species the barking tree frog, meanwhile, it’s 65.3 degrees. The two species diverged some 13.4 million years ago, and their common ancestor is estimated to have lived in mean climatic conditions somewhere in between these two numbers, at 65.5 degrees.
The rate of evolutionary change in response to temperatures for these frogs is therefore extremely slow — “about 100,000 to 500,000 times slower than the expected rate of climate change within the range of the species from 2010 to 2100,” says Wiens.
Even if you take a species that evolved much more rapidly in relation to changing temperatures, the conclusion remains the same. The species still didn’t change fast enough in the past for scientists to think that it can evolve to keep up with global warming in the future.
An example of a faster-evolving species would be the Northern banded newt, which lives at relatively high altitudes in a range that spans from Russia to Turkey. Annual mean temperatures in its habitat are about 50.4 degrees F; but for a closely related species, the Southern banded newt, the average temperature is vastly different — 65.7 degrees. The two species’ common ancestor is estimated to have lived only 350,000 years ago, amid mean temperatures of about 59.5 degrees. Adaptation to new climatic conditions among these newts thus happened much faster than among tree frogs — “but still about 1,600 to 4,700 times slower” than the kind of changes we expect from global warming, according to Wiens.
In the new paper, Wiens and his coauthor apply a similar analysis to several hundred other species, ranging from cranes to crocodiles and from hawks to turtles. And none adjusted to temperatures in the evolutionary past at anything like the rate at which temperature change is now coming.
This does not mean that each and every species will go extinct. Some may shift their ranges to keep up with favorable temperatures. Some may perish in certain locales but not others. And some may find a means of coping in a changed environment. Just because these species have never experienced what climate change is about to throw at them doesn’t prove that they’re incapable of surviving it.
Nonetheless, the new research as a whole validates a striking statement made recently by the renowned climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University. At a Climate Desk Live event in May, Mann remarked that there is “no evidence” from the planet’s past to suggest that life can adapt to changes as rapid as the ones we’ve now set in motion.
Wiens’ data add an exclamation point to Mann’s statement. And it also raises an unavoidable question: What is going to happen to the species responsible for all of this, namely, humans?
“Humans will be fine,” says Wiens, “because we have things like clothes and air conditioning.”
Sea-level rise is currently measured in millimeters per year, but longer-term effects of global warming are going to force our descendants to measure sea-level rise in meters or yards.
The world is currently trying (and failing) to reach an agreement that would limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Business-as-usual practices could yet raise temperatures by 4 (or even more) degrees Celsius.
Multiply 2.5 yards by 4 and you are left with the specter of tides that lap 10 yards higher in the future than today. That’s 30 feet, the height of a three-story building. For comparison, the seas rose less than a foot last century.
Here is a chart from the new study that illustrates long-term sea-level rise projections under four warming scenarios:
PNASClick to embiggen.
Now, it’s important to note that the new study looks at sea-level rise over the next 2,000 years. The study doesn’t make predictions for how rapidly the seas will rise during that time frame; it just lays out what is possible in the long term. From the study:
On a 2000-year time scale, the sea-level contribution will be largely independent of the exact warming path during the first century. At the same time, 2000 years is a relevant time scale, for example, for society’s cultural heritage.
The difference between this study and others, some of which have foretold less dramatic rises in water levels, is the extent to which it considers ice-sheet melting.
Compared with the amount of water locked up in the world’s glaciers, which are melting rapidly, Earth’s two ice sheets hold incredibly vast reservoirs. The Antarctic ice sheet alone could inundate the world with 60 yards of water if it melted entirely. And then there’s the Greenland ice sheet, which suffered an unprecedented melt last summer.
The ice sheets are not yet melting as dramatically as the glaciers, insulated as they are by their tremendous bulk. In fact, the melting glaciers and the melting ice sheets are contributing roughly equally to today’s rising seas, despite the differences in their overall bulk.
But a hastening decline of the ice sheets is inevitable as accumulating greenhouse gases take their toll.
The authors of the new study, led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, analyzed sea levels and temperatures from millennia past, combining those findings with climate models to get a glimpse of the shifting coastlines of the future. From the study:
[C]limate records suggest a sea-level sensitivity of as much as several meters per degree of warming during previous intervals of Earth history when global temperatures were similar to or warmer than present. While sea-level rise over the last century has been dominated by ocean warming and loss of glaciers, the sensitivity suggested from records of past sea level indicates important contributions from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
The study’s lead author, Potsdam researcher Anders Levermann, said the results reveal the inevitability of rising water levels as heat accumulates on Earth.
“Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again,” he said in a statement. “Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt. Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come.”
Antarctica’s penguins could benefit from proposals to create huge international marine preserves in their ‘hood.
Plans to protect more than 1.5 million square miles of ocean around Antarctica are getting serious consideration this week — and that could be a big benefit for whales, seals, birds, fish, krill, and other wildlife in the region.
The idea is akin to creating a vast national park, except that it would be an international park. And it would be larger than most nations. And it would be entirely soggy.
On July 16, the members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) — 24 nations and the European Union — will vote on two proposals for marine reserves, each one bigger in size than the state of Alaska. A U.S.-New Zealand one would set aside roughly 876,000 square miles in and around the frozen Ross Sea, a home for penguin nurseries and source of nutrients throughout the Pacific Ocean. A second European and Australian one would set aside a more than 700,000-square-mile string of protected marine reserves around Eastern Antarctica.
NPR has more, including a comparison to another big U.S. state:
“The total size of the marine protected area we are proposing is roughly 3 1/2 times the size of Texas,” says Ambassador Mike Moore, the former prime minister of New Zealand, who was talking up the joint U.S.-New Zealand proposal in Washington this spring. “So to misquote the vice president of the United States, ‘this is a big deal.’” …
But because these two areas are in international waters, creating marine preserves will require consensus from all of the nations in the pact known as CCAMLR …
When the group met to discuss the issue last fall, it couldn’t reach agreement. Russia, China and Ukraine were concerned about losing fishing rights in these seas. But they agreed to [a] meeting in Germany to try again.
The biggest obstacle is Russia, which has expressed resistance to these reserves. It is joined by Ukraine, China, Japan and South Korea. Their hope is to manage fishing in the Antarctic much as it is managed elsewhere, with limits and restrictions. But the state of fisheries around the globe makes it clear that the most effective antidote to declining fish populations is the creation of totally protected marine reserves.
The Obama administration has expressed strong support for the idea of such protections in Antarctica, and many delegates to the Bremerhaven meeting are hopeful that sooner or later the Russians and other opponents can be brought on board. But when it comes to protecting ecosystems, sooner or later often means later, which often means too late. The time to protect the Antarctic Ocean is now.
Here’s hoping that these five reluctant countries, all of which are located in the Northern Hemisphere, don’t continue to pour cold water over proposals that could help stabilize the world’s fish stocks — and protect one of the world’s last big wild areas.
EVERETT — Exposure to methamphetamine nearly cost a 10-month-old Marysville boy his life.
The toddler overdosed on the drug in December and was taken to a Seattle hospital, according to a Marysville Police Department report.
Doctors had to insert tubes down the child’s airway after he stopped breathing on his own,
Police on Friday arrested a man who lived at the home in the 6400 block of 105th Street NE where the baby became deathly ill. The suspect, 26, was arrested for investigation of endangerment with a controlled substance and was booked into the Snohomish County Jail.
The suspect allegedly told a detective, “This is my fault. I almost killed (the boy.)”
The baby first was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. A nurse there told a Marysville officer that the boy had been admitted to the emergency room for an amphetamine overdose. She said his health was quickly deteriorating.
Police said the man had custody of the boy and shared a room with him at the time. The nature of his connection to the child was not clear in redacted police documents.
A search warrant of the suspect’s bedroom turned up the baby’s crib as well as a marijuana pipe beneath the man’s pillow. A meth pipe was found wrapped in a black bandana in a sunglass case in the bottom drawer of a night stand.
The suspect allegedly acknowledged using meth in a garage that was about 12 feet from the living area where the baby was crawling Dec. 27.
Police believe a meth pipe was loaded with meth within six feet of the bedroom where the baby was sleeping.
The suspect allegedly knew that the baby “was in the stage of crawling around the house, picking up things on the floor and putting the items in his mouth,” police wrote.
The man reportedly was well aware of the risks of doing drugs around young children.
An acquaintance told police that the man had a rule of not picking up or touching the baby when he was high.
For 100 years, families have gathered in the historic district of Snohomish for the annual Kla Ha Ya Days. The native word Kla Ha Ya means welcome and we welcome you to experience old fashioned summertime fun and enjoy our town.
Click here for the full schedule of the July events. (tentative schedule)
Since 1913 volunteers have made Kla Ha Ya Days possible. If you’re interested in keeping the tradition alive for another 100 years, check out our volunteers’ page. Volunteers are the back bone that make the festival fun!
TULALIP — The Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce’s new Board of Directors represents a rare influx of new blood, according to Chamber President and CEO Caldie Rogers.
Although Rogers estimated that the Board already averages a turnover of about one-third of its members each year, she deemed this year’s number of new Board members unprecedented in the Chamber’s history.
“We deliberately seek out folks from small businesses, corporations, nonprofits and the Tribes to represent all segments of our community,” Rogers said. “This year’s Board boasts an especially amazing spectrum.”
Rogers touted the value of a recent team-building retreat at the Cedar Springs Campground in Naches, Wash., in getting the Board members familiar and comfortable with one another.
“We wanted a camaraderie that would allow them to discuss the pros and cons of issues without fear, so that when we do adopt a position, we’re unified behind it,” Rogers said. “That’s why we’ve never lost in our lobbying efforts.”
As the new Board plots the Chamber’s course for the future, Rogers called attention to Lance Curry of Edward Jones & Co., who will be heading up the Chamber’s emissaries program as part of its public relations efforts, and The Marysville Globe Publisher Paul Brown, who will chair the Chamber’s next “Buy Local” campaign.
“Educating the community on our local businesses has been proven effective,” Rogers said. “It’s one reason why we haven’t had to raise our dues for so many years.”
Rogers, Curry and Brown are joined on this year’s Board by Chair John Bell of Willis Hall, Vice Chair Teri Gobin of the Tulalip Tribes TERO, Past Chair David Chin of Go Small Biz, Chair Elect Will Ibershof of Waste Management, and Treasurer Robyn Warren of Langabeer, McKernan, Burnett & Co.
“Rebecca and Paul Pukis [of Mosaic Insurance Alliance] are waiting in the wings to chair our military affairs committee,” said Rogers, who named Perry McConnell of Hansen, McConnell and Pellegrini as the Chamber’s legal counsel. “We’re still waiting on a government affairs chair.”
Other Board members include Al Aldrich, Dom Amor, Dr. Becky Berg, Joy Brown, Doug Buell, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jeff Caulk, Gloria Hirashima, Jessica Joseph, Pastor Greg Kanehan, Ken Kettler, John McKeon, Becky Mulhollen, Dennis Niva, Patrick Sisneros, Jack Schumacher, Rob Toyer and Chris Winters.
Yakama Nation biologists have released thousands of sockeye salmon into a Central Washington lake over the past four summers. The work, according to The Associated Press, is to restore fish runs that were decimated with the damming of area rivers and streams. Each fall, the just-released fish swam up the Cle Elum River to spawn and die. Their babies, meanwhile, spent a year in the lake before swimming to the ocean to grow into adulthood. Now, four years after the first release in 2009, those adult fish are returning to their birthplace to spawn, and tribal members are celebrating what they hope is the resurrection of a revered species to its native habitat. “You are part of a sacred ceremony to celebrate the return of an important ingredient to our body, our hearts, our life,” Yakama elder Russell Jim told the crowd gathered on the shore of Cle Elum Lake.
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Tribal Council Member Gerald Lewis conduct a blessing ceremony before releasing sockeye salmon into the lake, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Tribal elder Russell Jim, left, and Tribal Council Member Gerald Lewis conduct a blessing ceremony before releasing sockeye salmon into the lake, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Tribal elder Russell Jim is helped in to the bed of the truck to release sockeye salmon into the lake, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Tribal elder Russell Jim smiles after releasing pulling the lever that released sockeye salmon into the lake during a ceremony Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Sockeye salmon were released into the lake in a ceremony Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – “We need all the help we can get to restore our environment. Everything has life,” tribal member Virginia Beavert told the crowd attending the ceremony. “We need to take care of it.” Sockeye salmon were released into the lake in a ceremony Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Tribal dancers Vivian Delarosa, Nia Peters and Katrina Blackwolf, left to right, sign the Lord’s prayer before the meal after sockeye salmon were released into the lake, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
LAKE CLE ELUM, WASHINGTON – Jun. 13, 2013 – Media and bystanders watch as sockeye salmon were released into the lake, Wednesday, July 10, 2013, to mark the first return of sockeye salmon to Lake Cle Elum in 100 years. Sockeye salmon were reintroduced to the lake in 2009 by the Yakama Nation and the fish released today are the first of those salmon to return to the lake. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
