View our latest posts: From the Field

Rolling Out the “Redd” Carpet by WCC Crewmember PJ Heusted

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Did you miss your chance to attend the Wild and Scenic Film Festival? Don’t worry, PJ’s got you covered on the ins and outs of what you missed!

 

‘On October 12, Skagit Fisheries hosted the Wild and Scenic Film Festival for one night only at the Lincoln Theater showing a selection of environmental short films. The films ranged from making the audience laugh at one-star reviews of the National Parks to making them cry when confronted with the realities of habitat degradation and climate change’s effects on local salmon populations.

The festival opened with Finding Salmon which featured the Salmon Watch program in Oregon which looks to get school-aged youth out and into streams to see salmon and connect with their local watersheds. After the opener ended, the energy in the theater changed when One Star Reviews started; despite being short, this film got the most laughter as it shared low reviews of some of the nations most beautiful National Parks complaining about the number of rocks and lack of wildlife on display.

 

The Last Last Hike introduced the audience to Nimblewill Nomad on his attempt to become the oldest person to thru hike the Appalachian Trail and shared the story of his life spent walking, long distance hiking, and time spent at Flagg Mountain.

 

The film festival’s next film, Black Like Plastic, continued to explore outdoor recreation, but through a different lens. The film features Chris Ragland and his non-profit, The Sea League, in a conversation about environmental justice and recreation as a method for advocacy. 

 

Land of the Yakamas continued to build on the ideas of advocacy and providing a platform to diverse voices as the film demonstrated the importance of indigenous voices in environmentalism and shared accounts of the environmental stressors present along the Columbia River that continue to affect the surrounding indigenous communities.

 

The next film took us from the Pacific Northwest into the deserts of the Southwest and into the depths of Glen Canyon. In Tad’s Emerging World – Glen Canyon Exposed filmmaker and photographer Dawn Kish retraces the steps of many explorers before her through the viewfinder of a historic camera. Kish blends history, memoir, and environmentalism in her exploration of the canyon as water levels dip to new historic lows.

 

Rounding out the short films of the first act is I Am Salmon featuring a poem of the same name in which the author takes on the perspective of the salmon to share the narrative of their hard journey to and from the ocean. This film highlights the Japanese printmaking art of gyotaku, using the body of a salmon to create a print while the poem is read.

 

The final film of the night was Shane Anderson’s The Lost Salmon shared breakthrough research showing distinct genetic differences between spring and fall run Chinook salmon that could work to provide further legal protections for the remaining native stocks. Anderson’s film showed stories of salmon from various rivers across the Pacific coast and highlighted voices from the people that are working to save their native salmon runs. The film took the audience on a journey through the current highs and lows of salmon conservation taking on a hopeful tone for the future of these fish, but stayed rooted in the current difficulties that salmon face in our rivers.

 

From the Whiskey River Mudflats bluegrass performance that kicked off the night through the final moments of the film festival, the theater was alive with a love for restoration, conservation, and a passion for the environment. The 2023 Wild and Scenic Film Festival felt like a love letter to the outdoors signed by everyone in the theater, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival.’

Redder Western Red Cedars by Bengt Miller, Stewardship Coordinator

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If you have been paying attention to the trees lately, then you may have noticed that they are getting ready
for fall. Trees have ceased their growth and are preparing for their leaf drop and dormant season. This
becomes particularly evident when deciduous trees shed their leaves in fall, sometimes with spectacular
showing of autumn color. While it is obvious that deciduous trees like alders, maples, and cottonwoods
lose their leaves in the fall, most people are unaware that evergreens (also called conifers) also lose
some of their foliage.
When western red cedars lose their older needles, it is called cedar flagging. It is most noticeable in the
late summer through fall as brown interior branches begin to appear. To those unaware this can look
disconcerting, as it appears the tree is beginning to turn brown and die. Fear not, this is a natural
process. It can be exacerbated by periods of drought, but is a natural process and does not harm the
tree. By the time spring arrives the dead needles have fallen to the ground and the tree appears all
green again.
As more and more people hear about the native cedars struggling in our area, many are paying more and
more attention to their arboreal surroundings. It’s true our iconic western red cedars appear to be
struggling with the local impacts from climate change, but not every cedar you see with some brown in
the canopy is dying. Drought stressed cedars turn brown from the top down and then from the branch tips to
the interior. Cedar flagging occurs from the interior of the tree outwards. The cedar sheds the older
interior needles while the tips remain green.
If you believe you have noticed this on a local neighborhood tree, keep an eye on it. Most likely the dead
needles and branches will fall during a heavy rainstorm or the first serious windstorm of the winter.
Then these branches will fall to the ground and act as a mulch for the surrounding forest. Older
generations of needles/leaves provide nutrients for future generations of trees, much like adult salmon dying provides nutrition for future salmon generations.

 

Looking Back on Knotweed Season by Past WCC Crew Member Nova Barbieri

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Every year, the Skagit Fisheries Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) crew jumps into the Sauk River as part of the Upper Skagit Knotweed Program to prevent the spread of knotweed in the Upper Skagit watershed. This could be quite literally on the off-time during our multi-day rafting trip, or to cool off after a scorching Skagit summer day. Most often though, this refers to actively working to eradicate knotweed around the river. Knotweed is a particularly nasty invasive plant species that is known to choke out neighboring plant species, inhibiting them from thriving and providing riparian benefits to their ecosystems. Skagit Fisheries is concerned with controlling knotweed as it harms habitat that is crucial for salmon, both by limiting space and nutrients available for helpful native plants and contributing to bank erosion along streams and rivers.

 

Prior to heading out for a day of work in the field, the crew packs up all necessary personal, surveying, and herbicide gear to go out for the day. On our trips, we would carry these packs of personal equipment, surveying equipment, and herbicide gear on a hike to our desired survey areas, where we would then spread out perpendicular to the river to survey the floodplain. 

Contents of a knotweed warrior’s backpack

 

Surveying areas that receive inundation regularly are important as knotweed is primarily spread through breakage, as pieces as little as a quarter inch of the stem can break from the plant, travel in water, be deposited, and then root to create a new plant. Armed with multiple methods of data collection (journals, iPads, GPS, maps, and cameras) each knotweed patch, when located by the crew in a spread out survey line, is given a unique identifier and documented in multiple ways. Data such as these unique identifiers, the number of stems on the plant, the general patch area, herbicide amounts applied and their formulation, and its newly identified location are documented. The crew uses GPS to record the location of the patch, as well. It is then marked with blue and white striped flagging labeled with the unique identifier which helps with locating and figuring which point it is from for continued monitoring in future years. Knotweed has been known to resprout sometimes after 9 years of appearing dormant or dead. Herbicide is applied with the hopes of killing the plant before continuing the surveying line. Should someone encounter the surveying crew, they may hear ‘Marco’ or ‘Polo’ calls to help with triangulating members and maintaining the survey spread, or very clear ‘knotweed’ or ‘flag’ as communications for points that need a pause and special attention, documentation, or additional resources. More specific information is relayed on radios.

 

Through this exhausting work, on hot days, and extremely uneven terrain, stress can be high at times and can be uncomfortable either due to heat or encounters with unfriendly stinging insects. As such, the crew maintains open communication and first aid supplies and utilizes the river, as needed, to dunk clothing to stay cool, or to cool a sting. It is through these challenges that memories are formed, and the crew learns to appreciate the uniquely intimate relationship that they have and are developing with the Sauk River, where most of the season is spent. 

 

Our season of knotweed conquering includes a four-day rafting trip down the river to get to less/non-accessible patches of the invasive plant. This provides a special opportunity to see the river sequentially and completely, but also an incredible opportunity to see just how dynamic the Upper Sauk is! Often this includes experiences like seeing swathes of forest just decimated within a year as the river decided to change course, and leaving the old channel dry, or nearly dry, and bare. Within a few years, it starts getting brushy with young vegetation growing in. This land will then mature, in time to become forested floodplains. Seeing the diversity and natural succession of the area truly is a demonstration of how dynamic the river is. It isn’t just that, as these changes force the knotweed program and surveying crew to become dynamic and adjust to the conditions. Through the experiences and meeting these challenges and demands, Skagit Fisheries’ knotweed program creates a positive impact not only on the immediate area, but on everything downstream in the system, including the program’s participants as they carry on the knowledge, lessons, and memories learned from working in the field.