View our latest posts: From the Field

Hamilton Crowdsources Flood History

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by Lindsay Warne

Seventeen community members gathered in Hamilton on Thursday night, the 17th, to start planning a new restoration project for Carey Slough. SFEG is working with adjacent landowners and consulting partners to gather information to create a technical plan that benefits both people and fish. Restoration projects cannot increase the flood level of an area; therefore  accurate, on-the-ground data from the community is invaluable to correct and supplement existing information.

Hamilton Community Meeting

This project is the first phase of a multi-phase project. SFEG is currently collecting data, building relationships with local landowners, and working with those landowners and the Town to identify constraints and opportunities for habitat restoration.  We will ultimately identify and develop preliminary designs for one or more early-action projects that can be implemented (Phase 2).  Once we have achieved community support and have developed a solid conceptual restoration program and process we will move forward with developing designs for additional restoration and/or acquisition actions in Phase 2, and ultimately implement those projects to restore habitat in Carey’s Slough and the surrounding floodplain as part of Phase 3.

Working with Hamilton shows that every person can make a difference in their community. This meeting was the first of many in designing a working conceptual model that is supported by the community. Check the calendar for updates on our next meeting sometime in January.

For more information on SFEG projects check out our Current Project page: Current Projects

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Inside the Classroom by KayLani Siplin

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Being only two months into my WSC term with Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group, I can definitely say it has been quite the learning experience, and not just for the kids I work with.

As the Education Associate here at SFEG, I have the pleasure of teaching over 500 7th graders about salmon and their habitat through our Junior Stream Stewards program. Each month we go to the classroom and focus on a specific topic whether that is the life cycle of a salmon or the chemistry of the water the salmon like to live in. At a minimum I feel it is my job to help the students become aware of the issues salmon are facing that contribute to their declining populations, but ultimately the goal for me is to get these kids excited about learning and feeling a want, maybe even a need to go out and do something to help the environment.

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Eggs spilling from a female Coho

Being in this position has definitely been a change of scenery for me. I came into SFEG with a background in outdoor environmental education, so standing at the front of a classroom was the last place I thought I would ever see myself. And I was very nervous about it. In the past I have always felt very contained and uncomfortable being in a room with 30 children as opposed to the open space an outdoor classroom like a beach or a forest had to offer. But now having stood at the front of a classroom over 40 times, I have not once felt that discomfort. And it’s great! I felt like I could do anything…That is until October’s salmon dissections came along.

At the beginning the idea of dissecting a salmon seem-

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KayLani and the specimen!

ed like no big deal. How hard could cutting open a fish be? Well, it proved to be very difficult upon receiving my first fish to practice on and being reduced to tears. It took a lot of strength, but I was able get past it and get into it (literally). Donning my lab coat, I managed to overcome two obstacles at once and share with these students the external and internal anatomy of many salmon. I felt a great deal of pride when Lucy said to me that I am a role model for kids that may be intimidated by science by being confident and excited about what I was doing. And of course, what better way to make my heart melt than with the voice of a student exclaiming that “science is so amazing!”

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Reviewing external anatomy with students at Cascade Middle School

Although it has only been two months, being here at SFEG has helped me grow as a person and I hope this trend continues throughout my term. One cannot expect their students to be excited and confident in their abilities if you yourself are not.

First Week with SFEG by Taylor Schmuki

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Kyle Koch (left) and Taylor Schmuki using dip nets to remove juvenile salmon from the dredge zone.

“Start being comfortable with being uncomfortable” perfectly describes my first week with Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group (SFEG).  The week started out with me stumbling through an explanation of why a desert rat wanted to work with fish and ended with a stroll down a river spotting salmon.  It definitely has been a few hectic days with early mornings, hard work, lots to learn, and a smile that can’t seem to leave my face.

I became very aware of my shortcomings with my tour around the SFEG nursery.  My background in plant identification is based in the salt flats and sagebrush steppe—quite different from Skagit’s riparian-wetlands and subalpine habitat.  So as Rachael and I wandered around the plants, I was able to confidently identify Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchnesis) and Washington’s state tree (Western Hemlock, Tsuga heterophylla). Our nursery has at least ten times that number of species.  In other words, I don’t just have fish species to catch up on.

That brings me to my second training of the week: spawner surveys!  The whole day was spent learning about our five species of Pacific salmon which also happen to live within the Skagit Watershed.  The other volunteers and I learned how in the past twenty-five years SFEG has worked on hundreds of miles of habitat, engaged at least 11,000 students in education, and had over 145,000 donated hours of work.  Even though there has been a decline in salmon populations, SFEG and those associated with them are truly making a difference.  Within my first week, I even helped make a difference for a small community called Concrete.

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juvenile salmon relocated from the dredge zone.

This town of seven hundred citizens may just have as many salmon as it does people.  Yet, every year Concrete suffers a severe salmon spread as they flood into streets and peoples’ backyards from a stream that most mistake for a ditch.  As a temporary fix, Concrete received approval to dredge this stream until a more permanent solution could be achieved.  SFEG assisted by relocating the fish upstream so they would not be squashed by the excavator.  I tagged along and stood in waist-deep water, waving a net back and forth, catching juvenile fish.  In that moment, I could not imagine any other place I’d rather be. My whole life I wanted to save and protect animals and here I was doing it! One fish at a time.

My first week was busy, crazy, difficult, and quite uncomfortable at some points.  It was also enlightening, fun, interesting, and everything I could hope for.  Just proving the point that even though “it may get tough [being uncomfortable]… it’s a small price to pay for living a dream.”