“Now the river can connect to its floodplain like it hasn't in 140 years.”

A statue to honor the Native American treaty rights leader Billy Frank Jr. is being poured at a Seattle foundry.

An unprecedented project to reconnect fish migration routes in western Washington State is showing exciting signs of ecological and cultural benefits.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe opened a gear-lending library to help tribal members enjoy the outdoors safely. The tribe’s summer youth work program inspired the idea, said Kim Sager-Fradkin, the tribe’s wildlife program manager. With kids often requiring proper gear for field work, she saw a broader need. “You can have a really uncomfortable experience if your first time in the woods is in jeans and a sweatshirt and you get soaking wet and you’re freezing,” she said.

Being Frank is a column by Chairman Ed Johnstone of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. As a statement from the NWIFC chairman, the column represents the natural resources management concerns of the treaty tribes in western Washington. The treaty tribes’ commitment to habitat protection and salmon recovery is reflected in the newly published State of Our Watersheds Report. The comprehensive watershed-by-watershed analysis of habitat conditions tells the story of where we’ve come from, where we are and what must be done to stay the course.

Green tags affixed to Dungeness crab are an invitation for harvesters in Puget Sound to participate in a region-wide tracking project to learn about crab migration. The Suquamish Tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) teamed up in September 2025 to collect and tag 555 legal-sized male Dungeness crab in mid-Puget Sound so they can learn more about adult crab movement behavior, said Viviane Barry, the tribe’s shellfish program manager.

Do Native Americans need more encouragement to consume saturated fats? Native nutritionists are wondering how the new federal dietary guidelines just unveiled by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. intersects with decades of scientific research urging the population with the highest rates of heart disease to limit their saturated fat intake. The new federal food pyramid shows up in recommendations for programs like Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Head Start, Indian Health Service, and the National School Lunch Program. Tribes in the Pacific Northwest are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to seals taking a bite out of the salmon populations they worked decades to preserve. The seals are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They feast on fish that on which the tribes rely. We will look at how this situation affects tribal treaty rights and what tribes are doing in response. A handful of organizations are working to strengthen traditional connections between urban Native residents and buffalo. Organizers in Chicago and Denver are among those working to put the animals closer to Native people who might not otherwise have exposure to a significant traditional source of food.

The elk herds being tracked by the Skokomish Indian Tribe have mysteriously diminished. “The numbers are not great for the elk,” said Bethany Ackerman, the tribe’s wildlife biologist. “And weird things have happened that we can’t quite explain.” The tribe has been collaring elk and tracking herds since 2008 to get an idea of population sizes and migration patterns throughout the southern half of the Olympic Peninsula.

Last week, Congress approved $190 million to restart a fish passage and water storage project at the Howard A. Hanson Dam.

Suquamish Tribe, partners celebrate decade-long work to support wild chum run The Suquamish Tribe, in partnership with Washington State Department of Transportation and Kitsap County, recently celebrated the removal of significant fish-passage barriers within the Chico Creek watershed, home to the county’s largest wild chum salmon run. This effort has been nearly 40 years in the making, said tribal Chairman Leonard Forsman.

A new bridge over the Big Quilcene River will reduce flood impacts for area residents while allowing salmon, including threatened Hood Canal summer chum and Puget Sound steelhead, to swim through habitat-rich floodplain channels to their spawning grounds. The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, in partnership with the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group and Jefferson County, began replacing the 81-foot-long bridge on Linger Longer Road with an 1,140-foot-long, floodplain-spanning bridge in 2025.

Goldsborough Creek has become an example of what removing fish barriers and restoring habitat can accomplish. And the Squaxin Island Tribe, which is driving restoration efforts in collaboration with partners, isn’t finished yet. Since the tribe and partners teamed up to remove the Goldsborough Creek Dam in 2001, numbers of outmigrating coho salmon have continued to rise. Built in 1885 and rebuilt in 1921, the dam was 35 feet tall.