By Nathan Zabel
NSEA Education Program Manager

This Spring, thanks to funding through Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) , NSEA was able to provide supplies, curricula, and staff support to install freshwater aquariums in Acme, Kendall, and Eagleridge Elementary Schools in conjunction with the Students for Salmon Program (SFS). This exciting addition to SFS intimately links students to the salmon lifecycle through raising salmon from eggs to fry in their classrooms.

Earlier this year, Chum salmon eggs from the Kendall Creek Hatchery were delivered to each school and carefully placed into an aquarium. Students witnessed the stages of the salmon lifecycle unfold before their eyes daily and they learned about the water conditions salmon need to thrive and were responsible for testing the aquarium water to ensure it was ideal for salmon.

The program culminated with students releasing the salmon fry after months of watching them grow up and caring for them during their SFS field trip, where they determined how healthy their local creek is for salmon and participated in a stewardship project to set their salmon up for success. Altogether students released over 500 salmon fry into Cedar Creek, Kendall Creek, and Landingstrip Creek.

Each student named their fish, made a wish or poem for their fish, and chose one action they can take in their lives to help salmon. One student wrote, “I hope you will make it all the way. I’ve been watching you day by day and now it’s time to let you go away. I hope I’ll see you again.” Many of the students were sad to say goodbye to their fish after seeing them grow up, but were excited about seeing them in the wild, starting their journey to the ocean.

This opportunity directly connected students with the salmon lifecycle and showed students how the choices they make in their lives affect salmon and how responsible stewardship can save salmon like the ones they said goodbye to as they released them into their local waterways. We are excited to announce that funding will continue for next school year and are looking forward to expanding this opportunity even further, broadening the impact students are making on salmon recovery in Whatcom County.

By Nathan Rice
Restoration Biologist
Lummi Nation Natural Resources

Salmon are essential in so many ways – to our health, our cultures, our economy, and as the thread that holds Northwest ecosystems together. That iconic species like Chinook and steelhead are threatened in Puget Sound, where I was born, raised, and lived most of my life, has always felt deeply unacceptable. At my first work party with NSEA more than two decades ago, I was inspired by the work to restore our streams and recover the salmon that define our home. It just made sense. Little did I know at the time, that experience would guide my career for years to come.

A few years later, way back in 2005, I joined NSEA as a Volunteer Coordinator, where I organized riparian planting parties and helped with monitoring and education programs. Engaging diverse community members in restoring habitat for the salmon we all value was very rewarding. Restoration often feels like putting things back together, and bringing people together to do that work was particularly meaningful.

My experience at NSEA helped start my career in fish and wildlife research and restoration, from surveying salmon spawners across the Nooksack watershed, to restoring Puget Sound shorelines and surveying marbled murrelet habitat – another threatened species that ties together our marine and terrestrial ecosystems. After I finished my Master’s in Environmental Science at Western Washington University, I felt pulled back to the work of ecological restoration, to apply science to pressing problems and build solutions to recover threatened species.

In 2018, I started working for Lummi Nation as a restoration biologist and soon found myself working with NSEA once again, many years later. Lummi Nation has been partnering with NSEA to restore Porter Creek, a tributary to the Middle Fork Nooksack River, where steelhead and multiple salmon species spawn. In 2020, we removed part of a decades-old berm to reconnect the creek with its historical floodplain. In November, just over a year after restoration, the creek reclaimed an old, forested channel that is quickly developing into quality habitat for salmon and other species. This February, the first salmon redd was documented in this new channel – the first of many more to come.

Today, when I see how much the alder and Doug fir saplings that we planted years ago have grown, the impact of those NSEA work parties feels very real. When I multiply that by the hundreds of projects that NSEA, Lummi, and all of our restoration partners work on, it feels like hope for a future of healthy watersheds, whole communities, and abundant salmon runs returning home again and again.

Students release salmon this Spring

Salmon home