Through rain and shine, mud and…more mud, we are so thankful for the 496 volunteers that gave over 1,500 hours to plant trees, remove invasive vegetation, and improve salmon habitat throughout Whatcom County this fall! We celebrated some momentous days with Make a Difference Day partnered with the City of Bellingham and our annual Orca Recovery Day with the Whatcom Conservation District and Whatcom Land Trust. We also continued our midweek Stream Team events where we revisited over 2 acres of habitat to provide some much-needed maintenance to plantings that happened decades ago.

With the 2,339 plants installed during the fall work parties, the year ended with a record breaking 9,707 trees and shrubs planted by volunteers in 2023. While many of those plants were part of the large estuary project at the beginning of the year, the rest were placed along nearly 1.5 miles of riparian habitat across the county. This work wouldn’t be possible without the support of amazing community partners and the local businesses that help fuel our hardworking volunteers, Tony’s Coffee, The Bagelry, and the Community Food Co-op.

We will start the new year with our annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service Community Work Party with the City of Bellingham on Saturday, January 13th from 10am to 1pm along Squalicum Creek. Together, we will plant native trees and shrubs to restore fish and wildlife habitat and improve water quality near the Squalicum Creek Re-route project. NSEA will also host a couple of midweek events before our spring work party season goes into full swing in mid-February. Visit www.n-sea.org/stream-stewards for details.

NSEA’s Students for Salmon (SFS) Program annually serves over 1,600 fourth graders throughout Whatcom County. Students become “stream scientists” and participate in a stewardship project where they leave a positive impact on their local waterway. Supplementing this NSEA-led programming is NSEA’s Students for Salmon Curriculum.

This suite of curriculum can be utilized by teachers in their classrooms to extend the learning and bring the program full circle, leaving their students with a deeper knowledge of salmon, the threats they face in our region, and actions they can take to help salmon in their local watersheds. Recently, this curriculum was updated, thanks to a partnership through Western Washington University (WWU) with Dr. Debi Hanuscin and her pre-service teachers. Dr. Hanuscin and her students took NSEA’s existing SFS curriculum and revised it to ensure that it is locally relevant, includes Indigenous Ways of Knowing, builds in climate science, and integrates the power of youth voice.

Over the past year, thanks to funding from NOAA BWET, we have hosted workshops for 40 teachers in all seven Whatcom County public school districts along with tribal schools. These immersive, full-day workshops take place on school grounds within teachers’ districts and allow them to fully engage in the curriculum. NSEA highlights activities teachers participate in through the lens of their students while learning teaching tips to help them feel confident facilitating the curriculum. So far, 100% of teachers have gained confidence in implementing the curriculum and learned more about salmon and watersheds. One teacher said, “This will really help more kids engage in creative learning. To allow kids to become experts and engage them more deeply in hands-on learning is a wonderful addition.”

NSEA and WWU have also presented at recent Washington Science Teachers Association (WSTA) Conferences and further broadened our impact by showcasing this curriculum to teachers and professionals from around the state. As a result, teachers in schools outside of Whatcom County are utilizing this curriculum to connect their students to watershed and salmon education, along with the impact of their actions on salmon. This connection supports NSEA’s value of the importance of hope in education and how this can empower students to take action in their lives to help salmon, which are so essential to the environment, culture, and economy of our region.

For more information about NSEA’s Education programs, please contact Nathan Zabel at nzabel@n-sea.org or call 360-715-0283.

Through rain and shine, mud and…more mud, fall work parties were awesome!

NSEA completes first year of Curriculum Teacher Trainings