Squaxin Island Tribe's Natural Resources

A couple of people have inquired about how the new coalition between the cities and tribe will address Capitol Lake issues. Well, the short answer is it won’t — at least not in the near future. The fate of Capital Lake is an issue much larger than the coalition. The coalition has been set up [...]

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Proponents of keeping Capitol Lake say that if we only cleaned up the entire Deschutes River watershed, water quality problems in the dammed estuary would go away. From the Save Capitol Lake website: Broaden focus to watershed for improved water quality: The CLIPA findings support more effective management of the upper Deschutes Watershed to address [...]

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Jeff Dickison, a biologist with the Squaxin Island Tribe, was interviewed over the weekend on Make No Bones About It on KAOS.

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Salmon smolts from numerous Puget Sound river systems migrate into Budd Inlet. The Squaxin Island Tribe has been monitoring salmon usage there and we’ve found extensive use by juvenile salmon all over the region. This isn’t really surprising. Deep south Puget Sound is one of the most productive areas in the world for the food [...]

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The creation of what we now know as Capitol Lake was not the natural outgrowth of a landscaping plan for the Capitol Campus. Rather, it was the result of a decades-long lobbying effort by local businessmen, politicians and city-fathers to create an appealing water feature and “scrape the moss off” Olympia. Recently, lake defenders have [...]

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One of the myths that defenders of Capitol Lake like to mention is the danger of ever present mud flats on a restored Capitol Lake. Obviously, they like to point out, a quiet and peaceful dammed river is much preferable to mud flats. What they don’t mention is the scientific studies that point out how [...]

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There’s a new post this morning on the importance of restoring the Deschutes River estuary: We know that South Sound is dying. Squaxin tribal researchers recently conducted a study of how many coho salmon leaving streams in southern Puget Sound actually survive long enough to swim past the Tacoma Narrows. Coho populations have been dropping [...]

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Jeff Dickison has a new post over at Everyday Olympia on water quality in Capitol Lake: …a recent letter from the state Department of Ecology to the Department of General Administration (which owns the property around the lake and therefore manages it) sheds a lot of light on the water quality debate. In short, the [...]

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Fishing chums in Kennedy Creek by oysters4me. This Thursday morning, CLAMP will discuss how the restoration of the Deschutes Estuary would impact recreation around where Capitol Lake is now. A draft chapter of our Alternatives Analysis outlines the options. It pretty basically says that certain docks would be high and dry during low tide and [...]

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Between now and June, a local committee charged with coming up with a recommendation of what to do with Capitol Lake and the Deschutes River Estuary (CLAMP) will come to a decision. If you’re interested in restoring the Deschutes Estuary, now is the time to start getting engaged. The City of Olympia is already talking [...]

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