Dear Editor,

That’s Right! Lines have been tight.

Local folks, tourists, and guests from throughout the Northwest, the United States, and the world have enjoyed many, many Wild Steelhead encounters. Bank fishers and those floating the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula have celebrated their encounters with this most majestic and magnificent icon of the Pacific Northwest. Many are working together to ensure the continued opportunities for fishing, viewing, and studying this unique and vibrant neighbor sharing our environment.

What is being done to ensure the survival of the Olympic Wild Steelhead? What is the status of our wild stocks and their many races? Each river system has runs of Wild Steelhead uniquely suited to spawning, surviving, and spawning again and again for how long we really do not know exactly. However, they have been spawning, surviving, and spawning again and again for a long, long time on the Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere in our Pacific Northwest.

Are their days numbered now? We are offering opportunities to better understand the answers. The Olympic Natural Resources Center is hosting the 2020 Wild Steelhead Review presentation series in March and April. Presenters will offer programs providing the best information possible. We will archive the presentations and use them to study the many perspectives, research, data sets, insights, and facts.

This effort will create an inclusive and collaborative process. “Many hands make a load lighter.” “Shared power is increased power.” All working together will be needed to ensure the survival of our wild steelhead here on the Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere.

Thursday, March 12, 7 p.m. Olympic Natural Resources Center. Forks, WA. Plan to attend the first presentation of the 2020 Wild Steelhead Review, featuring eDNA Research, and Equipment.

eDNA Research, and Equipment

Austen Thomas, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, and others working on the Olympic Peninsula conducting eDNA research, will share information on this new process and developing resources for understanding populations of fish and other inhabitants of our local rivers and waters. More jobs, more good science, more fish.

I look forward to future presentations scheduled for Friday nights at 7 p.m. in March and April at the Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks, on the status of wild steelhead stocks, research projects underway and being planned. Roles for students and volunteers.

Contact Frank Hanson (fsh2@uw.edu) at the Olympic Natural Resources Center and/or Roy Morris (able@olypen.com).

Co-producers of the Wild Steelhead Review,

Roy Morris

Sekiu, WA