July 26, 2010

Keeping it Rural and Taking it Urban

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in the Swan! We've been fulfilling all components of our NwC mission, through education, conservation, community and policy work. Adam, Andrea and the field crews have been out with Wildlands Volunteer Corp groups, fish shocking and continuing with bear DNA. While the field crews are out in force, the policy component of NwC is as active as ever.

Read on to learn more about the latest field work and policy action!

Washington D.C Testimony
by Melanie Parker

Joyce Dearstyne, Executive Director of Framing Our Community (left) and Melanie Parker (right) in Washington D.C. for their testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee.

The House Natural Resources Committee invited Northwest Connections to submit formal testimony on how Congress can better link ecology with economic prosperity in rural communities that are dominated by public lands. Last week I traveled to Washington D.C. to deliver that testimony along with 8 other spokespersons from around the West.

You can read my whole written testimony here, but I boiled it down to a few main points: 
1) Congress needs to protect working landscapes: regions of the west that are outside designated parks and wilderness areas, and have very high biological values. 2) They need to do so be keeping those lands in long term sustainable production of produce, beef, fiber, wood
products, and energy. 3) Such a strategy transcends the old choices of exploitation vs. preservation for our western landscape.

And then I went on to advocate for three specific programs: a fully funded and flexible Land and Water Conservation Fund, full funding for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, and new programs to support community based organizations like Northwest Connections, the Blackfoot Challenge, Wallawa Resources and the myriad of other place-based collaborative groups that are charting new territory in the realm of conservation.

It was an honor to speak before the congressional subcommittee, but it's nice to come home and get back into the summer routine here around the barn.

Fish Surveys
by Brooke Stallings

Hey y'all! The past two weeks have been full of fish surveying for Northwest Connections field monitoring efforts. Adam, Andrea, and I spent several days out with Beth Gardner, Fisheries Biologist with the Forest Service, who trained us in electro shocking for the work we will be conducting this summer in the Cold Creek drainage, particularly creeks on Forest Service land that was previously owned by Plum Creek Timber Company. These surveys are of importance because this drainage has not had much monitoring besides a few patches by Plum Creek.

The main goal of our surveys is to monitor the presence or absence of fish, and where fish are present, if the native Cutthroat trout species exists or has been outcompeted by the invasive Brook trout or other species, or if there are fish barriers such as culverts or waterfalls that may prevent fish from traveling further upstream.

Me with recovering fish in the live well after we shocked and processed them (to process, we measure length of fish and if it's a cutthroat, we take a small fin clip for genetic sampling)
	This is a cutthroat trout, notice that they have a red slash on the jaw.
Taking a sample from the caudal fin of cutthroat trout for genetic analysis

We've been to many sites, and some have had no fish at all, but others have had a variety of results, including Brook trout, Cutthroat trout, Slimy Sculpin, and Tailed-frogs, and Tailed-frog tadpoles.

	Andrea Stephens, Beth Gardner and Adam Lieberg on the South Fork of Cold Creek during fish training.
Andrea, our expert watershed lady, processing a fish.

I've really enjoyed getting to participate in this monitoring project, because I’ve learned so much about the entire drainage, and it’s been fun exploring different creeks and seeing where the fish like to hide out in pools and riffles, as a continuation of what I learned in the fall during Andrea's Watersheds class! Also, who doesn’t enjoy full days of bushwhacking to get to the site deep in the Wilderness that we’re supposed to shock? What a great way to get tired out! These fish surveys will continue throughout the summer, along with the Bear DNA collection work.

Out like Trout,
Brooke