Please join us Thursday, November 7th from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm for an evening of information sharing and celebrating the return of salmon to Southeast Alaska and the Tongass National Forest.
There will be a few short presentations from local agencies and short films capturing the habitats of Southeast Alaska and the Tongass National Forest, home to all five species of Pacific salmon.
The National Fish Habitat Partnership and Fish Habitat Section have teamed up to host a film festival for the Reno meeting – Reno-vating Habitat for Fish and Wildlife: A Film Festival Highlighting Collaborative Habitat Conservation and Its Benefits. This festival will take place each day of the conference and include over 80 films shown during 14 showing sessions.
Films will showcase examples where resource practitioners and others come together to protect, restore and enhance freshwater, coastal and terrestrial habitats that support the needs of fish and wildlife. These films share how improving habitat brings other benefits like improved water quality and socio-economic returns to communities. Film categories include habitat conservation projects, on-the-ground restoration examples, and include other films that capture the dynamic landscapes and unique habitats that are home to our fish and wildlife. This festival offers a unique opportunity for meeting attendees to collaborate and learn about successful habitat conservation stories from across the country. Each showing session will include some time at the beginning for available filmers and colleagues to share additional information about their films as well as engage in question and answer dialog towards the end of each showing session.
For Information on the times for specific films, please visit the detailed schedule in front of the room, the registration desk, or visit this page: http://bit.ly/AFSfilmfest.
The website for the Southeast Alaska Drought Workshop (Southeast Alaska Drought: Refining Drought Metrics for a Temperate Rainforest held in Juneau May 7, 2019) is now live with handouts from the workshop, recordings of the presentations and presentation files. Please share this webpage with your communities, organizations, and anyone whom you think may be interested.
Next steps include developing a synthesis of information presented at the workshop, taking this information from the workshop to help refine drought metrics for Southeast Alaska, gathering information on community driven next steps and implementing community driven next steps. As these additional products are developed we’ll upload them to the website and send out email notifications.
This April, the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition and Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership teamed up to bring together over 70 participants across Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, including state and federal agencies, university researchers, Tribes, and NGOs, for a regional discussion about the state of eDNA research and existing and future applications across Alaska. The agenda, a brief meeting synopsis and the informative and valuable presentations relayed by leading researchers on the subject are available at the partnership’s website at https://seakfhp.org/edna-in-alaska-1-day-workshop-april-1-2019/.
Presentations and discussion touched on topics of interest garnered in early outreach efforts including:
Next steps include exploring capacity to support a statewide Alaska eDNA Working Group, advance opportunities to share data resources especially information about primers that exist for Alaska species, and prioritize monitoring efforts especially for aquatic invasive species detection. For more information contact the SEAKFHP coordinator at: coordinator@sealaskafishhabitat.org
The Implementation Plan for the Southeast Alaska Freshwater Temperature Monitoring Network is now available! The Implementation Plan reviews the need for the network and long-term water temperature data, summarizes existing sites, outlines a strategic sampling plan for the future, and touches on network sustainability, including participant roles and a budget.
You can find the report on Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition website here.
The Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition has recently published the Wrangell Area Watershed Assessment.
The assessment can be downloaded at: http://www.alaskawatershedcoalition.org/2019/02/wrangell-area-watersheds-assessment/
The purpose of the Wrangell Area Watersheds Assessment was to compile a dataset and report outlining key aquatic resources within the City and Borough of Wrangell, including an assessment of the current habitat condition of key aquatic resources, identification of sites that could benefit from restoration treatment, and outlining watershed management challenges and opportunities.
This project was carried out with financial and technical support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Coastal Program, in partnership with the Wrangell Cooperative Association, and the US Forest Service, and with financial support from the Charlotte Martin Foundation.
SAWC is greatly appreciative to all of the funders, partners, and stakeholders that helped to make this project possible.
On Wednesday – February 20, 2019 scientists shared the latest on ocean acidification in Alaska including current and future conditions and species response.
Presentations were live streamed on the Alaska Ocean Observing System’s Facebook page and are now available on the Alaska Ocean Acidification Network’s web page at: https://aoos.org/alaska-ocean-acidification-network/
Presenters included:
Bob Foy, Director of NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center, and former director of the NOAA Kodiak Laboratory, speaking to species response to ocean acidification.
Jessica Cross, oceanographer with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, studies ocean acidification across all three ocean basins in Alaska and will speak to what we know about current conditions and future scenarios.
SEAKFHP’s strategic action plan includes a two-part conservation strategy one focusing on freshwater aquatic areas of Southeast Alaska and the other on coastal fish habitats. Together these components serve as a blueprint for the partnership to meet its mission with measurable objectives and actions that partners and others can use to gauge progress and success in advancing shared conservation actions. It is envisioned that by fostering regional conservation strategies, strengthening partner collaboration, elevating work accomplished and planned by partners, incorporating science-based information, and articulating key priorities shared across mixed-ownership watersheds and coastal areas throughout southeast, the partnership will achieve improved on-the-ground fish habitat conservation outcomes across the region.
The freshwater strategy relies heavily on previous partnership efforts and takes advantage of more abundant freshwater assessment information resources, focus on fish passage efforts and additional partnership engagement. This revised strategy has expanded to include four conservation goals with specific objectives and conservation actions:
For the coastal strategy, four conservation goals are also identified and due to the emerging focus for these habitats early actions have been identified rather than the more thorough objective/action process developed for the freshwater strategy. In addition, these actions are focused on partnership led actions and are anticipated to expand during a future planning effort.
For more details you can find the full document here: SEAKFHP Strategic Action Plan 2017-2021
Coffman Creek is located on eastern Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, near the community of Coffman Cove.
The Nature Conservancy, Kai Environmental Consulting Services, and Hydaburg Cooperative Association completed stream surveys in the Coffman Creek watershed in the summer of 2016. Fish trapping and adult foot counts were also performed to determine the presence and distribution of fish in Coffman Creek. This study was undertaken to address concerns from the residents of Coffman Cove, that stream conditions in Coffman Creek were degraded and possibly impacting fish and fish habitat. You can find this report online here: Coffman Creek Watershed Assessment
The 2018 Southeast Alaska Watershed Restoration Workshop “Stepping up to the Plate for Collaborative Restoration” was held in Juneau this past March 5-7. You can find meeting resources and presentations here.
Also check out the great meeting summary shared by Juneau Empire reporter Kevin Gullufsen: Southeast watershed coalition coalesces, talks water restoration: NGOs, nonprofits and agencies meet to talk challenges
Huge thanks to workshop organizers and sponsors:
