North Olympic Salmon Coalition
Mission: “Restore, enhance and protect the habitat of North Olympic Peninsula wild salmon stocks and to promote community volunteerism, understanding, cooperation and stewardship of these resources.”
Phone: 360-379-8051
E-mail: info@nosc.org
On the web: nosc.org
The funding pool used to enhance salmon habitat in Clallam County just got a little deeper.
The North Olympic Salmon Coalition was awarded a $15,000 grant from the Benjamin N. Phillips Memorial Fund, a fund aimed at supporting nonprofits working to improve the lives of Clallam County residents.
Since its establishment in 2006 by the estate of Joy Phillips to honor her late husband, the memorial fund annually supports the local distribution of about $250,000 in grants.
“This funding will allow us to sustain the momentum of our education and volunteer programs in Clallam County, connecting community members of all ages with these large, landscape-scale restoration projects,” Reed Aubin, the coalition’s education and volunteer program manager, said.
To do this, North Olympic Salmon Coalition officials connect with teachers from the schools along the North Olympic Peninsula, including those within the Sequim School District, to develop rigorous, hands-on programs aligned with educational standards.
“With the Salmon Coalition, I have had the opportunity to practice motivating my peers, to work in professional settings and to benefit the community in which I have grown up,” Emily Larson, Sequim High School senior and Running Start student, said in a speech during the organization’s annual meeting earlier this month.
Beyond their work with students, coalition officials collaborate with local communities, as well as state and tribal governments to restore degraded and compromised salmon habitat through both small and large-scale restoration projects.
Within the Dungeness watershed, North Olympic Salmon Coalition officials are spearheading the estuary restoration project at the former site of The 3 Crabs restaurant and are involved in a project with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to remove invasive species and plant native trees on 75 acres along the Dungeness River, project manager Kim Clark said.
The organization’s habitat enhancement work also is expanding to areas farther west.
“We are developing several exciting opportunities in the Lyre, Sekiu, Hoko and Pysht watersheds and collaborating with fantastic partners,” Clark said.
For 25 years, coalition officials and volunteers have worked to balance technical habitat work with community engagement and education in areas spanning from the Hood Canal to Neah Bay.
Headquartered out of Port Hadlock and with a field office in Port Angeles, the North Olympic Salmon Coalition is one of 14 such Regional Fisheries Enhancement Groups statewide.
