River Notes: A Letter from the Director

River Notes: A Letter from the Director

By Brett Vandeheuvel, Executive Director

The theme of this newsletter is the relationship between salmon and orcas, two creatures that help define the Pacific Northwest.

Every fall, I take my two kids to the Klickitat River to watch Chinook salmon struggle up the frothing whitewater in a 10-foot-wide canyon called The Narrows. The canyon walls thrum with energy and we have to speak loudly just to hear each other. We scramble down the canyon walls and perch on the edge of a flat rock at the base of big rapid. Chinook salmon leap out of the water so close we can almost touch them—and the raging water beats them back, over and over again. We cheer at leaps, and groan at smackdowns.

Next to the big rapid is a deep, clear pool where we watch a dozen fish rest, circling slowly, gathering the strength to take another shot. It looks impossible to ascend this maelstrom. But ascend they do, one after another, silver torpedos muscling up through the water.

A big Chinook, the largest we’ve seen, flies up the rapids without pause. This magnificent animal swam 180 miles from the ocean to its birth stream, where it will spawn and die, nourishing the river and the land itself with nutrients from the Pacific.

Upstream from The Narrows, skilled Yakama fishermen and women fish from scaffolds where their people have fished for thousands of years. Some of the salmon—bundles of protein from the ocean—literally jump into their dip nets. I look at the fishers, look at my kids, and renew my vow to fight for salmon with all I have.

What do orcas have to do with the Columbia? Endangered Southern Resident killer whales (aka orcas) travel from Puget Sound to the mouth of the Columbia each spring to pack on fat by eating salmon. Fishers crossing the Columbia River bar spot pods of orcas hunting. On rare occasion, people have spotted orcas upstream as far as Astoria.

I don’t have a deep connection to orcas—I’ve never lived in their realm. (To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of the ocean.) The Lummi people, featured on page nine, have the deepest connection possible. As Raynell Zuni-Morris, a Lummi Nation tribal elder explains, “My people’s cultivated kinship relationship with resident killer whales goes back since time immemorial. They are not wild animals, they are family.” The Lummi Nation is leading efforts to protect the whales, as each of us would protect members of our family.

This newsletter discusses the intertwined fates of salmon and orcas, and the Columbia River that sustains them. The bottom line: We must take action. Now. And we need your continued support of aggressive legal, policy, and organizing work to break down the status quo. Thank you for making a difference.