NISQUALLY — Carving his boat through the the river, Willie Frank III, chairman of the Nisqually Tribe, called out nearby bald eagles over the roar of the motor.
“My grandfather Willie Frank Sr. used to say the Nisqually Indians lived in paradise before the white man came,” he said Thursday morning. “We still live in paradise. We’ve just got to protect it, restore it and bring it back to life.”
As the chairman navigated logs and shallow muck, semitrucks and cars rumbled over the freeway bridge above. Ahead, the river spilled into the Nisqually Reach of southern Puget Sound and plump harbor seals perched on driftwood as the aroma of damp earth replaced the smell of vehicle exhaust.
The scenes on this river tell a story of the threats to salmon across the region: pollution, predation and habitat loss. It’s these issues that, 50 years since a court ruling would affirm Indigenous peoples’ treaty-protected fishing rights, has united Indigenous leaders and fishers, recreational anglers and scientists and others for a renewed call to prevent salmon extinction.
The Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition launched its first outreach and awareness campaign last week through a press tour of the Nisqually River. The coalition was born from 50 years of learning to co-manage and collaborate on solutions, and a realization that the current salmon recovery efforts aren’t keeping pace with climate change, habitat loss and other human activities.
Key to the coalition are Frank, the son of Billy Frank Jr., Kadi Bizyayeva, an elected Stillaguamish tribal leader and fisheries director, and Glen Gobin, a longtime Tulalip leader and lifelong fisherman. Also, Ron Garner, president of the Puget Sound Anglers, John Stark, a Washington State University professor of ecotoxicology, and Fran Wilshusen of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
On Thursday, they stood united at Frank’s Landing to discuss their shared investment in ensuring future generations see salmon in Pacific Northwest rivers.
“This has never been done before where you brought in tribes, commercial fishermen and sports fishermen. It’s unheard of,” Stark said. “Here we are and we’re doing it. It’s an honor to be part of this.”
Now the coalition is inviting people to become warriors for the salmon in their local waterways.
One river’s story
In the Nisqually peoples’ creation story, the Nisqually watershed is the center of the universe. First there was the Nisqually, and everything else followed.
Nisqually peoples (originally Squalli-absch, “the People of the Grass”) lived in villages from the summit to the sea along the river and the adjacent prairies.
For millennia, Nisqually territory was a central crossroad for Indigenous peoples across the region. Travelling north to south, it connected the Salish Sea with the Columbia River, and the Cascade mountain passes with the coast from east to west.
In 1917, two-thirds of the Nisqually reservation was condemned by Pierce County to make room for what is known today as Joint Base Lewis McChord, the chairman explained. Willie Frank Sr. bought back 6 acres of land here, on a major river crossing at Frank’s Landing, where his son, Billy Frank Jr., would learn to fish.
The renowned Nisqually fishing rights defender was just 14 when he was arrested for the first time for fishing the Nisqually River. He would go on to be jailed more than 50 times, fighting for his tribal rights to fish on and off the reservation, that, at the time, were not recognized by the state.
Treaties signed by Frank’s ancestors had explicitly reserved their right to fish in their usual and accustomed areas in exchange for swaths of their homelands. But it took violent protests and a decision by U.S. District Court Judge George Boldt, appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to affirm their right to fish.
The Nisqually people were the first caretakers of the watershed. Now they’re fighting to heal the wounds since colonization as another threat looms over all they fought for: scarcity of the fish themselves.
The journey along the river was punctuated by reminders of this.
The cars traveling along an I-5 bridge are releasing tire chemicals into the river that kill coho salmon, said Stark, the WSU professor.
A paper published by researchers in 2020 revealed the culprit behind the deaths of coho: 6PPD-quinone, a chemical derived from a preservative that helps tires last longer. Researchers found it kills 40% to 90% of returning coho to some Puget Sound urban streams before they spawn.
“There’s so many factors involved in salmon decline,” Stark said. “Pollutants are just one part of it.”
Eagles perched high atop cottonwood tree boughs looked on as the Nisqually chairman’s boat rolled past braided sloughs, the site of a 750-acre habitat restoration project.
The waters of the southern Salish Sea were blocked from the Nisqually River estuary for more than a century by human-made dikes to make way for farmland. In 2009, the tide began to spill in on what was at the time the largest estuary recovery of its kind on the West Coast, returning essential habitat for Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout, and the more than 100 critters that rely on the salmon’s existence.
Today, more than a decade after the last dikes were removed, looking across the vast marshy tangle of grasses, channels, salt and fresh water at the mouth of the Nisqually River, Glen Gobin drew comparisons to rivers across the region.
“Many of our tribes have the same setting, the mouth of the river where we’ve since time immemorial had villages based around places where we could hunt and harvest and gather,” Gobin said. “Maybe a normal person would look out and see the grandeur of the beauty that surrounds us all here. But when you step back and you take a real look at what’s happening to our environment, you see the destruction that’s taken place over time, how we continue to use and abuse and take from our next generation.”
Estuaries provide critical habitat for young salmon and steelhead to find refuge and food before journeying to the ocean. Puget Sound rivers have seen as much as more than half of this habitat lost to farmland and other development. Tribes are leading efforts to restore it.
Plump harbor seals, like those perched on driftwood at the river’s mouth on Thursday, can number in the hundreds and plague fishing seasons, Frank, the Nisqually chairman, said.
A 2016 sampling of harbor seal feces around Puget Sound revealed the seals rely on Chinook salmon for about 1% or 2% of their diet. That percentage equaled an estimated 1.4 million juvenile Chinook a month.
Even in places with fewer barriers to fish passage, like the Nisqually estuary that has been restored, about 20% of the baby steelhead migrating through the Nisqually estuary die. And, according to a 2022 study, about 90% of those deaths are from harbor seals.
Pinnipeds have reaped the benefits of sweeping federal protections. But salmon and steelhead, most classified under the Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered, have foundered. Unlike seals and sea lions, salmon and steelhead can be harvested. And much of their freshwater habitat includes physical and climate change-fueled barriers like low water levels and rising temperatures.
A call to action
A report from the Governor’s Office cited by the coalition suggests 70% of endangered or threatened salmon and steelhead populations are not keeping pace with recovery goals.
“It’s those next generations obligation to continue on what we’ve always had for thousands of years, a way of life a way of life that has sustained us … and it’s threatened,” Gobin said. “I worry about what the future holds for our next generations if the salmon are no more.”
Ceremonies held for the return of the first Chinook salmon, salmon bakes and large gatherings centered on the fish could be lost, he said.
“I can put that in a tribal perspective,” Gobin said. “But they’re at risk for every family within Washington state.”
The coalition, formed in summer of 2018, led at the time by the late salmon recovery leader Lorraine Loomis, is made up of past, present and future tribal leaders, environmental scientists, local and state officials, recreational fishermen, attorneys, conservation groups and industry officials.
On its new website, salmondefense.org/salmonwarriors, the coalition is calling for further collaboration, for individual people to sign on to care for their own space, to buy local seafoods and empower themselves through connecting with their local ecosystems.
The campaign is supported by some tribal nations, state agencies, industry groups and nonprofits. They hope to grow.
“It’s got to be more than an educational campaign, it’s got to be a call to action,” Gobin said. “We can’t just talk about what needs to happen anymore.”
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