Lummi Indian Tribe
The Lummi tribe is one of the largest in Washington State, with over 5,000 members.
Lummi Tribe Area of Concern:
The Lummi Tribe focuses their restoration efforts in the Nooksack Watershed (WRIA 1). Funding shortages have slowed progress, but major components of the restoration plan include construction of logjams in the Nooksack river, which historically had high instream wood abundance, and closure or repair of 458 miles of road within the watershed. Although the Nooksack estuary is healthy, the lower mainstem area of the river has lost over 90% of its historical wetland area.
Natural Resources Management:
- In 2009 the Lummi Nation began work on almost 2,000 acres of habitat that will become part of a federally backed tribal wetland and habitat mitigation bank, the first of its kind in the country. Restoration work on the land, in the Nooksack and Lummi river deltas, will include plantings of native species such as western red cedar and willow. A second project, separately funded, began in 2009 to restore Smuggler’s Slough, which was turned into a drainage ditch in the 1930s.
- The Lummi Intertidal Baseline Inventory surveys every species in tidelands on the reservation, covering over 7,000 acres. Teams performed shorebird surveys, dug for clams and crabs, and sampled finfish with a lampara net, finding over 242 different taxa. A full report is available online.
- In 2010, the tribe’s Skookum Creek Hatchery partnered with the University of Idaho to study disease in coho salmon. Hatchery coho infected with bacterial coldwater disease often die, and the disease can move rapidly through a population. Sampling salmon from the hatchery will help scientists develop a way of controlling the spread of the disease.
Lummi Indian Tribe
2616 Kwina Road
Bellingham,WA 98226
Phone: (360) 384-1489
Fax: (360) 384-5521
Chairperson: Clifford Cultee
Fisheries Contact: Elden Hillaire
Website: www.lummi-nsn.org
source: NWIFC
