Tuesday April 25, 2023
The Seattle Times —
Nearly a decade after the last Elwha River dam came down, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe could see its first fishery on the river in years.
The tribe, Olympic National Park and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Monday that the tribal ceremonial and subsistence fishery for coho salmon on the Elwha will open this fall.
The Elwha will remain closed to commercial and recreational fishing. Mountain lakes in the Elwha basin within Olympic National Park and Lake Sutherland will remain open to sport fishing from the fourth Saturday in April through the end of October.
For more than a century, the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams blocked salmon and oceangoing trout from more than over 90% of the Elwha watershed. They held up sediment and woody debris that would otherwise make its way down to nourish the downstream habitat.