As long as anyone can remember, these indigenous peoples—now organized as the Tulalip Tribes—have fished for the Chinook, a Pacific Ocean salmon dubbed by modern tongues as King, Tyee, Columbia River, Black, Chub, Hook Bill, Winter, Spring, Quinnat, and Blackmouth salmon. The Tulalip culture is intertwined with the waters that they have lived upon: the marine waters, tidelands, wetlands, forests, and freshwater creeks and lakes that make up their homeland—now reserved as 22,000 acres between the Puget Sound and the Snohomish River west of Marysville, Wash.
A landmark 1974 decision by U.S. District Judge George Boldt said the tribes’ 1854-1855 treaties with the federal government give them a 50 percent stake in the salmon harvest. However, the Chinook have been declining. In recent years, the number of tribal commercial fishing permits has been reduced by more than 75 percent. Urban sprawl from Seattle has been deemed the culprit. In 2001, the tribes sued the state for mismanagement, citing that improperly built and maintained culverts block salmon from returning upstream to spawn. Environmentalists, too, pursued lawsuits to stop the harvesting of trees that provide shade to cool salmon streams.
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Tualco Valley
The North, Middle, and South Forks of the Snoqualmie River drain the western side of the Cascades near North Bend, Wash. The forks join near the city of Snoqualmie just above Snoqualmie Falls to form the main waterway. The Snoqualmie joins the Skykomish River to form the Snohomish River near Monroe, Wash., in Snohomish County. Between the two tributaries is an area of relatively level farmland known as the Tualco Valley and is the center of the county’s rich agricultural heritage. For settlers, dairy farming has played an important role in the local economy.
However, some dairies in the county have fallen victim to urban sprawl. Because of waste disposal limitations, the farmers are already at a competitive disadvantage with dairies elsewhere. Unable to increase their herds, many farmers sell out to developers.
Snohomish County has stepped in. Its Purchase of Development Rights program provides farmers with cash in exchange for development rights to their land, preserving the land for agriculture. The 42-acre Werkhoven Dairy near Monroe signed on. “It gives hope that there will be ground still left to farm,” says Andy Werkhoven, who operates the dairy with his brother, Jim.
Dairy Waste and Salmon Habitat
In 1991, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service received a petition to list Pacific Northwest salmon under the Endangered Species Act. Since then, the organization has been working to determine which salmon populations might be endangered. A 1995 Washington State Department of Ecology report said the most common water quality problems in salmon streams were caused by an increase in fecal coliform levels and a decrease in dissolved oxygen levels, attributable to dairy wastes. Some environmentalists cried foul—but not all.
“You had a number of people jump on farmers, saying we want to turn the clock back 100 years,” says John Sayre, executive director of Northwest Chinook Recovery, a nonprofit organization founded in 1997 to protect salmon habitat in the Puget Sound region. “That’s not realistic.” Sayre says he has worked with farmers on a number of salmon-friendly projects, including the Haskell Slough project where Dale Reiner, a local beef cattle farmer, sought help after being flooded in 1990 and again in 1995. Reiner, who lives and works on land that his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1873 in the Tualco Valley on a bend in the Skykomish River, worked with Sayre and also federal, state and tribal agencies to build a natural barrier that prevents flooding but also reconnects three miles of slough and 11 ponds with the river’s main channel, providing slow-water rearing habitat for salmon.
Werkhoven says it was through Reiner, his neighbor, that he met Sayre and also leaders of the Tulalip Tribes. “Dale was the one who said, ‘Hey, you got to meet these guys. They would rather work with us than against us,’” he says.
“We started meeting with the Indian tribes and had clandestine meetings in people’s houses on the reservation or elsewhere,” Sayre says. “You’d have two or three farmers and two or three members of the tribal council and out of that developed a friendship, and then eventually partnership and trust.”
“We spent a lot of time with each other, getting to know each other, and talking,” Werkhoven says. “It’s a whole lot different to argue with somebody if it’s the same person that
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