2018 Southeast Alaska Watershed Restoration Workshop

2018 Southeast Alaska Watershed Restoration Workshop

“Stepping up to plate for collaborative restoration”

March 5-7, 2018
Juneau, AK, Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall

Sponsors: Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, The Nature Conservancy, the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership

Symposium Goal: The 2018 Southeast Alaska Watershed Symposium will build capacity to develop collaborative solutions for the restoration and informed management of SEAK’s watersheds.
The event that will bring together community leaders, NGOs and resource managers from across SEAK to share stories of restoration efforts – successes, techniques, and lessons learned, to network and develop partnerships for collaborative projects, and to provide tools and resources to build the capacity or our region’s land managers to carry out watershed restoration across the Tongass National Forest and its neighboring lands.

Background: Over the last decade, the restoration and community based management of our watersheds and land has become an increasingly important component of land management in Southeast Alaska. Numerous different NGO’s, tribal organizations, communities, landowners, and agencies have engaged in restoration and collaborative management projects. Challenges still exist, but these examples provide lessons to learn from. The central issues that impede watershed or landscape scale restoration in the region of SE AK include: technical capacity and experience implementing watershed restoration within the region, adequate watershed assessment information to determine key stressors and restoration needs, coordination between NGO’s, agencies, landowners and communities working together to facilitate on the ground restoration, and funding to implement restoration projects.

Past watershed symposiums and meetings of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership (SEAKFHP) and American Fisheries Society have helped resource professionals share information, tools, and methods. This has included a successful 2016 USFS/NPLCC/SEAKFHP conference on informing management of water and fisheries in the context of climate change and a 2013 SAWC & SEAKFHP Watershed Symposium geared towards the science and methods to promote fish habitat conservation.
This Watershed Symposium is geared towards the community leaders, NGOs and resource managers that need to “Step up to the Plate” in order to bridge the gaps needed to scale up restoration and collaborative land management in Southeast Alaska.

Workshop agenda

Summary: Article shared in the Juneau Empire, March 7, 2018 by Kevin Gullufsen – Southeast watershed coalition coalesces, talks water restoration: NGOs, nonprofits and agencies meet to talk challenges

Workshop Presentations

SESSION 1: How do you get community groups, agencies, and the private sector to work together successfully?

Keynote speaker: Jim Capurso, Fisheries Biologist, Region 6 USFS – The Drinking Water Providers Partnership: Restoring municipal watersheds in the Pacific North West

Session Moderator: Deborah Hart, Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership – Introductory session notes

Ian Johnson, Hoonah Indian Association and Sustainable Southeast Partnership – Lessons in Collaboration from the Hoonah Native Forest Partnership

Michael Kampnich, The Nature Conservancy – Prince of Wales Landscape Assessment

Christine Woll, The Nature Conservancy – The Tongass Collaborative Stewardship Group History and Next Steps

Derek Poinsette, Takshanuk Watershed Council – How to Engage a Community: Examples of Success from the Takshanuk Watershed Council in Haines, Alaska

SESSION 2: What are the technical, social, and political bottlenecks that slow completion of restoration projects, and what are you doing to overcome them?

Session moderator: John Hudson, Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition – Introductory notes

Julianne Thompson, US Forest Service – Forest Service’s Watershed Assessment Approaches and Restoration Priorities

Bob Christenson, Sustainable Southeast Partnership, SEAWEAD and The Nature Conservancy – Integrating Community Values into Watershed Assessments in the Hoonah Native Forest Partnership

Neil Stichert, USFWS – Addressing Bottlenecks: Perspectives on Fish Passage Restoration in Southeast Alaska

Cathy Needham, Kai Environmental – Building a Local Natural Resource Workforce on Prince of Wales Island

Dennis Nickerson, Prince of Wales Tribal Conservation District and Tribal Stewardship Consortium – Addressing Capacity Gaps through a New Partnership

Bob Girt, Sealaska – Workforce Development: Case Study – TRAYLS Program and School Interface

SESSION 3. How do we find funding (and match) needed to bring restoration to scale?

Debbie Maas, Alaska Department of Fish and Game – Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund

Samia Savell,  Natural Resource Conservation Service – Conservation Programs for Alaska

Jess Kayser Forster, Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition – Assessing the New Southeast Alaska Mitigation Fund

Gretchen Pikul, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation – Alaska Clean Water Action, BEACH, and Clean Vessel Grant Programs

Erika Ammann, NOAA – Restoration of Coastal Areas for Habitat and Community Resiliency

SESSION 4. New tools and analyses for understanding the watershed and regional context of restoration.

Session Moderator Tim Beechie, NOAA NW Fisheries Science Center – Process-based Restoration: Overview of Analysis Tools and Guidance for Climate Adaptation

Julianne Thompson, US Forest Service – Preparing for the Effects of a Changing Climate

Chris Sergeant, University of Alaska Fairbanks – Categorizing Streamflow Patterns to Support Conservation Efforts in Southeast Alaska

Bernard Romey, Romey Environmental – Modeling potential Chum and Pink Salmon Spawning Habitat in relation to Landscape Characteristics in Coastal Southeast Alaska

Emily Whitney, Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center/University of Alaska Southeast – An Interactive Demonstration of the Aquatic Trophic Productivity Model Highlighting How Food Webs can be Incorporated into River Restoration Planning

Jessica Davila, US Forest Service – Watershed Restoration Effectiveness Monitoring on the Tongass