A boundary change being proposed at Olympic National Park would add nearly 241 acres to the park in the name of sockeye salmon habitat protection.
The habitat in question is in and around Umbrella Creek near Lake Ozette. This proposal, which park officials say is consistent with the park’s General Management Plan, involves acreage located just north of Lake Ozette’s Umbrella Bay, between Lake Ozette and the Hoko-Ozette Road.
The property is currently owned by the Cascade Land Conservancy, which is interested in transferring these lands to the National Park Service, dependent on NPS funding and the further due diligence process. The Conservancy purchased the property when it was advertised on the open market in March 2008, with the idea of adding it to Olympic National Park. For more information, people may call the park at 360-565-3004.
Comments about this proposal may be sent to National Park Service - Columbia Cascades Lands Resources Program Center, 168 South Jackson Street, Seattle, Washington, 98104; Attn: Wayne Hill by March 22, 2010.
Comments
Will this area be protected from the Native Americans who net the fish entering the river system to spawn? If not what is the use in adding land to protect fish that will end up in a net? If this land is sold and becomes part of the Olympic National Park it should be done so with the agreement that absolutely NO netting will be allowed by anyone. Interested in learning more visit one of the peninsula rivers during the time of the salmon and steelhead runs and see what is happening on the Quillayute, Solduc, Bogachiel, and the Hoh rivers..
The park wants to protect the sockeye yet they have not yet solved the simplest of problems related to their protection. Example: They have removed the fishing for cutthroat trout in Lake Ozette and cutthroat trout are one of the biggest predators of the sockeye eggs. Example: They have not come up with a solution of the seal population in the lake. I have personally watched the seals harvest many of the spawning sockeye. Example: The extremely high lake level during the sockeye spawning has the lake spawners laying eggs in the brush along the lake shore yet the park will not dredge the mouth of the Ozette River to stabilize the lake level.