Our Program Areas

In our Strategic Planning, we have identified four major programs: Education, Restoration, Stewardship, and Research. Over the years we have made significant progress in each of these areas.

 

 

Education

Education is the delivery of knowledge derived from study to those who need and want it. TWC has education as one of its major goals. For children, this includes work within the Haines Borough School District, other area schools and home-school families. In addition we work to raise awareness among adults as well through community events and opportunities to volunteer.

In the last three years we:

• Conducted three years of EcoStudies classes for Haines Elementary students in third, fourth and fifth grades. The classes began as a collaboration with Discovery Southeast, a regional outdoor education organization, and have since gained funding from the EPA's Environmental Education Grants Program. Our 2005-2006 EPA grant allowed us to expand service to second through eighth grades, and to introduce a Service Learning component. EcoStudies classes include frequent field trips to Sawmill Creek in Haines. During these field trips, children have helped with fish trapping studies and rescue of stranded juvenile salmon and trout after the creek was diverted into a restored stream bed. Students have also helped in re-vegetating stream banks within the restored reach of Sawmill Creek.

• Led an 8th grade field trip to Chilkoot River to study spawning eulachon. This trip involved presentations by Tommy Jimmie, Jr. on Tlingit relations with eulachon and help from Andrew Eller, a graduate student researching the biology of the species.

• Established an internship program which began in the Fall 2004 semester. Two Haines High School students have gained academic credit for assisting in field studies and research in area watersheds. Our intern's projects have included a Holgate Creek assessment, Watershed Weekly production, EcoStudies curriculum development.

• Tim Shields conducted a summer education program with students from Covenant Life Center , a local private school, to study declining western toad populations in the Klehini Valley.

In the future we will work to develop after-school and summer school programs and seek to acquire an Outdoor Science Laboratory for use by all Haines educators. We will continue to incorporate Native environmental culture and knowledge into learning experiences by inviting the participation of Tlingit elders and teachers.

Education is a two-way street. There is much that we of the TWC can and should learn of the community member’s knowledge of and desires for the watersheds in which they live. Toward the goal of gaining this awareness we have beeb conducting a series of meetings with community groups and individuals such as commercial fishermen, tour operators and others. Through these meetings we hope to raise awareness of TWC work but also to learn more about the community’s knowledge and desires for their watersheds.

Restoration

Nature has tremendous powers of regeneration. Restoration projects are one way for humans to work with nature to repair damage done in the past. We have actively involved in the following restoration projects:

• TWC applied for and received US Fish and Wildlife Service funding to participate in a stream re-routing project on Sawmill Creek, a stream that runs through residential Haines. Water was shunted from a straight sided ditch into a more winding, natural course. The diversion was done in the fall of 2003 and we are currently in the monitoring stage of the project, observing the effects of the restoration. Now each spring, we can see cutthroat trout spawning in the restored reach of the stream!

• We facilitated a culvert replacement project on Muskrat Creek near Mile 25 on the Haines Highway. A cooperative project of TWC, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Haines Borough, this work opened one mile of of coho spawning and rearing habitat by removal of an undersized and too-steep culvert and its replacement with a culvert designed to allow unhindered fish passage. Replacement was completed in early September 2004, in time for that year’s coho run.

Stewardship

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We are blessed with large and relatively intact watersheds in the area. A well designed sustainability strategy will maintain the health and productivity of our land and water indefinitely. TWC is dedicated to helping this effort.

• We are currently working with a private landowner toward purchasing and placing a sustainability easement on the Sawmill Creek restoration site. On this parcel we hope to establish an Outdoor Education Science Laboratory for all Haines Borough school children.

Research

Our watershed assessment effort will help us identify other areas which may be good candidates for sustainability projects. Research is the basic component which underlies our efforts. We are dedicated to understanding the functioning of our watersheds and sharing the information we gain. This research includes field work but also compiling information about our watersheds which has already been gathered by others.

• Completed a stream survey of Sawmill Creek for baseline data during the spring of 2004 using ADF&G’s Stream Survey Protocol.

• Organized a benthic macro-invertebrate training with the Environment and Natural Resources Institute (ENRI) for staff and key volunteers. The group collected at three sites on Sawmill Creek and found a predictable pattern of increasing health and diverstiy in the system.

• Conducted two years of spring, summer and fall fish trapping in Sawmill Creek to investigate species populations and movement back into the restored reach.