July 2023 Highlights from the SSP Community Forest Catalyst

Greetings! This is a brief blog post to share highlights from the month of July that I experienced while working as the SSP regional catalyst for community forestry.

The month of July was all about Kake for me, and the glorious summer weather finally arriving to our region. In total, I spent about three weeks in Kake and on nearby Kuiu Island this month, working with the SSP community catalyst Hank Copsey and the KKCFP field crew he leads, meeting with folks in town at the Organized Village of Kake, Kake Tribal Corporation and visiting with friends and visitors to the community that I met while participating in organized activities and just walking around.

In the early part of the month the focus was on getting things set up for a KKCFP crew field trip to Kuiu Island to do some salmon habitat restoration work (see photo above). This involved doing maintenance on some ATVs that currently live on Kuiu and conducting a quick survey of the field camp and road system that would be used later in the month for the project. I love getting out to Kuiu Island myself. The old-growth forest near the roads is particularly enjoyable to see. And the Karst features are amazing.

After returning home to Icy Strait for a week, I returned to Kake with my boat so that I could run the KKCFP crew out to meet SAWC and the Forest Service on the island for the restoration project work. It has long been a goal of mine to get the KKCFP crew out to Kuiu because it is their traditional homeland and has been fairly difficult to access, especially the terrestrial environment, in modern times. I spent one night on the island with the group, camping out at the Rowan Bay base camp and enjoying great conversation with the Forest Service staff on SASSfm and how our common goals for supporting Kake’s desire to lead stewardship efforts like this salmon habitat restoration project could be strengthened by future SASS initiatives. The screen grab pasted below is an indication that we are on the right track with this work.

Immediately after returning to Kake from Kuiu Island I was able to experience another highlight for the month of July – participating in the 35th annual Kake Culture Camp. Marina, the SSP director, organized our 2023 regional catalyst retreat to coincide with the Kake Culture camp so that we could participate in and support the event . This was a resounding success overall. One of the standout experiences for me was getting to work with the overnight campers on learning how to set up the gear for subsistence halibut fishing, and then to set, and retrieve the gear over by Kuiu Island. Most of the youth had some experience doing this activity with their families but not necessarily the details of knotting the gangion lines to the hooks and snaps, setting up anchors and buoys, and picking out a good spot to set the gear. The fish we caught were then processed by the youth campers and served at a community potluck or jarred for distribution to community elders.

Overall, the month of July was a real joy. I have had the opportunity to participate in many Kake Culture camps over the years. Every camp is unique, and every camp is meaningful, and somehow the weather is almost always perfect in Kake.