Kwiaht Celebrates 10th Year; Featured at Food Co-op in February

— from Russel Barsh —

February 18 is Kwiaht day at the Orcas Food Co-op! The Food Co-op’s second “3% Thursday” will benefit Kwiaht’s sustainable food programs, including documenting and preserving Orcas Island’s unusual, hardy, locally adapted heritage and seedling apple varieties for future generations of farmers and cider-makers.

Kwiaht celebrates its tenth anniversary this year as an island research laboratory dedicated to finding local, sustainable solutions for water, wildlife and plant conservation “from the bottom up,” as Kwiaht director and ecologist Russel Barsh describes it. Kwiaht was organized in 2006 at the call of Tribal leader Ken Hansen; the founding chairman of the board of trustees was Bob Gamble of Orcas and Waldron. Ken believed in the power of communities to take responsibility for their environment, pursuing their own scientific research and crafting grassroots solutions to concerns such as restoring historical herring and salmon fisheries that fed islanders for centuries. Ken gave Kwiaht its Salishan name, which means “a place kept clean”, and gave it the mission of doing “cutting-edge science with a Coast Salish heart.”

“We try to live up Ken’s challenge,” says Barsh, who worked with Ken on a wide variety of environmental and cultural-resources projects in the 1980s and 1990s, both on mainland Skagit County and the San Juan Islands. Kwiaht programs are organized around the specific concerns of different islands and communities in San Juan County, which are governed by local volunteers. “Our premier program on Orcas is the Indian Island Marine Health Observatory, which helps monitor and care for Indian Island and Skull Island, and speaks with thousands of visitors, and hundreds of school children each year.”

Other programs on Orcas include apple conservation, which includes grafting old varieties and novel seedlings into the Orcas Elementary school garden; and rediscovering the cultivation and processing of Coast Salish peoples’ traditional staple food, camas, a cooperative project with local producers and the Swinomish Tribal Communities. Kwiaht volunteers have monitored the diet and health of juvenile Chinook migrating through the islands’ waters since 2006, and in collaboration with Long Live the Kings, will begin to study and monitor adult Blackmouth salmon this summer.

Kwiaht also investigates potential water quality and food safety issues, generally in collaboration with Orcas schools and students. Kwiaht’s laboratory has capability to test for hundreds of contaminants, from heavy metals to pesticides and pharmaceuticals.

Orcas Elementary students are also working with Kwiaht scientists on identifying wild, native bee species that pollinate Orcas farms and gardens, and protecting nesting habitat for them around Eastsound. “Wild bees do most of the work throughout the islands, but they are very susceptible to garden sprays and are often mistaken for wasps, with tragic consequences,” Barsh says. “With the help of the Food Co-op, we can do more.”

Learn more by shopping at the Food Co-op on February 18. Kwiaht scientists will be there to answer questions about heritage fruit trees, traditional Native food plants, wild bees, and other Kwiaht programs and interests. Displays, fact sheets and a donation box will be at the Food Co-op all month.