The Wenatchee River Salmon Festival will take place at the Rocky Reach Dam Park in Wenatchee, Washington on Sept. 19 – 21, 2024. Including 2 days for students and the return of the much-loved Community Day on Saturday, the festival continues to educate and inspire year after year!
Friends of Northwest Hatcheries is proud to be the non-profit entity that has helped make the Wenatchee River Salmon Festival a reality for over 30 years.
As of July 2, 2024, approximately 3,400 adult spring Chinook Salmon have returned to the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery and are now in holding pens available for viewing. Visit the hatchery to see these majestic fish for yourself!
Spawning for Chinook will occur at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery in August.
Join us at Icicle Brewery in downtown Leavenworth, Washington on July 18th, 2024! $1 off coupons for the brew of your choice will be available at the Friends table. We’ll have lots of info to share about this year’s Wenatchee River Salmon Festival in September and info about the Friends of Northwest Hatcheries so you can get involved in shaping the next generation of stewards.
The Master Gardeners have improved and added to the growing Pollinator Garden at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. Visit this beautiful garden for yourself to learn how milkweed attracts the Monarchs and so much more!
Self-guided tours at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery and the nature trails that meander the property and alongside Icicle Creek are now open all year round! Learn about the environment at the hatchery, the wildlife that lives in the area, and Chinook Salmon that are raised at the hatchery. This is a great activity for all ages and helps to connect humans with nature.
The Friends of Northwest Hatcheries and Wenatchee River Salmon Festival event organizers are excited to announce the return of Salmon Fest School Days in September 2022! After a 2 year hiatus due to Covid precautions, we couldn’t be more excited to welcome back students from around the region, and to a new location at the Chelan PUD’s Rocky Reach Dam and Discovery Center. While School Days have returned, the public Community Day will have to wait another year.
Salmon Fest’s Education Coordinator, Marjorie Lodwik says of this year’s event, “We are so excited to be able to bring this event back for the first time since 2019, but due to complications with the construction on hatchery infrastructure projects and limitations with both FWS and Friends of NW Hatcheries/Salmon Fest staff, a few weeks ago it became clear that a successful event at Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery would be incredibly challenging to pull off. Luckily, our wonderful partner, Chelan County PUD, offered their Rocky Reach Dam facility for this year’s event. They have extensive grassy grounds, a brand new interactive visitor center, and can accommodate a large number of buses for the school days.”
She continues, “Unfortunately they won’t be able to host the public event on Saturday, but we have heard from many teachers, students, and their families that are so excited to be coming to the festival’s school days this year on September 15th and 16th. While we are sad that the festival can’t take place a the fish hatchery, we are very thankful for all of the hard work that the PUD and the rest of the Salmon Festival Team have put in to make this new location work!”
Read the official Press Release from the Directors of Salmon Fest below.
—————–
Wenatchee River Salmon Festival “School Days” September 15th and 16th, 2022
Wenatchee, Washington — “Celebrate the Return of the Salmon”, at the 30th Anniversary of the Wenatchee River Salmon Festival! Our two “School Days” will be ready to host North Central Washington students on September 15th and 16th, 2022 at Rocky Reach Dam and Discovery Center. Students will explore and experience natural resource education at its finest! Salmon Fest has been the recipient of multiple awards, including, “Best Children’s Program”, by the International Festivals and Events Association. The Wenatchee River Salmon Festival 2022 is an event devoted to engaging students at a venue that is both educational and fun. Our Festival mission is to connect people of all ages to nature, and help build discovery and appreciation of the diversity and importance of the great outdoors. The beautiful grounds overlooking the mighty Columbia River are managed by the Chelan PUD’s Rocky Reach Dam. This unique venue will transform into an extraordinary outdoor classroom for this year’s Salmon Fest event. Students will become part of “River Ramble” and a Native American Village receiving a powerful inter-tribal cultural experience. Learning about nature from top Pacific Northwest natural resource specialists means students will gain first-hand knowledge about fish and wildlife, healthy habitats, and watersheds. There is magic when Salmon Fest happens. Students receive unique opportunities to be eye-to-eye with a fish, create gyotaku art, and share in a “Salmon Experience” together. For more information, swim to our website salmonfest.org or call 509.548.6662 ext 226.
The Wenatchee River Salmon Festival is hosted by Friends of NW Hatcheries, Chelan PUD, USFWS-Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests, and the Bureau of Reclamation.
The Story Trail at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery keeps on getting better. In July 2020, the hatchery staff reached out to Friends of Northwest Hatcheries for help with a project aimed at engaging young preschool and school age hikers on the local Icicle Creek Nature Trail, an existing interpretive trail. The project was called Story Trail because it involved posting up a children’s book low on the interpretive sign posts. FNH’s secretary, Courtney Feeney, volunteered herself and her two boys to do the work of cutting, getting the pages laminated and posting up the first story.
After a few early tweaks, everyone agreed that the Story Trail project complimented the trail nicely. Bringing art, early literacy and environmental education onto the trail enhanced the hiking experience for young students and their families during a time when school resources were limited due to the lockdown.
The Story Trail project caught the attention of another local family interested in volunteering at the Leavenworth Hatchery. Mother and son team, Dara and Olyn Shultz, contributed their expertise and in coordination with hatchery staff continued work to improve it. Dara reached out to Washington based publishing company, Sasquatch Books, to get permission to download the PDF version of “Why Do I Sing” and print it on durable, weather resistant paper provided by the hatchery. Wood was also provided by the hatchery to create a stable place for Story Trail pages on the sign posts. Olyn, a local Boy Scout, finished the boards and attached the boards and pages (perfectly) to the sign posts.
.: Friends :. Category, submitted January 12th, 2021
The Friends of Northwest Hatcheries has become an official sponsor of the Salmon In Schools program organized by Sound Salmon Solutions in Mukilteo, WA in partnership with the Willow Creek Fish Hatchery. The program will be similar to the Salmon in the Classroom programs that are organized in the Wenatchee Valley by Cascade Fisheries and supported by the Yakama Nation Fisheries and Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. These programs offer teachers and students an opportunity to watch salmon develop from eggs to fry to fish before they aide in their release into a local waterway. Due to Covid-19 restrictions and closures during the 2020/2021 school year, these programs have gone virtual including livestreams of fish tanks so that teachers and students can still witness fish development and use these videos as learning tools. The live streams will run from Jan 10 – March 11, 2021 after which the fish will be transferred to ponds at the hatchery to grow larger and develop further. Additional videos that will serve as virtual field trips will highlight the stages of development. Check out the new website for the 2021 program including the virtual fieldtrip video at tinyurl.com/SalmoninSchools2021
Watch Coho Salmon LIVE below between Jan – March 2021 in their tank in Mukilteo, WA. Or, watch it on the Sound Salmon Solutions YouTube Channel: https://tinyurl.com/SISlivestreamtank
Below is the Live Feed from a tank in Wenatchee, WA supported by Cascade Fisheries. Video will be available between Jan – March 2021.
Thanks to Sound Salmon Solutions and Cascade Fisheries for organizing these programs!
The Wenatchee River Salmon Festival, presented by Friends of Northwest Hatcheries, has a beautiful brand new website!
The new website better conveys the full of extent of this important annual event and provides valuable resources and info that is easy for festival attendees, teachers, partners, and supporters to find. Know what to expect, get the most out of your experience, and plan your trip to the next Salmon Fest!
.: Friends :. Category, submitted September 14th, 2020
Friends of Northwest Hatcheries is helping to celebrate early literacy and environmental education at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery in Leavenworth, Washington. Staff and Friends’ volunteers are working together to add colorful media to the existing interpretive sign posts. The media varies during the year from pages of a nature themed children’s book to fish shapes to footprints. School aged kids can read the story aloud and preschoolers can count the fish or footprints. The trail has spectacular views of the Sleeping Lady and the Icicle Creek. Continue on past the Icicle Creek Nature Trail to get more exercise and enjoy the trails at Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery.
