Coastal Watershed Institute Celebrates Decade of Elwha Nearshore Restoration
On the last day of the first year a decade after dam removals began we paused to celebrate the complex and ever-evolving Elwha nearshore. Here are a few bright posts from the last couple of weeks to celebrate a year of hard work, including recent successes by colleagues at Wild Fish Conservancy (“A Second Court Rejects Cooke Aquaculture’s Challenge Over Termination Of Port Angeles Net Pen Lease“), and the wonder and beauty of world-scale nearshore ecosystem restoration.
Pamela Adams, CWI volunteer beaver expert, provides a quick glimpse of her evolving understanding with the hard-working and shy Elwha coastal beaver, truly an unsung hero in nearshore ecosystem restoration.
We’re looking forward to another year of hard, but important work.
Happy and grateful New Year to, and from, all at the Coastal Watershed Institute!
Learn more about the Elwha nearshore restoration project here.
Dr. Shaffer is the Executive Director and Lead Scientist of the Coastal Watershed Institute (CWI), a small, place-based environmental non-profit formed in 1996 that is dedicated to understanding, protecting, and restoring coastal ecosystems thru community-led scientific partnerships. Shaffer and her team conduct world-class ecosystem science and restoration with very modest resources and from a remote base of operations.
Dr. Shaffer and the talented team she leads at CWI are now informing dam removals planning and actions worldwide. Dr. Shaffer has authored over twenty scientific publications on nearshore ecology and dam removal science and regularly presents her scientific work internationally. Her work is featured in Hakai Magazine, National Geographic, New Yorker Magazine, Al Jazeera, PBS (Earth works), and National Public Radio. Dr. Shaffer and her team have received conservation science awards from the Seattle Aquarium, American Fisheries Society, and Society of Ecological Restoration for work on coastal ecosystem science, conservation, and restoration, including the Elwha.
Dr. Shaffer was born and raised in a large family and a small town of eastern Washington struggling to overcome the ravages of WWII. The solitude of wild intact remote coastal shorelines of northwest Washington provided rare moments of peace and healing and instilled a fierce dedication to conserving and restoring wild places. After their first round of graduate school Shaffer and her husband Dave Parks moved to the Olympic Peninsula where they raised two children. Dr. Shaffer then returned to school and earned a PhD in Marine Science from the University of Victoria in 2017. She and her family continue to thrive in their dedication to fight for what matters. Their future focus is to instill a passion in the next generation to do the same.
More information on Dr. Shaffer and her work with the Coastal Watershed Institute can be found at www.coastalwatershedinstitute.org.