The Place

Quiz: Where in the Bioregion?

How many of these places do you know? Mouse over a map point to reveal the answer.

1. This place is home to the largest run of sockeye salmon in the lower 48 states.
2. An ocean site near this coastal city was found by the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute to be the optimal place in the nation to develop a wave energy demonstration project.
3. The 1997 closure of a mammoth pulp mill in this town spelled the end of a sweetheart deal to log thousands of acres annually in the nearby national forest.
4. This city is home to the first redevelopment of a historic building to be awarded a gold rating by the U.S. Green Building Council.
5. This cultural preserve, whose name means "place of wonder" in the language of the local First Nation, is marked by ancient totem poles, seaside village sites, and old-growth forests.
6. This archipelago is one of the primary breeding sites for the northern fur seal.
7. This spot on one of the West's great rivers was the location of the first salmon cannery on the Pacific coast.
8. The insistence of native fishermen that they had a treaty right to fish on this river and the nearby Puyallup led to a landmark court ruling in favor of aboriginal fishing rights, the 1974 Boldt decision.
9. This forest grew back after a series of wildfires from 1933 to 1951 consumed more than 800 square miles of trees. Replanted in part by citizen volunteers, it is the center of controversy as its trees grow big enough to be cut for timber.
10. In this home to a rare white variant of black bears, environmentalists, timber interests, and First Nations recently agreed to set aside nearly 5 million acres of untouched forest, and cut selectively on the remainder.
11. Groundfishing near this coastal town will decrease dramatically, with the purchase of trawling permits by The Nature Conservancy and the designation of 4 million acres of sea-bottom off-limits to trawling.
12. A national laboratory located here developed several key energy-saving technologies, such as high-efficiency fluorescent lights, low-E windows, and a scientific understanding of how trees keep cities cool.
13. The Exxon Valdez ran aground on this shoal in 1989, triggering the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
14. Over 25 percent of all trips in this city are made under human power — more than any other city in Salmon Nation.
15. The waters of this national park were open to commercial fishing until 1999, when the Park Service took steps to ban it as soon as the current crop of fishermen retires.
16. This national forest has most successfully shifted its focus from timber harvest to restoration, cutting trees only as a tool to improve habitat for fish and species that depend on mature forests.
17. The dams on this river are scheduled for removal beginning in 2008 and will be the largest dams to be intentionally dismantled in the United States.
18. Commuters who work in this Salmon Nation city have pioneered the use of "casual carpooling," where drivers pick up strangers and give them a ride downtown in the morning, and toward home in the afternoon.
19. Fishermen in this town were the first to use clever marketing and attention to quality to garner a premium price for their product.
20. This town is home to the one of the leading grass-fed beef producers in Salmon Nation, Country Natural Beef.
21. This riverside town has given up on trying to confine high water within levees and weirs, and instead is redesigning its downtown to accommodate the river's occasional need to top its banks.
22. This spectacular watershed inspired more than 800 people to commit civil disobedience in its defense in 1993, and is now designated a UN Biosphere Reserve, with limited logging underway under the auspices of local native peoples.
23. This was the first place that explorers Lewis & Clark encountered and ate salmon on their westward journey — a meal that convinced them they had arrived in the watershed of the Pacific Ocean.
24. This place is headquarters for a confederation of tribes whose large forestland holdings are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Sources

•

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Listen closely...

Think you know where you stand? Take another look. There's a new common ground forming right beneath our feet. If there's one thing we all share, it's that we care about this place.

The foundation of this place, the glue that holds it together, is its salmon. Not only do they feed us and support a centuries-old commercial fishery, but they feed the land as well. Trees in the forest depend on the nitrogen that salmon carry back to land from their ocean journey. Animals benefit, too: scientists have found that at least 137 species rely on salmon as part of their diet. Beyond that, salmon are a symbol of what it means to live in this corner of the world, on our home turf that stretches from California up to Alaska, and even over into Russia and down to Japan.

"I always thought I was just passing through. But now I feel at home here."

Other Maps

The Lands and Waters

More maps

Where in the Bioregion? Quiz