FORKS — The 2019 Wild Steelhead Review Series will continue at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Hemlock Forest Room at the Olympic Natural Resources Center.
This Evening Talk is a continuation of the 2019 Wild Steelhead Review Series on the Olympic Peninsula and will be a combined presentation with Bill McMillan and his son, John, at the center at 1455 S. Forks Ave.
The elder McMillan’s knowledge includes extensive historical steelhead accounts in Washington since the 1950s.
His presentation will be a brief off-the-cuff perspective on early visits to the Peninsula in the later 1950s to early 1970s.
He also will describe life on the Washougal dominated by steelhead fishing with increasing spawning and snorkel surveys.
Those volunteer surveys became basic methods for determining wild steelhead escapements on southwest Washington rivers by the end of the 1980s.
That work later transitioned to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
He later moved to the Skagit River and again decided to pursue volunteer spawning surveys.
His short talk will lead into John’s work in the Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula.
The younger McMillan will discuss why steelhead are so unique among salmonids and the types of behaviors they have evolved that allow the species to pack so much diversity into a single population.
John is the science director for Trout Unlimited’s Wild Steelhead Initiative. He has also worked for the Hoh Tribe and worked as a biologist and fishery research scientist for the Wild Salmon Center and NOAA on the Elwha Dam removal project.
Refreshments will be served and attendees are encouraged to bring a potluck of a favorite dessert.
For more information, contact Frank Hanson at 360-374-4556 or fsh2@uw.edu.