OUR VISION
We believe the Copper River watershed can have a vibrant, healthy future.
Last week Cordova students went outside and waded into the water for salmon egg-take day. They harvested eggs that they will be raising in their classroom tank this year.
It was a beautiful fall day out the road. The kids participated in a habitat sketch activity and learned about the purpose of a Redd. The goals of this activity are to introduce why gravel and bankside vegetation are important to healthy spawning grounds.
Big thanks to our partners pwssc and Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation for making egg-take day possible, and to all of our partners and sponsors in Salmon in the Classroom for bringing this opportunity to Copper River youth: ahtnaintertribal (AITRC), adfg.official, Copper River School District, Cordova School District, cordovatelecom, Cordova Wireless Communications, Native Village of Eyak, Valdez Fisheries Development Association (VFDA).
📷 Kim Casavan/CRWP - Cordova students sketch beside a river learning about salmon habitat, then participate in harvesting salmon eggs for their classroom tank.
#CordovaAlaska #SalmonintheClassroom #youthprogram #salmonhabitat
Happy Alaska Day!
Today and every day, we celebrate Alaska and the incredible Copper River Watershed we’re lucky to call home. This wild, abundant place is a rare treasure—and its future is in our hands. Through dedication, collaboration, and a shared commitment to stewardship, we can make sure the watershed remains healthy, wild, and thriving for generations to come. 💙
.
CopperRiver.org
.
#lovewhereyoulive #copperriverwatershed #AlaskaDay #celebratethewild #conservation cleanrivers cleanoceans
CORDOVA – While you`re planning your upcoming Halloween festivities, add this event to your calendar! We are THRILLED to bring you, in partnership with the pwssc . . .
👻 Cordova`s first ever Spooky-Scary Species Smackdown!
WHEN: Friday October 30th, from 2-4 pm.
WHERE: In the woods behind the Forest Service building. Please enter @ Browning Ave & 4th St.
[Big THANK YOU to Dave Sjostedt for land use permissions for this program.]
🎃 Games and candy galore! Fun for all ages!
💀Come help us defend our forest from the spookiest creatures to haunt Cordova.
CopperRiver.org
#CordovaAlaska #Halloween #InvasivePlants #CommunityEvent
🥳 COPPER BASIN - We`d like to give a great big shout-out to all the volunteers who helped with the ROAR recycling site in Glennallen during the month of September!
♻️ Arlene Rosencrans, our very first volunteer of the month, got the ball rolling and a week or so later Kelsey Stanbro and her volleyball team knocked it out of the park, then CRWP Board Member Gloria Jones and her husband finished strong! All volunteers had the entire site cleaned up in no time!
💪🏽 THANK YOU so much to all of you for showing up, cleaning up, and caring about our community recycling depot. You all rock!
CopperRiver.org
#Recycling #Glennallen #CopperBasin #communityeffort
The first people, who have lived here since the very beginning, have been stewarding this watershed for a long, long time. We are grateful to live here and work in partnership with the Eyak, Ahtna, Sugpiaq and Tlingit People, as we learn and work to support the restoration of our watershed in partnership with our Tribal partners. `Awa’ahdah and Tsin’aen for stewarding this watershed with deep wisdom and knowledge.
📷 Ian Lingard/CRWP - The Copper River south of Gulkana.
#IndigenousPeoplesDay #Eyak #Ahtna #Sugpiaq #Tlingit #copperriverwatershed
The CRWP team had a great time at the third annual Ocean Sciences Festival last week!
The event was hosted by the pwssc, one of our heroic local partners and member of the akcoralnetwork. It was wonderful talking with so many students of different ages (grades 3-12) about the salmon life cycle, the interplay between salt & fresh water and why it`s important to their life cycle, and salmon habitat preservation and restoration. It was a fun day - thanks for having us!
CopperRiver.org
📷 Photo 1 Kate Morse/CRWP and Photo 2 & 3 Jillian Gold/CRWP - Students stop by the CRWP table to learn about salmon at the Ocean Sciences Festival. Photo 4 Kate Morse/CRWP - Micah Phillips, a Copper River Stewardship Program participant, helped host a booth about the stewardship program and talked with students about glaciers.
♻️CORDOVA — Next week, bring in your old fishing web and aluminum cans for recycling!
Your used fishing gear can be repurposed into handy things like knives, shoes, and hats when you recycle it instead of sending it to the landfill.
🗓️ WHEN: October 13 and 14, 10am - 3pm
📍 WHERE: Baler on Whitshed Road
Web has to be free of cork lines, weed lines, lead lines, purse lines, chafe gear and hangings but
corks, leads, chafe and purse lines can be recycled separately.
.
.
👉🏼 We need volunteers to help process fishing web. If you can donate some time, please sign up for shifts on this google form and let us know when you`re available to help. THANK YOU for helping!
📋 Sign up to volunteer here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjwievoedzOHqnJJXkrmaWW_V2wicWoY8XrC97-7eQXEuBvw/viewform
.
.
🥫When you recycle cans, the money from your cans goes towards supporting the fishing web recycling effort!
Learn more about our recycling program at https://copperriver.org/programs/recycling/
#fishingwebrecycling #recyclingmatters #repurpose #CordovaAlaska
Birds are cool. They get to fly with feathered wings above the landscape that gravity holds the rest of us to. They get to see the big picture, the far-away, the distant mountains, and all that happens on the ground while soaring and twirling through thin air. Seriously, how cool is that?
The closest we get is riding in a helicopter or plane, which is pretty neat too. Our summer plant technician, Moshe, took his first helicopter ride out to Kayak Island this summer and said it was incredible. On the way back, he took this shot of the Copper River carving through the delta before it spills into the Gulf of Alaska.
What an amazing world we live in. Fish swim home by smelling the river they were born in. Humans fly in machines along with the birds. Rivers braid and carve the land, creating an artery for all kinds of life. Sometimes you have to get above it all to really see how magnificent this world is. Especially when your corner of the world is as big as this 🙂
📷 Moshe Cotton/CRWP - The Copper River flowing through the delta near Cordova.
#CopperRiver #CopperRiverDelta #BirdsEyeView
Last week, the pwsc_cordova Forestry course visited the Copper River Delta and spent a day with CRWP learning about the intersection between forests, streams and roadways.
Fifteen students and two instructors completed two different outings. With CRWP Executive Director Kate Morse, participants learned about fish passage and visited culverts that were replaced this summer. They checked minnow traps to confirm that Coho aged 1-3 were enjoying their open pathway across the Copper River Highway.
This group also toured the Sheridan Glacier floodplain and learned how the river is significantly eroding land on the north side of the highway due to the highway bridge not being big enough to handle Sheridan River waters. As the river is forced to release its energy upstream, it is eroding USFS Road 220 and eyakcorp (TEC) lands. CRWP and TEC are working together to hire an engineer to evaluate the flood plain and provide recommendations on how to save the road.
While the group was with Moshe, our summer Plant Technician, participants learned about vegetation on the land next to Sheridan Glacier. Moshe shared his experience gathering native seed collections on the Copper River Delta, and participants got to collect lupine seeds for our Cordova native seed bank.
CopperRiver.org
📷 Kate Morse/CRWP - Prince William Sound Forestry course participants visiting culverts and checking minnow traps with Kate Morse.
#CordovaAlaska #CollegeForestryCourse #FishPassage #NativePlants
COPPER BASIN - We`re so happy to report the tributary to the Little Tonsina river along the Bernard Creek Trail is now flowing freely!
The old culvert was removed, the streambank and slopes were shored up seeded with native seeds, and boulders were placed to block access. Photo #1 shows the old culvert, perched above the streambed. Photo #2 & #3 shows the stream now, after restoration, flowing freely.
🐟 The salmon will be happy about that!
Thank you to the contractor who completed the work, Blackburn Industries, and to our partners and funders for making this habitat restoration possible: mypubliclands, the noaa, and the Chugach Alaska Corporation.
CopperRiver.org
📷 Kirsti Jurica/CRWP
#CopperBasin #RichardsonHighway #ConstructionProject #fishpassage #haibtatrestoration
As field season starts to wind down, we`d like to give a big shout-out and thank you to our awesome Cordova Plant Technician, Moshe, for coming aboard this summer to work with CRWP! Today is Moshe`s last day with us this season.
Moshe did a lot of work with the Native Plant Program collecting seeds and data, and did some great outreach at events this summer in Cordova giving out native seeds packets to folks and sharing information on how important it is to plant native plants. Moshe also hopped on a helicopter and rode out to work on Kayak Island.
"It was a really cool experience getting to go to remote places to work in the field and do seed collection. Another thing I really loved doing this season was interacting with the community as much as possible. When I was out doing seed collections people would stop by and ask what I was doing. Everyone was really interested. It was a great feeling to be able to share that with people." — Moshe Cotton
The CRWP Team thanks you for all the great work and outreach Moshe!
📷 Moshe Cotton/CRWP - Moshe collecting lupine seeds along the shores of Sheridan Glacier lake.
#StaffShoutOut #Cordova #NativePlantProgram #ThankYou
CORDOVA - Tomorrow is the LAST day to purchase a Sandpiper Cream Ale from copperriverbrewing and have $1 from your purchase donated to CRWP to support habitat restoration work!
You love to fish. Fish need healthy habitat to thrive, spawn, and return again to this watershed. It`s a win-win, plus you get to quench your thirst with some good brew after a long day on the water.
If you want give more, Copper River Brewing makes it easy! Just add $1, $3, or $5 to your tab at checkout to help open more miles of fish passage in the Copper River watershed.
.
Drink responsibly. Donate recklessly.
.
Find out more about our fish habitat restoration work at https://copperriver.org/programs/fish-habitat-restoration/
#CopperRiverBrewing #CordovaAlaska #BeerSpecial #SalmonHabitatRestoration
You’re Invited!
Join us for our upcoming Open House at the Copper River Watershed Project office in Cordova on Friday, November 6th. Check out our newly renovated space, meet the CRWP board members, and hear the latest on the Eyak Lake Weir restoration project!
WHEN: Friday, November 6, 5:30pm-7:00pm
WHERE: CRWP Office (across from the Front Door Store)
Our Programs Making a Difference
