Kenai Watershed Forum

“We have tons of pictures of loons with fishing line wrapped around their beaks, their legs and their feet and their wings, and then they can't dive, and they can't feed themselves or preen or even take flight when it's time to migrate,” said Outreach Biologist Tamara Zeller.

Stream Watch was started in the mid-1990s by a group of fishermen intent on protecting the Kenai Peninsula’s salmon habitats. The program is jointly run by the Kenai Watershed Forum and the U.S. Forest Service and has an overarching goal of promoting watershed stewardship.

The initiative aims to raise awareness about declining king salmon runs within the Kenai watershed.

The Kenai River watershed gets a twice yearly checkup because of its natural and economic importance to the Kenai Peninsula. But the initiative is at risk of being shrunk because of increasing project costs.

Since 2019, Cook Inletkeeper has hosted “Shark Tank”-style events to solicit and help the community pick small-scale projects to back. The latest project's goal is to protect local salmon habitat.

Researchers on the Kenai Peninsula are on the hunt for a pesky waterweed – elodea. The invasive aquatic plant was first detected in the region a decade ago, and monitoring efforts are crucial to prevent its spread.

The Kenai Watershed Forum will host its first-ever Kenai River Fair this Saturday at Soldotna Creek Park. The education-driven fair is a spin-off of the Kenai River Festival, which ran until last year.

The Kenai Watershed Forum, a Soldotna-based nonprofit that works to promote healthy watersheds, recently gave a presentation about a restoration project the organization has undertaken. The project aims to stabilize a local streambank, which can decrease erosion and protect native fish habitat.

The Kenai Watershed Forum is hosting its annual speaker series, highlighting local presenters involved with environmental, outdoor or recreational projects. Last week’s event featured Dom Watts, a biologist and pilot with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who has been studying mountain goat populations on the Kenai Peninsula.

The International Fly Fishing Film Festival will be held at Main Street Tap and Grill in Kenai next Monday. Hosted by the Kenai Peninsula Chapter of Trout Unlimited, the event will showcase a number of fishing-related short films from around the world.