AUBURN — The Green River Community Community College was put on lockdown Monday after a student made a veiled threat to a faculty member.
A large police presence was seen on the campus in the 1200 block of SE 320th Street in Auburn around 10:50 a.m.
Police sources said a student made a threat to a faculty member, and police were called to the school. No weapons were seen and the student is no longer on the campus, sources said.
Officers checked the college following the threat.
Some in the area tweeted about the event around 10:50 a.m. Monday, posting pictures of a lockdown message sent to students.
The threat follows a shooting event at a high school in Marysville Friday that left three students dead. This was the second police call to an area school Monday, as a Molotov cocktail was discovered at a Seattle high school.
The Center School was evacuated after a 16-year-old brought a Molotov cocktail to school, the Seattle School District said.
KIRO 7 News
SEATTLE — Seattle police said a 16-year-old is in custody after bringing an incendiary device to school.
The boy brought was is known as a “Molotov cocktail” to the Center School, located in the Seattle Center’s Center House, according to the Seattle School District.
Other students reported it to staff and the school has been evacuated as a precaution.
Officers posted a message about the incident on their Twitter account Monday at about 9:30 a.m.
No one was hurt.
Seattle police and Seattle fire are investigating.
Divers measured as many as 200 juvenile sea stars in a square meter at a site on the North Jetty in Florence. | credit: Courtesy of Oregon Coast Aquarium
Divers at the Oregon Coast Aquarium say they have new hope that sea stars will recover from the widespread wasting syndrome that’s wiping them out all along the Pacific coast.
This month they found thousands of thumbnail-sized juvenile sea stars, commonly called starfish, on the North Jetty in Florence.
Diver Jenna Walker said her team didn’t recognize them as sea stars at first because there were so many, and they were so small.
“It was overwhelming,” she said. “When we first got down there it looked like the rocks were covered with barnacles. We soon realized those white spots were thousands and thousands of stars. I have never seen them in numbers like that. It was pretty incredible.”
The divers counted as many as 200 juvenile sea stars in a square meter. They were too small for the divers to identify their species. Adult sea stars were completely absent from the site.
It’s difficult to determine where the new sea stars originated, according to Stuart Clausen, assistant curator of fishes and invertebrates for the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
“Sea stars start out as plankton and drift wherever currents will carry them,” he said.
Clausen said the juveniles in Florence may be the first sign of sea star recovery in Oregon.
“We are not out of the woods yet, but it is encouraging,” he said. “It means some adults survived or at least put viable gametes in the water before being affected.”
Divers with the aquarium plan to monitor the juvenile sea stars in Florence with regular trips to the site in the coming months.
The shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School Friday comes as Washington voters are about to decide two competing gun-related ballot measures.
Credit Colin Fogarty / Northwest News Network
In fact, next week two parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook school shooting are scheduled to be in Seattle. They will campaign for Initiative 594 to expand background checks.
The background check campaign put out a statement shortly after the shooting. It said, in part: “While the facts of today’s shooting are still unclear … It is up to all of us to come together and work to reduce gun violence.”
Cheryl Stumbo is the sponsor of Initiative 594 and a shooting survivor. Stumbo acknowledges that most school shooters obtain their guns from home or a relative.
“594 if and when it passes is obviously not going to prevent all gun violence in our state, but it is a way for us to do something,” she said.
Stumbo said she’s convinced if I-594 passes it will save some lives.
Initiative 591 is the competing gun rights measure on Washington’s ballot. It would prevent the state from adopting a background check requirement that goes beyond what federal law requires. That campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The National Rifle Association also held back in contrast to gun control advocates who were vocal in the hours after the Marysville shooting.
Well, it’s nearly Halloween, which means it’s that time of year again when cultural misappropriation runs amok; when you end up at a party and some one comes clad in faux Native American garb, i.e. a chicken-feathered headdress and multi-colored racing stripes on his face. Invariably, the man’s date comes costumed as a “Pocahottie,” and is completely oblivious to the plague of violence against indigenous women in North America. So, folks, here are 15 people who have publicly expressed their interest in dressing up as a Native American this year. Be warned. Some of these are pretty awful:
Indigenous rights offer a path to a radically more just and sustainable country – which is why the Canadian government is bent on eliminating them
Fish Lake on Tsilhqot’in territory in British Columbia, where the Indigenous Tsilhqot’in nation has prevented a copper and gold mine from being built. Photograph: Friends of the Nemaiah Valley
The unrest is palpable. In First Nations across Canada, word is spreading of a historic court ruling recognizing Indigenous land rights. And the murmurs are turning to action: an eviction notice issued to a railway company in British Columbia; a park occupied in Vancouver; lawsuits launched against the Enbridge tar sands pipeline; a government deal reconsidered by Ontario Algonquins; and sovereignty declared by the Atikamekw in Quebec.
These First Nations have been emboldened by this summer’s Supreme Court of Canada William decision, which recognized the aboriginal title of the Tsilhqot’in nation to 1,750 sq km of their land in central British Columbia – not outright ownership, but the right to use and manage the land and to reap its economic benefits.
The ruling affects all “unceded” territory in Canada – those lands never signed away through a treaty or conquered by war. Which means that over an enormous land mass – most of British Columbia, large parts of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, and a number of other spots – a new legal landscape is emerging that offers the prospect of much more responsible land stewardship.
First Nations are starting to act accordingly, and none more so than the Tsilhqot’in. They’ve declared a tribal park over a swath of their territory. And they’ve announced their own policy on mining – a vision that leaves room for its possibility, but on much more strict environmental terms. Earlier this month they erected a totem pole to overlook a sacred area where copper and gold miner Taseko has for years been controversially attempting to establish itself; no mine will ever be built there.
And the Canadian government’s response? Far from embracing these newly recognised indigenous land rights, they are trying to accelerate their elimination. The court has definitively told Canada to accept the reality of aboriginal title: the government is doing everything in its power to deny it.
Canadians can be pardoned for believing that when the country’s highest court renders a decision, the government clicks their heels and sets themselves to implementing it. The judiciary directs, the executive branch follows: that’s how we’re taught it works. But it doesn’t always – and especially not when what’s at stake is the land at the heart of Canada’s resource extraction.
The new land rights ruling is now clashing directly with the Canadian government’s method for cementing their grip on land and resources. It’s a negotiating policy whose name – the so-called Comprehensive Land Claims – is intended to make your eyes glaze over. But its bureaucratic clothing disguises the government’s naked ambition: to grab as much of indigenous peoples’ land as possible.
This is what dispossession by negotiation looks like. The government demands that First Nations trade away – or in the original term, to “extinguish” – their rights to 95% of their traditional territory. Their return is some money and small parcels of land, but insidiously, as private property, instead of in the collective way that indigenous peoples have long held and stewarded it. And First Nations need to provide costly, exhaustive proof of their rights to their own land, for which they have amassed a stunning $700 million in debt – a debt the government doesn’t think twice about using to arm-twist.
Despite the pressure, most First Nations have not yet signed their names to these crooked deals – especially when the supreme court is simultaneously directing the government to reconcile with First Nations and share the land. But the supreme court’s confirmation that this approach is unconstitutional and illegal matters little to the government. What enables them to flout their own legal system is that Canadians remain scarcely aware of it.
Acting without public scrutiny, prime minister Stephen Harper is trying to shore up support for this policy – now 40 years old – to finally secure the elimination of indigenous land rights. The process is led by the same man, Douglas Eyford, who has been Harper’s advisor on getting tar sands pipelines and energy projects built in western Canada. That is no coincidence. The government is growing more desperate to remove the biggest obstacle that stands in the way of a corporate bonanza for dirty fossil fuels: the unceded aboriginal title of First Nations – backed now by the supreme court of Canada.
A public commenting period opened during the government’s pr blitz has created an opportunity for the indigenous rights movement and concerned Canadians to demand a long-overdue change in the government’s behaviour. Recognising aboriginal title, restoring lands to First Nations management, would be to embrace the diversity and vision we desperately need in this moment of ecological and economic crisis.
Because the government agenda is not just about extinguishing indigenous land rights. It’s about extinguishing another way of seeing the world. About extinguishing economic models that prize interdependence with the living world, that recognise prosperity isn’t secured by the endless depletion of resources. And about extinguishing a love for the land, a love rooted in the unique boundaries and beauty of a place.
“The land is the most important thing,” Tsilhqot’in chief Roger William told me. “Our songs, our place names, our history, our stories – they come from the land that we are a part of. All of it is interrelated with who we are.”
The few days I spent in Tsilhqot’in territory five years ago made that vivid. It is a land of snow-capped mountains – Ts’il-os, who in their stories was a man transformed into giant rock after separating from his wife. Wild horses stalk the valleys. Salmon smoke on drying racks. The Tsilhqot’in carefully protect and nurture these fish – running stronger in their rivers than anywhere else in the province.
That’s why the habit of government officials, of media and even of supreme court judges to call the Tsilhqoti’in “nomadic” bothers William so much: his people have lived on these lands for thousands of years, while it is non-natives who are constantly moving and resettling. And what could be more nomadic and transient than the extractive industry itself – grabbing what resources and profits it can before abandoning one area for another.
As Canadians look more closely, they are discovering that the unceded status of vast territories across this country is not a threat, as they’ve long been told. It is a tremendous gift, protected with love by indigenous nations over generations, to be seized for the possibilities it now offers for governing the land in a radically more just and sustainable way for everyone.
In this battle between the love of the land and a drive for its destruction, those behind the extractive economy have everything to lose and indigenous peoples everything to win. The rest of us, depending on our stand, have a transformed country to gain.
Atlanta, Georgia – Statement of the Executive Board of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
As tribal nations gather this week in Atlanta, Georgia for NCAI’s 71st Annual Convention, the NCAI Executive Board released the following joint statement:
“We are deeply saddened by the tragedy that occurred at Marysville-Pilchuck High School on Friday. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims, the students of Marysville School District, and the Tulalip tribes.
It is at times like these that Native communities from all across Indian County come together in support of each other. As Native peoples, we recognize that every youth is sacred. Each of the young people involved in this tragedy represent a loss to the Tulalip tribes and Indian Country – they were sons, daughters, friends, and future leaders of their communities.
Unfortunately, acts of violence in schools are occurring more frequently across the country and Native communities are not immune to inexplicable acts that leave their communities forever changed.
NCAI stands with all those who are grieving at this time – Native and non-Native. We are all mourning loss and by coming together we will be strengthened by our resolve, our hope, and our prayers. We will work closely with the Tulalip tribe and the surrounding community in any way we can to understand and address this horrible tragedy.”
NCAI President Cladoosby, a well-known leader in the Pacific Northwest, expressed his solidarity with the Tulalip tribes. “As a father and grandfather, my thoughts and prayers are with my Tulalip relatives. All of Indian Country is holding the Tulalip people in our thoughts and prayers.”
MARYSVILLE, Wash. — A student walked into his Seattle-area high school cafeteria on Friday and without saying a word opened fire, killing one person and shooting several others in the head before turning the gun on himself, officials and witnesses said.
Two people were found dead, including the male shooter and a female victim, inside the school north of Seattle. Three other students were critically injured and the shooter, a student at the school, killed himself, according to police, student and hospital reports.
The shooter is freshman Jaylen Fryberg, according to students and his family members. Marysville Police Commander Robb Lamoureux would not confirm whether the second person killed was a student or not.
Three of the victims had head wounds and were in critical condition. Two young women were taken to Providence Everett Medical Center.
A 15-year-old boy, Andrew Fryberg, was at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in critical condition, hospital officials said.
Austin Taylor said he was sitting about 10 feet from the shooter inside the cafeteria.
“I was sitting at the table right next to the round table (where the shooter was). I just got done eating my food. He was quiet, everyone was talking. All of sudden he stands up, pulls something out of his pocket. At first I thought it was someone making a really loud noise like a bag, a loud pop. There were four more after that. I saw three kids just fall from the table, like they were falling to the ground dead. I jumped under the table as fast as I could. When it stopped, I got back up and saw he was trying to reload his gun. And when that happened, I just ran in the opposite direction and I was out of there as fast as I could.”
Another student described his experience on campus following the incident.
“We all heard the fire alarm. We didn’t hear any gunshots because we were so far away,” said Bryce Vitcovitch, student. “We all started to evacuate into the field. Right when we got to the field, a teacher came running out obviously in a hurry and he was yelling to go back into the classrooms…We got into the classrooms immediately and from there rumors started flying.”
The Marysville-Pilchuck football coach said he was not at school, but checked in with his players by text.
“I’m just making sure my kids are safe,” Coach Brandon Carson said. “I don’t know if any players are involved. I have checked in with a few, and I have talked with a handful of kids.
“They said there’s a shooter in the lunchroom and that’s all I know.”
Di Andres, whose 17-year-old son is a student, said her son texted her about the shooting.
“He said that the school has been in lockdown and he’s been hiding in a closet in a classroom with some classmates,” said Andres. “As far as we know, he’s okay and safe with those other classmates.”
Governor Jay Inslee was briefed about the shooting.
A statement from his office said that he “like everybody is keeping these students and families in his prayers.”
The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office is assisting Marysville Police in the investigation.
FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich said the agency was also assisting and providing specialists to work with victims and their families.
Marysville-Pilchuck High School has many students from the Tulalip Indian tribe. State Sen. John McCoy, a tribal member, said the shooting had devastated the community.
“We’re all related in one shape or form. We live and work and play together,” he said.
Classes were canceled for the week of Oct. 27, according to the Marysville School District. Counselors will be available Friday from 6pm to 8pm and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at 4220 80th St. NE in Marysville.
A prayer vigil was planned for 6:30 p.m. Friday at The Grove Church, according to Pastor Andrew Munoz. Gov. Jay Inslee was among those in attendance.
Elizabeth Wiley and Susan Wyatt contributed to this report.
An eelgrass transplant consists of tying five eelgrass rhizomes together with a twist-tie and attaching it to a landscaping staple. The staple is then buried in the subtidal area where eelgrass is expected to flourish. More photos can be viewed by clicking on the photo.
Work will begin this week on the final phase of a major eelgrass restoration project located just outside Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island.
The project is at the site of the former Milwaukee Dock, near Pritchard Park. The dock, removed in the early 1990s, historically served the Wyckoff creosote plant; the area is now a Superfund cleanup site.
The dock was constructed in a dense subtidal meadow of eelgrass, which was further impacted by navigation channels that left two large depressions too deep for eelgrass to grow and flourish.
Eelgrass is recognized as one of the most valuable ecosystem components in Puget Sound. This project will contribute to the Puget Sound Partnership’s goal of increasing the amount of eelgrass habitat by 20 percent over the current baseline by 2020.
“The importance of eelgrass meadows to salmon and other fish and invertebrates is well documented,” said Tom Ostrom, salmon recovery coordinator for the Suquamish Tribe. “The depth of these depressions is what has prevented eelgrass from growing. Because the surrounding eelgrass is so dense and so robust, it makes this site a prime candidate for restoration.”
The Elliott Bay Trustee Council, which includes the tribe, began restoring the smaller of the two depressions in 2012; work begins this week on the larger depression. The work is being coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The work takes place in three stages: The existing eelgrass is temporarily transplanted from the edges of the depression to nearby areas. The depression then is filled with clean sediment. After the sediment settles, the eelgrass is re-planted in the filled depression and is expected to fill out the former bare area.
SCUBA divers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Sequim (PNNL) have transplanted eelgrass back into the smaller depression and begun removing eelgrass from the larger depression in preparation for filling.
PNNL scientists will monitor the restoration site annually for at least five years to document how well the transplanted eelgrass is growing and to assess the overall success of the project.
The first phase of the project, restoring the smaller depression, was funded by the Elliott Bay Trustee Council from funds set aside for restoration efforts under a legal settlement with Pacific Sound Resources. The settlement addressed natural resource damages resulting from the contamination at two Superfund sites in Puget Sound, including the Wyckoff facility in Eagle Harbor.
Most of the funding for restoration of the larger depression is from a $1.76M grant awarded to the Suquamish Tribe from the Puget Sound Partnership through the Puget Sound Acquisition and Restoration Fund, a state
fund program that targets high priority restoration projects that benefit salmon recovery. The grant is administered by the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will manage filling the larger depression.
More information about the Puget Sound Acquisition and Restoration program
The Puget Sound Acquisition and Restoration (PSAR) program was created in 2007 to help implement the most important habitat protection and restoration priorities. Funding is appropriated by the Legislature through the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, based on a request from the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP). PSP works with local entities to identify and prioritize the highest impact, locally-vetted, and scientifically-rigorous projects across Puget Sound. This funding is critical to advancing the most effective projects throughout our region.
Eelgrass Facts
Scientific name: Zostera marina
True flowering plant
Eelgrass meadows have very high primary production rates and are the base of numerous food webs
Roots and rhizomes stabilize the seabed
Meadows contribute to local oxygen budget, both above and below the seabed
Utilized for foraging, spawning, rearing, and as migration corridors by many commercially important fish and invertebrate species, marine mammals, and birds
Sequesters carbon, thus ameliorating the effects of ocean acidification
Elliott Bay Trustee Council
The Elliott Bay Trustee Council consists of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce; the U.S. Department of the Interior, represented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe; the Suquamish Tribe; and the Washington departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife.
The Squaxin Island Tribe is conducting snorkel surveys throughout the Deschutes River watershed, looking for stretches where coho go to feed and grow.
Each spring for the last three years, the tribe has released 100,000 juvenile coho into the Deschutes. They then follow up for months with snorkel surveys to see where the fish go. “What we’re looking for is coho habitat to protect and restore,” said Scott Steltzner, salmon biologist for the tribe. “And, obviously, the coho know where the best coho habitat is.”
The problem, however, is that low runs of coho to the Deschutes in recent decades mean there aren’t even enough coho to fill the available habitat. “We can guess what sort of habitat coho want, but the best way is to get out there and find out first hand,” Steltzner said. “But, to find where the good coho habitat is in the Deschutes, we need to put some coho in the river first.”
Because coho salmon spend an extra year in freshwater before heading out to the ocean, they are more dependent on river habitat than other salmon species.
In the past, the Deschutes River was the largest producer of coho in deep South Sound. Coho have been returning in low numbers for over 20 years since a landslide sent tons of sediment into the river. “The landslide wiped out coho in their main stronghold on Huckleberry Creek and they haven’t been able to re-establish themselves,” Steltzner said.
New forest practice rules put into place since the landslide would likely prevent the same type of catastrophic event from happening again.
The tribe will use the information from the snorkel surveys to plan on-the-ground restoration and protection efforts. “Finding where salmon rear in the Deschutes is the single largest data gap in proceeding with much-needed habitat work,” Steltzner said.
Because the upper Deschutes River is relatively undeveloped – less than 10 percent has been paved over – it’s still possible to restore salmon habitat and productivity. “There is a chance here to restore salmon productivity to historic levels,” said Andy Whitner, natural resources director for the tribe.
“Our way of life, our culture and economy have always been based around natural resources,” Whitener said. “Protecting and restoring salmon habitat is the most important thing we can do to restore salmon in the Deschutes and protect our treaty right to fish.”
