Olympic Opportunities for Support

Washington's National Park Fund is actively seeking charitable contributions to help make these projects possible in Olympic National Park.

 

Elwha Pathways for Youth - $134,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Elwha - Youth Development
The Elwha River Restoration is the National Park Service's second largest restoration project, and Olympic National Park has set goals to include youth in many parts of this project. From collecting and cleaning seeds to planting techniques and greenhouse maintenance, youth will gain fundamental skills in physical sciences. By connecting youth to the park for such a major project, Olympic will gain a new generation of advocates and park stewards, all while educating them on the importance of the Elwha project.

Citizen Science: Olympic Marmot Monitoring - $10,300
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Scientific Research
Beginning in the summer of 2010, Washington's National Park Fund and Olympic National Park began a project to track marmot populations throughout the park with the help of volunteer citizen scientists. Over the course of the summer, about 90 volunteers will gather information vital to the park's management decisions in order to preserve the species. This project will be the third year, and the park hopes to sustain the incredible level of volunteer involvement experienced in past years.

How Healthy are the Elk in Olympic? - $5,500
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Scientific Research
From 2008 to 2010, Olympic National Park has been able to capture more than 50 elk for biological samples, and to fit with radio GPS collars. The biological samples that were gathered from these elk need to be tested in order to gain a better understanding of the health of elk within the park. Setting a baseline with this data will enable the park to have more control over wildlife diseases, as well as provide a better habitat for the park's iconic animal.

Mountain Goats Study - $5,000
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Scientific Research
Throughout the years, mountain goats have continued to be a topic of controversy in Olympic National Park. The management of these animals, their impact on their high-country habitats, as well as their origination, has created a large collection of informational and archival materials. This collection needs to be preserved in park archives in order to be used in the future by park management and outside resources alike. In addition, the completion of this enormous will significantly reduce the park's backlog of resources to be cataloged.

Glacier Meadows Ranger Station Replacement - $17,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Building/Structure Enhancements
Glacier Meadows Ranger Station is used by all park visitors who visit Mount Olympus in Olympic National Park. More than 500 hikers and more than 2400 backpackers visit this iconic mountain each year. This ranger station provides a ranger at close range in order to protect both the human visitors, and the unique sub-alpine and alpine resources. To remain fully functional, this ranger station needs to have its platform replaced, as well as the yurt. This project will enable to park to replace these items, all which must be done via helicopter transport..

Queets Homestead Ethnohistory and Cultural Landscape Inventory - $55,608
Focus Area: Connecting People to Parks - History

Expansion of "For Kids" section of the Park Website - $20,000
Focus Area: Connecting People to Parks - Youth & Technology
Olympic National Park has set goals to engage youth as well as create a more useful and interpretive website. With these goals in mind, the park needs to develop and include the following topics within the park website: family-friendly hikes and activities, kid friendly facts, stewardship activities for kids, downloadable pre-visit activities, and opportunities for youth to share their experiences within the park. Through this outreach, greater opportunities will exist for youth to strengthen their connections with the park.

Alternative Transportation Trip Planning Guide - $8,000
Focus Area: Connecting People to Parks - Publications
To better meet their goal of becoming a Climate Friendly Park, Olympic National Park is in need of a brochure for visitors with information about public transportation throughout the park. By providing route information, connections to key park destinations, and other travel information, the park hopes to reduce vehicle miles within the park, and lower the carbon footprint left by patrons. This brochure will highlight options for those arriving without a private vehicle, as those who travel over from Canada on the ferry often do.

Adopt-A-Fish: Tracking the Return of Pacific Salmon to the Elwha River - $38,750
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Elwha - Scientific Research
For nearly a century, salmon migrations into Olympic National Park have been blocked on the Elwha River by hydroelectric dams. Beginning in the fall of 2011, two large dams will be removed and Pacific Salmon will regain access their historical habitat. This project will allow fish biologists to tag and track 75 adult salmon to determine how far, how fast, and where these fish go during the decolonization of the Elwha.

Preserving Olympic Oral Histories - $8,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Preservation
Oral Histories are used for a variety of projects throughout Olympic National Park, by both staff and outside researchers. The park currently has more than 400 individual stories, all on cassette tapes. This project will allow a museum technician to reformat and transfer these files to archival CDs. The equipment to complete this project has already been acquired, but the technical support is needed in order to preserve these oral histories for generations of future use.

Protecting Two Endemic Fish Species in Lake Crescent - $18,000
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Scientific Research
Lake Crescent is the crown jewel of Olympic National Park because of its unique fish populations, scenic setting, ultra-clear water, and breathtaking beauty. Two co-occurring populations of fish, the endemic rainbow (Beardslee) and cutthroat trout (Crescenti), have been isolated in Lake Crescent for several thousand years when access to the Elwha River was eliminated by a prehistoric landslide. These two populations are distinct from other races in many ways, and the parks have gone to great lengths to protect them from fishing and environmental threats. Funding for this project will allow the park better manage these unique fish, by improving fishery practices and to create interpretive signs to be installed at popular access point along the lake. These signs will be viewed by thousands of visitors, boaters and anglers, and will provide critical information about fishery practices and the fish themselves.

Develop Iconic Artwork for Improved Visitor Understanding and Experience - $15,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Building/Structure Enhancements
Olympic National Park would like to create a graphic identity and visual brand for ten front-country areas in the park: Staircase, Hurricane Ridge, Elwha, Lake Crescent, Sol Duc, Ozette, Mora/Rialto, Hoh Kalaloch and Lake Quinault. This project will provide park visitors with a better understanding of the significant resources for each area of the park, and create a visual brand for each area of the park that will be consistently used throughout park publications, the park website, concessionaire items, as well as future signage designed for the park.

Three Chops: CRM - $3,000
Focus Area:
More information on this project to come.

Tracking Ocean Acidification - $6,696
Focus Area: Protecting Wildlife - Scientific Research
The coast of Olympic National Park is a biodiversity hotspot and encompasses over 750 species of marine invertebrates and seaweeds. In order to properly protect these organisms and marine species, acidification levels of the ocean water must be monitored often. These species, especially ones that use calcium carbonate to form shells and other structures, depend on the healthy pH level of the water they call home. Funding for this project will allow the park to continue to track the pH of the ocean water that directly contacts the diverse assemblage of these marine organisms along the park shoreline.

Provide Elwha Outreach and Education - $17,000
Focus Area: Connecting People to Parks - Elwha - General Outreach
As the Elwha River Restoration moves into the next phase of dam removal and ecosystem restoration, public interest in the project continues to grow. Olympic National Park has made it a goal to increase the amount of information available about this project, as well as to increase the availability of rangers available to interpret this information. Funding for this project will allow the park to bring in a ranger specifically for Elwha-based outreach.

Ozette Archaeology Project Archives - $10,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Preservation
In 1970, Washington State University, The Makah Tribe, Olympic National Park and the National Park Service began a project that would take over a decade to complete, excavating and studying materials discovered from an ancient village that was buried under a mudflow which preserved an incredible array of artifacts. The project director, Dr. Richard Daugherty, has recently made these valuable records available to the park, and they are in need of being properly archived. This project will enable the park to properly archive this incredible information for future management and research use.

Shrinking Glaciers of Olympic National Park - $8,590
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Climate Change
A recent inventory of glaciers in Olympic National Park has determined that the area covered by glacial ice has dramatically changed in the last three decades. Nearly 30% of the glaciers are now gone. Although five of the major glaciers within the park are being monitored, adding information gained from other glaciers will help determine the true amount of loss of Olympic's glaciers. Data gathered from this project will be used in park interpretive and web based materials which tell the story of climate change and the impacts on these important features.

Public Outreach Assistant - $20,000
Focus Area: Connecting People to Parks - General Outreach
Olympic National Park is currently preparing a new Wilderness Stewardship Plan, which will eventually provide fundamental guidance and direction for the long-term management of the park. This project will significantly enhance the development of this plan by engaging the park's gateway communities, as well as the broader Puget Sound Area. Through a variety of public outreach tools, including newsletters, social media, the park website, the park blog and public meetings, the park will be connecting with the public to ensure park stakeholders are aware of the wilderness planning effort, and are actively engaged in the conversation.

Update Resource Protection and Visitor Safety Exhibits at Hurricane Ridge - $15,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Building/Structure Enhancements
Visitor-wildlife interactions and visitor trampling of fragile sub-alpine vegetation at Hurricane Ridge is a topic of concern for park management at Olympic National Park. Visitors are frequently seen feeding wildlife, and failing to give wildlife sufficient space. To properly protect visitors, wildlife, and the landscape alike, the park needs to create new wayside exhibits with updated information, higher quality and include multiple languages. This project will enable the park to reach the 200,000 people who visit the short, paved nature trails accessible from Hurricane Ridge each year.

Curation of Olympic National Park Maintenance Archives - $10,000
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Preservation
Olympic National Park currently has an incredible backlog of valuable maintenance files, in desperate need of being archived for future management and research. These materials include project files, slides, photographs, drawings and correspondence that this project would allow to be properly curated in archival storage materials and properly added to park archives.

Enhance Park Audio Tour - $15,500
Focus Area: Connecting People to the Parks - Technology
In 2012, Olympic National Park will launch it audio tour of the park, with an emphasis on the Elwha Valley and the current Elwha River Restoration. In order for this project to be a complete success, funding is needed to complete the planning, scripting and recording of the tour. In addition, signage is needed to inform visitors about the tour. Other similar NPS parks have launched this program and experienced huge successes, with numbers of users in the hundreds of thousands. In today's growing technological population, reaching out to a new audience through this exciting and interactive outlet creates a channel to reach new stewards and advocates for the park.

Conduct Annual Mass Balance Measurements of the Blue Glacier - $5,190
Focus Area: Greener Parks - Climate Change
The Blue Glacier is the largest glacier in Olympic National Park and has one of the longest records of study in the lower 48 states. It is a major contributor of water to the Hoh River, regulating flows and river temperatures. Funding for this program will allow the park to continue studies used to determine whether glaciers are growing or shrinking during the year. As climates shift, this information will be invaluable for understanding the impacts to aquatic species in the Hoh River, as well as application to other river habitats.

 

Thank you!