PORT ANGELES — Conservationist Dick Goin will be honored posthumously at the North Olympic Land Trust’s 8th annual Conservation Breakfast on Friday.
The breakfast will be at 9 a.m. at the Elks Naval Lodge, 131 E. First St., Port Angeles.
The breakfast is complimentary, but donations will be accepted.
Seating is limited, so RSVPs are required by contacting Brad Tesreau at 360-417-1815, ext. 4 or brad@northolympiclandtrust.org. A handful of some 200 seats were still available as of Tuesday.
Goin, who died in April at the age of 83, will receive posthumously the land trust’s 2016 Out Standing in the Field Award “for his decades of steadfast dedication to protecting quality fish habitat across the Olympic Peninsula,” said Tom Sanford, North Olympic Land Trust executive director.
Goin’s wife of 64 years, Marie, will accept the award on his behalf. Sam Brenkman, chief fisheries biologist for Olympic National Park, will present it.
Goin “passed on a lot of his experience and knowledge to Sam,” Sanford said.
Goin’s work
Goin was a keynote speaker at the Elwha River Science Symposium in 2011 to mark the beginning of the largest dam removal project in American history, the destruction of the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams on the Elwha River — a project to restore the river to its wild state and renew salmon habitat.
He documented the state of salmon in Peninsula rivers for decades and was an advocate for their well-being.
“He was a voice of many of the Olympic Peninsula rivers’ salmon and steelhead in addition to the Elwha,” Brenkman said shortly after Goin’s death.
“He spent the last seven decades observing and studying fishing and sharing information about these rivers,” Brenkman said.
“He was truly one of the keenest observers we all knew and was sort of universally recognized as an expert of these rivers.”
Goin was featured in newspapers and other publications on the Peninsula, in Seattle and in Colorado, Sanford said.
He appears in such videos as Voices of the Strait, Return of the River and The Memory of Fish, which is expected to be released this year.
Other awards
He and Marie received Clallam County Community Service awards in 2007 for their work with Volunteer Hospice as well as habitat restoration.
They also received the Eleanor Stopps Environmental Leadership Award from the Port Townsend Marine Science Center in 2011.
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles called him “an elder to us” and “an individual with a good heart.”
The land trust “is honored to be part of recognizing exceptional contributions of the late Dick Goin through its third annual Out Standing in the Field award,” Sanford said.
Prior recipients include the Jefferson Land Trust in 2015 and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s natural resources department in 2014.
“Each year, the land trust selects a local individual or organization to honor that embodies the spirit of the community in its efforts to conserve the farms, fish and forests that define the local landscape,” Sanford said.
Conservation Breakfast
The Conservation Breakfast is an opportunity for the community to come together and celebrate the conservation of open spaces, local food, local resources, healthy watersheds and recreational opportunities, according to Sanford.
The land trust has conserved land across Clallam County during its 25-year history.
It’s most recent was the Lyre Conservation Area, which is 280 acres along the Strait of Juan de Fuca abutting the mouth of the Lyre River west of Port Angeles.
The area opened to the public late last year. A grand opening celebration is planned for April 23.
The Lyre property includes the 3,000th acre that the land trust has directly conserved in Clallam County.
For more about the land trust, which is at 104 N. Laurel St., Suite 104, see northolympiclandtrust.org.
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Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3530 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter Arwyn Rice also contributed to this story.
