Food Security

Kwiaht wants everyone in the islands to have access to affordable, healthy, and sustainable wild foods. We are using our social media to share information about ethical harvesting, underutilized species, and delicious and nutritious ways to prepare and preserve the harvest. Because knowledge isn't the only barrier to harvesting wild food we are also starting an initiative to purchase fishing licenses for islanders who would have difficulty affording them, and building a lending library of harvesting and processing tools.

Our seasonal harvest recommendations include information on rules for harvesting on public lands, and we are looking for private landowners interested in hosting managed community harvests (sceduled, monitored, and socially distant) of wild greens, berries, seaweed, and shellfish. We will work with tideland owners to enhance or seed shellfish beds if they host community harvests.

During the pandemic our food outreach events will be take-out only for safely, and food demonstrations will be by online videos. If you'd like to contribute a video of wild food harvesting or processing get in touch, we can arrange to have your lesson recorded and shared.

Learning about what you plan to harvest is critical, not only to your success, but also for sustainability. We are happy to identify wild species for those wanting to harvest them, please ask for identification help before you harvest rather than collecting what you may not be able to safely consume!

Want to get involved? You can invite a managed community harvest, donate to our license fund, donate supplies to our lending library (fishing poles, crab traps, canning jars, clam shovels, etc.), or share recipes or techniques! You can request help purchasing a fishing license, ask for more information about harvesting particular species, ask others to share their harvest, or ask for help identifying a plant or animal.