Meet our new team member: Erin Heist

Hi! My name is Erin Heist, and I'm a salmon lover. In April I started working for our Southeast Alaskan salmon with the Salmon Beyond Borders team as the new outreach coordinator. We've had a lot going on with Salmon Beyond Borders this summer, so even though I've only been in the job for three months, you may have already read some of my emails, met me on the docks, seen me in the 4th of July parade, or liked one of my pictures on Instagram.

I'm a Southeast girl through and through. Born in Ketchikan, raised in Juneau, I am a die-hard advocate for our Southeast Alaskan way of life. And wild, healthy salmon are at the heart of what it means to love this place. Whether you live in the big city of Juneau or you're a year-rounder in Angoon, salmon shape your life. They fuel the people, the animals, and even the land through the nutrients they provide to our forest.

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I sometimes find it difficult to explain to friends and family in the lower 48 what it feels like to be of a place like Alaska. Like a lot of Southeast Alaskans, my fridge, freezer, and pantry is full of food I hunted, fished, and foraged (which I blog about at foodabe.com). We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, in a landscape that not only inspires, but provides and sustains us. There's a fashion right now for locally-sourced, organic, natural, non-GMO, wild foods. For once, we Alaskans are on the cutting edge, because we've always known the intense connection and thankfulness that comes from the intimacy of harvesting our own food.
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In the office the other day we were talking about 'salmon love stories.' I'm not sure I have one grand love story to salmon, more like lots of little stories. The magic I felt as a kid when my dad would fillet a just-caught salmon and let us hold that still beating chestnut of a heart; the first time I hooked a bright silver on a fly rod, the hen bursting from the water to try and shake me off; the rich distinct smell of low-tide in spawning season, awful and wonderful at the same time; the taste of the summer's first king shared with friends around a midnight bonfire.

Do you have a salmon love story? Share it with us!

This love for our salmon is what drives my work with Salmon Beyond Borders. It is unthinkable to me that some of the largest open-pit mines in the world are under development in the headwaters of some of our most important salmon rivers - we're talking Pebble Mine in our back yard. B.C.'s record is horrible, and after what we saw happen to the Fraser River watershed just three years ago when the Mt. Polley Mine disaster happened, we have to do do everything we can to defend our salmon rivers.

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Mt. Polley mine waste.