Online Watershed Festival will include salmon crafts, critter parade and a mobile zoo

The Nisqually Watershed Festival, set for Saturday, Sept. 26, is happening online this year, but pretty much the only thing that will be missing from the celebration of the watershed and the creatures that dwell there is the traditional salmon bake.

The 31st festival, livestreaming on YouTube, includes presentations, performances and crafts presented by pretty much all of the organizations that normally contribute to the annual event.

How big is it? The livestream, beginning at 10 a.m., is scheduled to run nearly five hours — just one hour shy of the six hours the festival lasts when it’s held in person at the Billy Frank Jr. National Wildlife Refuge in Olympia.

You don’t need to watch it from beginning to end, though. There’s an online schedule so you can plan when to tune in, and the content will remain online after the streaming ends.

Among the perennial favorites included in Saturday’s stream will be a demonstration of how to make a salmon print T-shirt (yes, as many newcomers to the Northwest are surprised to learn, this is done using a dead fish), a visit from Mr. Lizard’s Mobile Zoo, and the critter parade that signals the festival’s end.

This year’s parade will be a short one, featuring physically distanced festival organizers showing off masks they made, but viewers can participate by making their own masks and sharing on social media.

The mask-making is just one of the activities for kids that’s already available on the Nisqually River Council’s website. There are instructions for making a bracelet with colored beads representing the salmon life cycle, paper salmon to decorate and a link to the Nisqually Delta Restoration Puzzle created by Lucia Harrison, a professor emeritus of The Evergreen State College.

More crafts will be part of the livestream, and those who want to follow along might want to gather a forked stick, a paper bag and some markers or paint to make a stick snail or a cardboard egg carton, paint and maybe googly eyes to make egg-carton oysters.

The livestream also will include literal streams, with video of the Nisqually, Middle Nisqually and Mashel rivers, and drone footage of some of the most remote areas of the watershed, including Mount Rainier National Park and protected areas that aren’t normally open to the public.

“We’ll have a bird’s-eye view of some of the places that are very hard to get to if you’re not a bird,” said Emily McCartan of the Nisqually River Council, which organizes the festival in cooperation with the refuge, the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Nisqually Reach Nature Center and Tacoma Public Utilities.

“A virtual festival isn’t going to be quite as much fun as everyone getting together, but it gives us a chance to share some different corners of the watershed,” she told The Olympian.

There’s another advantage, too. Festival attendance always depends on the weather, with a clear day drawing crowds of up to 1,500 and a rainy one attracting only half that number. Weather forecasters are predicting rain this Saturday.

For an online event, though, wet weather just might be a plus, said Sheila Wilson of the council.

“I hope people take advantage of the rain in the forecast and jump online and check it out,” she said.

Nisqually Watershed Festival

• What: The 31st annual festival, a celebration of the animals, ecosystems and cultures that distinguish the watershed, is happening online.
• When: 10 a.m.-2:45 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26
• Where: YouTube
• Admission: Free, with donations appreciated
• More information: http://nisquallyriver.org/festival/
• Visit the Billy Frank Jr. National Wildlife Refuge: Though the festival can’t be held there this year, the refuge, at 100 Brown Farm Road NE, is open from dawn to dusk daily. The Visitor Center is closed, and parking is limited to help prevent overcrowding. Find out more at the refuge’s website.