Hi Everybody,

I am Gino Lucchetti…perhaps, as Jimmy Buffet sings, “200 years too late”. Nonetheless, I am happy with both my life and with what I have been able to contribute to both society and the wild lands that we need to cherish and protect.

I grew up along the trout streams of rural north-central Pennsylvania. The family home, which I now own and care-take, is in a remote valley in the Allegheny National Forest. My earliest memories are of fishing and observing trout and other fishes and the ecology of the small streams there. I truly grew up with a fishing rod in hand! It was good early training for my subsequent career,

After high school, I traveled to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State to study at Peninsula College in Port Angeles where I fell in love with the PNW. Subsequently, I earned a BS from the University of Washington and a MS from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VA Tech) and then returned to the Pacific Northwest.

I have been a fisheries scientist/aquatic ecologist for some 50 years, The past 10 years I’ve been semi-retired, consulting and serving on non-profit boards. Previously, for 25 years, I worked as a senior staff scientist for King County (Seattle, WA) Department of Natural Resources providing resource assessment, research and policy support for the County’s diverse watershed planning, salmon recovery, river and land use management activities.

I have been involved in many of King County’s and Puget Sound Region’s salmon recovery, watershed planning and habitat protection and restoration efforts. I was a member of the County’s federally-recognized Endangered Species Act Biological Review Panel, the Tri-County Salmon Recovery Planning team, and served on Puget Sound Steelhead and Coastal Bull Trout technical recovery teams for NOAA and the USFWS, respectively.

Some of my other major activities include lead scientist for the Cedar and Hylebos Basin Plans, and project manager/lead scientist for projects that assessed floodplain and rural land use effects and regulatory effectiveness and compliance with the ESA. Prior to King County, I worked for a) the Tulalip Tribes (Marysville, WA) where I developed and managed Tribal programs for assessing and monitoring fish, habitat and water quality, b) the USFWS, conducting research on Columbia River salmon and their predators, c) Virginia Tech Cooperative Fisheries Unit, conducting research on trout and stream ecology and teaching Itchthyology labs, d) University of Washington Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit assisting in research on fish food habitats, effects of lake draw-down and logging, and e) US Forest Service (Forks, WA) conducting the Soleduck Ranger District’s first stream surveys.

I enjoy hiking along and fishing the world’s trout streams.