While salmon are interesting, it was the environment that attracted Bev Lee to Issaquah’s hatchery.

When she first moved to the city, she regularly visited the hatchery’s foot bridge to soak in the sounds of rushing water and enjoy the cool air coming off the creek.

The more she visited, the more she learned from volunteers about how much pollution hurts the salmon runs.

“Their passion for it really rubbed off,” she recalled.

A volunteer with the Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery for about nine years, she’s now in charge of organizing the dozens of volunteers who lead weekly tours through the hatchery.

The demand for tours has been higher than ever this year. FISH needs to fill about 50 spots to be ready for the salmon return this fall.

The tours are packed with information about salmon spawning, the food chain, the hatchery and human impact on the fish.

The highest demand for the free tours is in the fall, when classes are back in school and the salmon are beginning their return.

This year the tours are becoming so popular that groups of kids have been coming all summer.

On the tour she stops at the statue of two great salmon at the end of their life cycle. The male’s nose is crooked like an old man’s. It’s for fighting off competition over the females, she says.

Animal imprints mark up the concrete on the footbridge representing natural predators to the salmon. Kids try to guess what animals the prints belong to.

In the fall, she leads visitors along the fish ladder, explaining the salmon’s natural want to head up stream.

Kids peer through the holding tank at the top.

Protecting the environment is woven through her tour, and so are facts about what make salmon unique and how the hatchery works.

When Lee was a girl, people didn’t know much about polluting lakes and streams. They often thought it eventually just cleaned itself, she said.

“We know better than that now,” she said. “It stays in our environment for years and years and years.”

FISH is her chance to teach kids what she wishes she knew at that age.

The nonprofit asks that volunteers be available for a few tours a week through the fall. The free training session is 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Aug. 27. To sign up e-mail volunteer@issaquahfish.org.