Our initial reaction to this story is that the Partnership needs to take careful stock of itself going into the next legislative session, and maybe focus it’s goals. Spend more time and money on public outreach and communication (which has been a very small amount per area of the Sound), and more funding working models such as the NW Strait Foundation and the Marine Resource Committees. The goal of restoring the Salish Sea is not achievable by an organization that does not even show up to testify in support of local SMPs. They should concentrate on what political organizations do well, which is help allocate public funds, monitor, coordinate and educate. I would guess, from experience, that the Partnership did not do a lot of work, if any, in actually recovering those shores documented below. However, they may have been instrumental in helping procure funds.
It appears to us in the field that the model of a central command and control location in Tacoma is not doing enough to reach us in the hinterlands.
But to be clear, we need the Partnership, because without it, the smaller organizations are at the mercy of fund distribution and total oversight by DOE, DNR and other silos of activity, that do not do a good job of overall coordination with outside organizations, and, as demonstrated by the current fiasco of the Jefferson County SMP, are actually fighting locally backed efforts to block industries that DOE feels favorable to, regardless of environmental cost.
Chris Dunagan reports: Since establishing recovery targets for Puget Sound, the Puget Sound Partnership faces the harsh reality that little progress has been made toward its own restoration goals. Since 2007, the number of killer whales and chinook salmon have declined; herring stocks and eelgrass beds have not increased; and marine water quality shows a recent worsening trend. These are the findings in the latest "State of the Sound" report approved Friday by the Puget Sound Leadership Council, the governing board for the partnership. Improvements were noted for two significant ecosystem indicators. Nearly 1,400 acres of commercial shellfish beds were recovered between 2007 and 2011, and about 2,300 acres of habitat were restored in some 16 major river estuaries.
Read the rest of the story.
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/oct/27/little-progress-reported-in-puget-sound-health/